Okay, so I’ve had the chance to play with [tag]Nintendo[/tag]’s new videogame console, the [tag]Wii[/tag], for slightly more than a month now. Although I’ve been hampered by my lack of too much free time to play with the new games, here are some of my experiences with getting the system, playing the games, and what the future holds. Since it could be a long read, I’ve decided to divide my impressions into parts spread over the next few days. This is Part 1, about how I actually got the Wii.

I currently reside in New Brunswick, a more isolated and rural part of Canada (which arguably isn’t the booming capital of the word). Therefore, I rely heavily on the Internet and web sites to keep me informed of technological advances. This is how I came to know of the new Nintendo console codenamed [tag]Revolution[/tag]. As the launch date of November 19, 2006, approached, I read more and more on this new toy and decided I wanted one, even with monetary limits imposed on an university student.
By September 2006, although many stores were offering pre-orders for the Wii and Playstation 3, most of them sold out on pre-orders quite quickly (within minutes) in the US. It would seem that I would have to wait until Christmas for more supply to arrive, but since Heather was heading to Moncton one day, I asked her to try and get a pre-order for me from Toys ‘R Us. Luckily, maybe it’s because Moncton doesn’t have too many gamers, they still had some and I had a receipt to pick one up when it comes out.

October rolled along and I read even more on the Wii and its capabilities. November came by and I was more excited than ever. My parents never let me play videogames in the household, so I was understandably excited to own my first console while away at university. I decided I was going to get these games the day I went to get my Wii:

• [tag]Wii Sports[/tag]: Comes bundled with the system anyway. It’d be a nice demonstration of the Wii’s capabilities for friends who don’t play videogames.
• The Legend of Zelda: [tag]Twilight Princess[/tag]: Everybody was making such a big deal about it. I personally wasn’t a major fan, but I played Link’s Awakening on my computer before.
• [tag]Rayman Raving Rabbids[/tag]: I read that it had tons of mini-games that made use of the Wii’s motion sensing controller.
• [tag]Tony Hawk Downhill Jam[/tag]: I thought it would be nice to have a multiplayer game to play with other people. It looked like high speed mixed with fun action.
• [tag]Trauma Center: Second Opinion[/tag]: I heard about this game when it was originally out for the Nintendo DS, but never got it since it’s hard to find in my area. Since this version’s supposedly an improved remake, I hoped that they would carry it in Moncton this time.

Then, the day came! It was November 19th, and I headed out on a bus from Sackville to Moncton to pickup my Wii. Since Sackville’s in the middle the Canadian tundra, it took approximately an hour for me to get to the mall.

As I entered the mall, I walked by 2 middle-aged women who were carrying large bags with the Wii consoles sticking out, assumingly with their children’s Christmas dreams inside. I tried to smile at them, but they simply walked right past me and didn’t even hold the door for me. Although the Wii is supposed to revolutionalize a lot of things, courtesy doesn’t seem to be one of them.

I walked toward Toys ‘R Us, and my prospects of walking out with a Wii seemed bright. There were hardly any people at the entrance. Unfortunately, they all gathered at the entrance to the video games section. Who said that the Wii would appeal to a greater variety of gamers? Everybody in the lineup weighed at least 250 pounds, including the women. There were only a few consoles left, but since I had a pre-order (haha, suckers), they were holding them in the storeroom for me. I tried to find out if I could skip out on the lineup because I had a pre-order, but no luck. Some lady who looked like a man gave me a snarl and told me to line up like everybody else. She didn’t have a pre-order.

Thus, I had to endure waiting for almost an hour, even though I had no intention of fighting for the half-dozen consoles left. While waiting in line I was entertained by the display of Toys ‘R Us’ videogame collection, featuring titles such as Spongebob and Dora the Explorer. I grabbed my copy of Downhill Jam while in line, but unfortunately all the Twilight Princess copies were sold out. Darn.

I spent the rest of my waiting period talking to some guy (I forget his name) about our collective excitement for the Wii. He was your stereotypical mama’s basement nerd, but he knew what he was talking about. He got his Wii pre-order way back during the Summer, and has been holding on to his receipt for months!

Finally, we were at the front of the line. The store clerk was even worse of a nerd than the guy in front of me. When he called the storeroom to have somebody bring out our Wiis, he greeted the guy on the phone with an annoying “Mow-shu-mow-shu” (the actual greeting is the Japanese もしもし, used for phone conversations). We waited some more minutes, and finally got our coveted systems.

I raced home with the system (well, more like waited for the bus to take me back to Sackville, a process that took a few hours). Here are some unboxing photos to share with the crowd. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photos into their larger glory.

A video was also made, but there were some issues involved with it. If I can fix it, it’ll get posted at a later date.

Keep checking back for the next installment of the Wii experiences! I’ll complain about Toys ‘R Us, and review some of the games I had a chance to play with.

This ClashBang.com article was written by Chris Chu. Tired of privately venting his frustration in vain, Chris decided to share his discontent with the rest of the world.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 2:32 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.