Wii Preview

A British magazine recently got to try Wii for extended play sessions. First, they consider the challenge level:

Some gamers have shown concern that the activity level required to play Wii games, especially the sporty titles, may be too high. There are concerns that you have to stand for long periods of time and use body actions such as swinging your arm above your head or at the side of your body... [this was not a problem]...even the most active title on the launch line up, Wii Sports, doesn’t require you to make large body motions unless you want to. You can play it moving very little if you want, and some of the games can be played sitting down.

I love that people are starting to worry that potential videogame options might be too strenuous. Seriously, think about that for a minute - being concerned that consumers might not be in good enough physical condition to play a video game! We've sure come a long way from the notion that videogames produce couch potatoes, haven't we? Pretty soon, parents will be reminding their kids to do their daily videogame exercise...

When introduced to Wii Boxing, all a player has to do is hold a nunchuck in one hand and the Wii remote in the other and then move exactly as you would a boxer – lean back or side to side, blocking, jabbing, upper cutting etc. The Wii detects the movement of the nunchuck exactly the same way as it does your main remote. There’s no need to press buttons in this game, you simply move. This is truly an awesome innovation in gaming and not an experience you’d expect outside of the arcades.

Coooool!

The QA guy on hand to talk us through the launch line up also informed us that there may be plans to invent shin remotes of some form to enable kicking in games in the future. As far as I am aware, this would definitely be a first in home entertainment, if not any entertainment!

It wouldn't be a first. At the last CES I was able to play Street Fighter using arcademx shin and wrist sensors. Still, it'll be nice to see what Nintendo comes up with.