I’ve Seen The Wii and the Wii is Good.

Monday, November 13th, 2006 @ 12:48 am

That is right, my friends and readers whom I have never met, I am here to tell you that I visited an EB Games this weekend and was treated to a Wii kiosk running Excite Truck. After trading my driver’s license for a Wii-mote, I got to experience, first-hand, what I have only been reading about on joystiq and gizmodo over the past few days. I have to say that after just a few minutes with the Wii (and a 3rd place finish in Excite Truck) I was very impressed and left wanting more.

For starters, the Wii-mote fits very naturally into your hand with your thumb directly over the ‘A’ button and your finger comfortably on the underside trigger. Controlling the on-screen cursor felt intuitive and made navigating around the system very easy. I have been a little concerned with reports of inaccurate pointing of the controller, but I found that once you located the cursor on the screen, it was pretty simple to move it where you needed it to go. Whether or not this will translate well when shooting arrows in Zelda remains to be seen. Figuring out the controls of Excite Truck took a couple minutes. Once I had the controller properly tilted and got a feel for the sensitivity of the turns, using the Wii-mote like a steering wheel felt pretty comfortable.

I have to admit that I have had a twinge of skepticism about the Wii and the ‘next-generation’ controls. I have been trying to calm myself with thoughts of the DS and how silly I thought that large second touch screen would be and just how brilliant it turned out. Trust Nintendo, I tell myself, remember to trust Nintendo.

By all this I mean to say, I cannot wait until November 19th!