Wii Sport is an excellent bundle, and uses the different features of the Wii remote very nicely. Boxing is the only game that also uses the nunchuck, and is also the worst in my opinion. The game seems chaotic, and it is hard to really get the feeling. I had no really expectations of the baseball game, but damn it is satisfying to hit that ball. A nice plus is the ability to curve the ball while pitching.

Wii play is a bundle of mini games, which all in all are quite lame. But they live up to their purpose, which is to train the user in using the Wii remote, and focus on precise pointing in most of the games. If it wasn’t bundled with a Wii remote for a modest extra cost, I wouldn’t recommend buying it. But they are so… I don’t know really!

Apparently the game to get was the new Zelda, so off course I did. I have never before owned a Nintendo, and never tried a Zelda game before so I was pretty new to the story and the universe. The game makes excellent use of the Wii remote and the nunchuck, and every single button is used. It has been a long time since I played an action adventure game, … actually any game at all. And I am slightly annoyed about the constant chit chat, (without voice by the way, but text only), and the lack of freedom hence the predetermined path. But all that aside it is an great game for the genre.

The reason why I never owned a Nintendo is that I am a sega fanboy to the fullest. At least I used to be. I would pick Sonic over Mario any day, even now. I had to get my hands on Segas first release for the Wii as well, so I anxiously grapped Monkey Ball Banana blitz, on my early Friday Wii shopping Spree. A game with that title has got to be great right?!! Well, I still can’t answer that really. The main single player game works pretty well, and once again excellently makes use of the Wii remote for steering a ball through various obstacles in the pursuit of bananas. But the main reason of purchase was the party game feature. It has 50 mini games that can be played by 2-4 players, and all with various game play and fun factor. Some of them are quite fun, but some of them are really hard to catch the meaning of. Several of those games are hard, well almost impossible to play with the Wii remote. Sometimes you get the feeling that they haven’t event tried the games themselves.

I have always thought that party games were for consoles and first person shooters for PC. But with the Wii remote I am beginning to think that first person shooters could be possible for the Wii as well. It is not as precise, neither as fast as a mouse, but the shooting aspects of Zelda works pretty great anyway. I also like the way the controlling is split in two hands independently (unless you have very very long arms). I was afraid that the joystick on the nunchuck would be annoying, because I never liked the stick on the PS2 controllers. But it works pretty well until now. At a later point I might prefer a more old school type nunchuck-pad like the mysterious one below. [...]

It is a bit shame that the online channels are not finished yet, so no news and no weather in Europe. I love to virtually represent myself as one of the Mii’s you can create on the console, though. I cant wait to see a parade, and let my Mii’s meaningless wander to other friends Wii’s, so they can see how creative I am. Or is there another aspect of this that I miss to see?

Another great thing about the Wii is that it seems to be blister free. After a whole weekend of concetrated gaming, I still havent had any pain in my fingers at all…They really thought it through this time.

My Wii friend code is 7159-9443-3680-5819 btw, so feel free to add me.

The D3 Expo where not really big, but still they managed to present the most interesting things in the main stream gaming world. But you could argue that it is quite easy to catch people’s interest at the moment, when the release of two new consoles is awaiting in the near future. A big disappointment though, where the lack of booth babes… Next year, you have to do better on this!

On the side note Yahoo just provided me some pleasant surprises. When I was geotagging my pictures for the expo, I discovered that yahoo maps now has much better support for Europe. They now include street maps to even small cities in Denmark and much better satelite detail than before. Now they really provide serious competition to Google in the world of geotagging and other geocoded applications.

Another funny discovery is that the Chinese yahoo offers free download of music. Besides the newest popular chinese music, you can find a lot of foreign music. It was quite a surprise, both because this most likely is illegal, and because I haven’t yet heard about any controversy concerning this. Even if it is not directly illegal, it must be against some kind of mission or value statements, and it could harm the image of the corporation. But I guess nobody in the headquarters can read Chinese, or nobody just cares about how they run the foreign platforms. And after all the Chinese interpret the phrase “copyright” to “the right to copy”.

“…in Nintendo Wii fashion, the new PlayStation 3 controller will also have motion-sensing capabilities. [...]“

I can’t wait to get my hands on one of these. I have spent a lot of time during the last couple of days checking the new games out for the PS3. I must admit that at one point I slightly considered the Wii, but only because of the motion sensing controller. I have always been a SEGA/sonic person and would feel bad to betray the speedy fellow by going to the dark side (or is it the light) of Nintendo. And now it seems like it isn’t necessary. I totally have the cravings for another console now, my last one was the PS1, which feel like a looong time ago. Before that I had the Sega Master System I and after that the Mega Drive…. amazing machines, and I spend a large amount of my childhood/youth in front of these. Of the latter, i had the Japanese version (black/purple in contrast to black/white), which meant that sometimes when i bought game it chose the japanese language setting. It didn’t mean so much though, because the stories and the understanding of it where always a minor part of the game for me.

I am also looking forward to the Gundam game for the PS3. I am crazy about those big robot/suits, and have watched a couple of the Gundam Seed series (…well all of them). Strangely enough I never much cared for transformers. About 7 years ago I played the PC game slave Zero, which I really loved. A guy in a gigantic mobile suit, fighting in a futuristic megapolis. Even though the player didn’t have much choice of where to go, the game still had its own specific mood and atmosphere. I hope the Gundam game can bring some of that back. I have always thought of consoles as drivers for social gaming, so I hope for some really great multiplayer/party games. And i cross my fingers for another Micro Machines release which must be the greatest ps1 game ever (MMV3).