My Wii Thoughts

Thanks to my friends Hans & Mark, I had a pre-order for a Nintendo Wii, the new console from the legendary game company. If you've missed the thousands of news pieces about the small unit, the key feature of the unit is a sensitive, wireless motion-detecting controller, dubbed the Wiimote in common parlance for its similarity to the TV remotes in every home.

Hold your Wiimote like a bat, and swing at the ball flying at you in Wii Sports Baseball (Wii Sports, a simplistic collection of sports games that serves as an effective demonstration of the controller, comes with the console). Swing the Wiimote and watch Link swing his sword in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the latest installment of the series that practically created the epic adventure video game genre. Or use the Wiimote like a laser pointer, aiming Link's slingshot with pinpoint accuracy. ("It even has your hand tremor," said Melissa as my pointer bobbed about during the console's set-up screens).

Critics describing the Wii have worn out their thesauruses looking up synonyms for "revolutionary," and I find myself in the same trap. The controller makes perfect sense from the first moment you hold it near your shoulder and try to hit the baseball arcing towards you. Even the simple sports games are shockingly immersive when your physical movement—not some arbitrary button—dictates a character's behavior on the TV.

Even so, it's a tough adjustment for a moderate gamer like myself. I played Excite Truck at my friend Hans's house, and I kept wondering why my truck wouldn't turn. It was because I kept using the directional pad on the Wiimote instead of just turning the Wiimote left and right like a steering wheel. In Twilight Princess, Link wasn't swinging his sword because I kept pushing the A button on the Wiimote instead of swinging the controller. I'm fighting against a lifetime of hitting buttons to create an action in the game.

But Nintendo doesn't care about me. They're doing the logical thing for a company that makes the least popular of last generation's consoles: Rather than compete against Sony and Microsoft's spiralling graphics capabilities, Nintendo wants to create a brand new marketplace. They've got their eyes set on the casual gamer, a person who enjoys easy gameplay and doesn't care about polygon counts. A large number (20 percent I think) of the shoppers who bought a Nintendo DS, the successor to the Game Boy, had never owned a gaming system before. Nintendo sees that gold mine and wants to dive in, leaving the processor-speed geeks to fight over the Xbox and Playstation. And we've all seen the people who try to play a video game, only to get confused about whether to push this button or that to run or swing or jump or whatever. Take that barrier away, says Nintendo, and you open a universe of new players and thus new consumers.

That translates to more casual games, well represented in the Wii's launch. I bought Rayman Raving Rabbids, a succession of mini-games that use the Wiimote and the motion-sensitive "nunchuck" attachment that plugs into the Wiimote. You can sit down for twenty minutes and play through five or so games (though you will fume at the between-game load times). Melissa laughed as I twirled the Wiimote over my head to simulate a hammer toss (featuring a cow and chain instead of the more normal equipment), pumped the Wiimote and nunchuck up and down to simulate running, and used the nunchuck and Wiimote to hit bunnies off a platform to the beat of a dance tune.

Rayman and Wii Sports are fun, but the person who loves a compelling, epic tale should pick up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, by wide agreement the best Zelda game ever (A title formerly held by The Ocarina of Time). I'm just a tiny bit into it, so I can't offer too much insight, but even a fast game—one that skips past the many side quests—requires a good 50 hours of gameplay. Average time is about 70 hours. Lots of familiar Zelda mechanics are in place, though at some point Link transforms into a wolf, but the pointer on the Wiimote provides a noticeable improvement in aiming. With some quick flicks, even my unsteady hand accurately took down five targets with my slingshot, a process that might have taken twice as long with the old hold-em-steady joystick aiming. And that's within just a minute of having something I could aim. Practice makes perfect, and most reviewers have agreed that "perfect" really is the term for the targeting.

These are all first-generation Wii games, laughable in retrospect as a console matures and developers figure out how to push the system further. The next innovation for the Wii is obvious: Figure out how to map the motion detector to the player's movement in a one-to-one way. Right now, I can swing the Wiimote in a sloppy diagonal, and Link will make a horizontal slash with his sword. The Wiimote has the sensitivity to detect minute changes, so I expect you'll see 1-to-1 motions soon.

Gaming pundits are already wondering if the Wiimote will open up whole new styles of gameplay that we've not yet seen. The DS, with its touch-sensitive screen, enabled new gameplay mechanics, and I'm sure the Wii will too.