Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Saturday, September 13, 2008 Trash and Mii Thanks for your charity suggestions so far. Keep them coming! * * * Trash got us a Wii a few weeks ago. I wasn't as excited about it as she was. I've never been much of an early adopter when it comes to video games. Like, I just finished Half-Life 2 earlier this year, and am still plugging away on Grand Theft Auto III. I blame my chronic lateness in this area on the fact that when I asked my parents for an Atari 2600 back in the seventies, they told me to save up and buy one with my own money. Do you know how long it takes a kid to save up that amount on a two-dollar paper route? Long enough that by the time I had enough cash, the cartridges for it were almost impossible to find on eBay. So since I finished writing the book, I've been perfectly happy wasting the odd hour on my used PlayStation 2 (that is, until it broke and I had to ship it to Texas last week so they would send me a new one, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe mailing a video game console to a perfectly-timed rendezvous with a category-3 hurricane maybe isn't the smartest thing I've ever done), sticking to older games and using Guitar Hero controllers with wires and calling myself "retro." Having a Wii in the house kind of blows that whole self-image out of the water. I have to admit it's been fun, though. Not the actual playing, mind you, but the joking and goofing off that goes along with it. For instance, wii've been having a great time cranking out a wii-markable volume of wii-based puns. Something that operates with Wii-motes and steering Wii-ls is pretty much begging for that kind of treatment. One night Chao and his girlfriend Gerd were over, and we were playing Wii Play, which is more or less nine different games representing all of the different ways you can use the Wii-mote. By the eighth game, we were wondering what could possibly be left. Wii sex? Chao obligingly pretended to stick the end of his Wii-mote into his mouth. Hey, it was already wearing a condom. But other games are the opposite of fun, at least to me. For reasons that are entirely beyond Chao and me, Trash and Gerd love this game called Cooking Mama, wherein players use the Wii-mote to simulate cooking tasks. If you do it well, Mama congratulates you. If not, she literally disowns you with a heavily-accented putdown that sounds like nothing so much as "You're not mine!" Find yourself a new Mama, loser. Clearly the Cooking Mama's love is conditional. Aside from that one grim fillip, I can't understand how anyone could find this game Wii-motely fun to play. So I came up with my own idea for a Wii game: Wii Sleep (or, alternatively, SWii-p). You do things like hold the Wii-mote up to your closed eyelid and simulate REMs, or place it on your chest so it can detect the soporific rises and falls, or hook it up to an optional electrode (or Wii-lectrode, as it Wii-re) peripheral so the computer can monitor your alpha waves. I think it'll be a huge hit. Unfortunately, I don't have the skills or resources to make this game happen, so someone else is going to end up getting rich off my idea. But that's fine. I'll just practice for it in advance when I'm watching someone play Cooking Mama, and for once I'll be ahead of the videogame curve. posted by M. Giant 8:14 PM 4 comments 4 Comments:I love my Wii, though I would totally buy Swiip. Heh! I have to say that I think Mario Kart, Mario Galaxy and Boom Blox are my favorite three games. That will likely change when the Star Wars game comes out this Tuesday. You use the Wii-mote as your light saber and the nunchuk to toss people like rag dolls with the Force. I bet that it turns you into an early adopter real quick. :)
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Wii can second the vote for Boom Blox. It's pretty swiit. And the kid could probably do it, too, assuming the wrist strap is properly secured.
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If you don't love the Wii, you aren't playing the right games!!
By Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii is pretty fun, and you can use the nunchuck as a whip in the game, which I figured out accidentially. And don't feel too bad, I only finished Half-life2 earlier this year, and I don't have a book published or a super-genius kid to look after.
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