Wee! Err, Wii!

Geek Alert: Women and children may want to take cover.

This past week the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or E3) took place in Los Angeles in the Staples Centre (where the L.A. Lakers play... Go Suns!). This is an annual trade show where videogame hardware and software developers get together and show off what big projects they've been working on since the last E3 to technology-based journalists and nerds who have enough expendible income to travel to LA and purchase a ticket to the event.

In the past one or two years, I've gone from a hardcore gamer to a more casual gamer. In today's video gaming world it seems like 95% of the games that come out belong in only a hand-full of genres with one clear leader in each followed by a bunch of clone copy-cats. Furthermore, pretty much any game worth my time is worth too much of my time as it would take an extremely long time to completely go through it from beginning to end. So unless it's a "must have, killer app" then I can't bring myself to log much time into it.

Enter the Wii, Nintendo's newest hardcore offering. The Wii has come up with a whole new controller scheme. In one hand you hold what looks like an ordinary TV remote with a few buttons on the top and a finger trigger button on the bottom. Attached to it by a chord is what looks like half an ordinary gaming console controller (called "the nunchuk") with a thumb stick and two trigger buttons. Both peices of the controller or motions sensored so they detect movement from the controller in the hand of the user, and the remote can be pointed at the screen and used to select different areas on the TV screen. So, for instance, in a shooting game, instead of using the analog pad (or joystick for you old school gamers) to move your cross hairs at the enemy, you'll just point at him on the TV screen and fire. One cool feature in an upcoming game called "Red Steel" for the Wii is that if you turn the remote sideways, your character turns their gun sideways. (Two points to the person who quotes the Simpsons reference to: A sideways gun). But being able to point at the TV screen and shoot something is nothing new, Duck Hunt has been out since 1986. But somethings that the new Wii controller can do that is new is: It can be swung like a bat to hit a pitch in a baseball game, or like a golf club. It can be used like a fishing rod in a fishing game (yes, they exist). The Wii controller is a sword, a tennis racket, a fly swatter, the possibilities are endless.

I don't think that the Wii could turn me back into a hardcore gamer, but I think it's the right system for me: Something that is going to be fun and not have a plethora of crappy games to sift through. Hey, maybe I could even get Black Mamba into videogames?

And Wii will also have the "must-have, killer apps" such as Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and Metroid Prime.