The “Break it Down” Blog

I have owned a Nintendo Wii since it was launched… actually I got one 2 days after the launch or something.

I own all the “must have” games for it (Zelda, Mario, Resident Evil 4, etc.).

I have two Wiimotes.

I have tried… jesus I have tried to like the Wii, but for all my trying, I’ve played it probably for a total of 10hrs over the year and a half or so I’ve had it, but I just cannot bring myself to like playing it more than my PS3 or 360.

Finally, this past weekend, I found out exactly what the Nintendo Wii is for and realized that my life is empty at the same time. Here’s what I mean…

My father-in-law was in town this past weekend and we had a big dinner planned with him and the neighbor family. After everyone came over and we fired up the grill, we realized there was this big empty silence in the room… a sort of “well, now what?” moment.

In a moment of panic I offered to turn the Wii on for us to play “some bowling”.

I would say it took my 60-year-old father in law all of 2.5mins to understand how to completely play every Wii Sports game and he was teaching the 8-year-old neighbor kid how to play in 5mins. The ramp-up time with the inherently intuitive Wii games is incredible… I can’t even imagine what turns that night would have taken if I had tried to show them how to play Gears of War or something… now I see why everyone drools over Nintendo’s games; the accessibility is really something to admire for non-gamers.

Fast-forward 4 hours later, everyone is yelling, clapping and having a great time. It finally dawned on me that the Wii is not a single-player game console, it’s almost exclusively a local-multiplayer source of awesome. Trying to replace a PS3 or 360 with a Wii I would say is an utter failure, but if you have a lot of friends, it kick some serious ass.

Unfortunately, that is when I realized I suck, because I rarely have friends over which is why I never noticed the Wii could be so fun.

So now I have the choice to make… keep the Wii and realize I am an empty shell of a person, or get rid of the Wii and run the risk of super-uncomfortable empty silences…

I think I’ll keep the Wii