Stoked About Nintendo's New Console. Ser-Wii-ously.

With the election come and gone, it is difficult for me to say that I'm as enthusiastic about its outcome than I had been in my last post. As I wait for the dust to settle and the smoke to clear, I thought it best to post about something entirely different in the interim: Nintendo's new video game console.

The Nintendo Wii (pronounced "we") is set to be released in six days and will be the greatest Nintendo console ever released - nay, the greatest console ever released by any company. Period.

I say this in all seriousness as I was raised on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) of the 80s and have made video gaming a "hobby" ever since. Unfortunately, I have become terribly bored with video games as of late. Every year the industry is watered down with titles like "Shoot A Lot of Freakin' Aliens 9" or the 300th installment of Madden. Consumers are being asked to shell out $300+ every five years to play the exact same game we've been playing for the past 20 years simply because of graphical enhancements.

I came to fully realize this two weeks ago when I saw the new game Gears of War on an Xbox 360 stand in the mall. Initially, I was in awe of its beauty (the graphics are absolutely outstanding). But, after watching an individual in front of me play the game for several minutes I was bored out of my mind and headed home. I then proceeded to plug in my old NES and have a blast with Super Mario Brothers 3.

The Nintendo Wii will revolutionize the gaming industry for several reasons. It does not possesses the graphical power of the Xbox 360 or that of the mind-boggling, psuedo-thermonuclear-device that is the Playstation 3 but it has one of the greatest innovations in gaming history: a controller that senses a full range of 3-Dimentional motion in space. For example, to play tennis, you simply swing the controller (shaped like a small television remote) just as you would a tennis racket. In fact, you can put spin on the ball by simply twisting the remote as you swing. In the new Zelda, you swing the remote to slash away at enemies and even use the remote as a pointer in shooting games to aim your gun. It may not sound like a big deal, but everyone who has played a game as graphically inept as "Wii Sports" cannot stop talking about how incredibly fun it is to play.

Another exciting feature is the ability to play games from every Nintendo console ever made, as well as some Sega Genesis games. For a minimal fee - like with iTunes - I can download games like Ice Hockey for the original NES, Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo or even Super Mario 64 that was released for the Nintendo 64 and play them on the Wii. In effect, Nintendo is not simply making available to the public their new generation of games, they are releasing their entire catalog of games over the past 20+ years.

While there are still a host of other features yet to be mentioned, the most exciting for me is online connectivity. Games that I have had a blast playing with friends and family when I come to visit, such as Mario Party and Super Smash Brothers, can now be played over the internet, thereby rendering distance constraints irrelevant. This means I could call up Mel, Eric, Yoj, etc. across the country and be like "Hey, you wanna' play Mario Party?" and they'd all be like "Fo' Shizzle!"

Seriously.

Because Mario Party and Smash Bros. are fan favorites within the fam and extended fam (shout out to the D's!), I've included links to some videos of the upcoming renditions of these titles. Some of the mini-games for Mario Party in particular look incredibly fun with the new controller:

Mario Party 8 videos

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Note: The picture at the top is a photoshopped rendition of Homestar Runner, a web-based comic character, accompanied by a Wii remote and its "nunchuck" attachment. Homestar Runner pronounces the word "Seriously" in the same manner as the phonetic spelling of "Seri-Wii-ously" and it was my lame attempt at wit.