Andrews Family

As Jenny knows all too well, I’ve always got something on my wishlist. Usually something to do with technology. This year for my birthday was no exception. I’ve been pestering Jenny to let me get a Nintendo Wii game console since it came out last November. I’m not much of a gamer these days but I was intrigued by the technology. While other game consoles have focused on High-Def graphics and are marketed to 16-25 year old males, the Wii takes a different approach. It is marketed more as a family or group fun system and has even been popular with senior citizens.

It wasn’t too hard to convince Jenny to let me get one, but finding one was the hard part. They are still in such high demand that you still can’t find them on the shelves in stores 6 months after its release. I got mine a couple of weeks ago by checking the internet for people posting Sunday ads early and found that Target was going to be advertising them. It didn’t show how many they were going to have but I showed up 15 minutes before they opened and got in line and was able to get one. Actually, I had a $20 gift card to BestBuy which was expiring on that Saturday so I took a leap of faith and bought a Wiimote before I even had the Wii.

So why is it so cool? The most interesting thing is the controller, called a Wiimote. It is wireless and uses Bluetooth to communicate to the console which means no wires and good battery life in the Wiimote. It has a built in 3-axis accelerometer which means it can sense when it is moved and its orientation. So when you play tennis, all you have to do is swing the Wiimote as if you were holding a tennis raquet. It also has an infrared (IR) camera on the tip and there is a "sensor bar" which has IR LEDs which sits on your TV. The poorly named "sensor" bar doesn’t actually sense anything. Instead the IR camera in the Wiimote can see it and allows you to "point" at the TV and it acts similar to a mouse. It is really pretty amazing and as people start doing more interactive things in the living room, the IR camera pointer system seems like a big advancement. When they couldn’t fit anything else in the Wiimote, they put a port on the bottom of it to plug in an accessory such as a standard controller or a nunchuck (yes as in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). The nunchuck has an analog joystick on it as well as another 3-axis accelerometer. That enables you to play games like Boxing simply by swinging with each hand. And the features don’t stop with the Wiimote. The console has build in wireless internet, an SD slot, and USB ports. The WiFi was a big selling point with me. The Wii can get updates over the web and you can even buy and download old games from previous Nintendo systems. The Opera web browser is also supported to let you surf the web which is more useful than you might think. It is easy to check out TVguide.com to see what is on, use Google Reader to check all your RSS Feeds which has already been specialized for the Wii, or any other website. It allows for some cool intergration with the outside world like streaming music into your living room and other Web 2.0 type applications.

Oh, and you might be wondering about the "Mii" in the post title. You can create a cartoon-like character of yourself to use as your player. You might even spot other Mii’s on your system in the crowd and you can register your friends Wii and your Mii’s can travel to their system and vice versa.

Overall, the Wii is aptly named because it is a lot of fun. Jenny enjoys playing tennis with me but she prefers to play on my team rather than against me. Part of my sell to Jenny was that since it isn’t going to be getting any easier to go out bowling with friends that now we can just have people over for dinner and bowling. Feel free to invite yourself over!