While my Wii experience was not nearly as exciting as zhx’s, I do have enough blog-worthy content. It was too cold for me to even consider staying over night at any store, Alberta winters are freezing. My EB Games pre-order plan had failed early on, it was too hard to get there on a school day, and Microplay managed to pre-order off the six consoles they got without me even hearing about it. That left my very local Wal-Mart, the not-so-near Best Buy and the even further Future Shop. My chances looked slim at either of the latter, and I’m glad I didn’t decide to even bother with either of them. I heard from a couple of people that Best Buy had about a hundred consoles and three times as many customers. That wasn’t nearly as big as in some places, but I’m still glad I didn’t bother.Wal-Mart got a shocking sixty-nine consoles, that’s quite a large number for the size of city I live in. With EB and Microplay getting less than twenty between them, Zellers apparently getting none, Wal-Mart received almost the entire shipment to my area.

I was aiming to be at Wal-Mart by 6:00 and ended up in line by 5:45. Only a few minutes made a huge difference at this launch, the head guy was handing out tickets and apparently went through about twenty tickets from 5:30 to when I got there. A lady and her daughter told us that they had ticket number sixty-five and thought it was the last Wii available, but said that earlier they thought it was sixty-three so they may “find” more. Almost immediately after we were told, the organizer stepped out with tickets sixty-six and sixty-seven, and told us those were the last ones. Relieved, I stood shivering and prepared for the hours wait until Wal-Mart opened at 7:00. Over the hour a good number of people came and left thinking that sixty-seven, and, later, sixty-nine were the last tickets, but the smart ones stuck around and eventually the slots were filled by some eager friends (or brothers, I couldn’t tell) who were quite a bit older than me and a father. The friends were pretty cool guys, we talked about some stuff and they asked me a lot about the Wii as they didn’t seem to know some of the more specific details like the removal of the DVD player or the SD card slot. After the hour was finally up, they let all sixty-nine of us with tickets (plus about another forty without) inside, at which time we piled in against the electronics “department” while two ladies called up the next ten numbers to the single cash desk. Needless to say, this took a long time, but an announcement came on saying all ticket holders were guaranteed a Wii and there would be another shipment of ‘em in about three days. At this point, almost all of the non-ticket holders left, three days isn’t that long to have to wait. The rest of us warmed up and watched in dismay as copy after copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was scooped up. Not only that, but there seemed to be no limit on the number of Wiimotes and Nunchuks that could be bought, so many people were buying three of each, some even bought the Virtual Console controller as well. I guess it was fair that they could buy what they wanted since they were there long before me, so I didn’t really mind. I quickly forgot about that as I was informed that there was a copy of Twilight Princess per console, all of us would be getting one! This was looking great until number sixty bought what appeared to be the last copy of Twilight Princess. The last of us were pretty disappointed and one lady who I had talked to earlier in the morning asked them to look through all their boxes and, lo and behold, found around twelve more copies of the game! The Nunchuks were gone which left me no reason to buy Red Steel, I really wanted to try multiplayer. It may have been for the best, anyways, with all the bad review it is getting. I decided not to get anything besides the copy of Twilight Princess and the console itself and left very, very happy.

What then? Well, I had most of the day with my Wii. Between Friday and Sunday I had screwed over my sleep schedule so I didn’t want to get into the epicness of Zelda, so I stuck to Wii Sports. My brother had gone to Microplay later and picked up a very expensive Wiimote ($45 CND) and Nunchuk ($25 CND). I swear Wal-Mart was selling both for $25, but no one believes me. Either they get it cheaper because of their status, they messed up the price, or I’m wrong. Anyways, that meant I did actually get the try out Wii Sports’ multiplayer. Let me say this: It is highly under-rated. Tennis is okay, but over doing the movements doesn’t really work because it is nearly impossible to do a big hit on your forehand and then go quickly to your backhand without messing up the shot. Baseball was a lot of fun for me, it is a limited version of baseball but for a non-fan I liked it a lot. Golf and bowling are boring single player experiences but I had a lot more fun with my brother, friend or sister. And then, of course, there is boxing. It is far from perfect, the punches don’t always do what they are supposed to and it is hard to dodge and block. This game is still incredibly fun. It is awesome to pick up and play, this is something local multiplayer had always lacked. It is refreshing to be able to jump into a game and be in an opportunity where you could beat your opponent even if they are a “master” and you’ve never played before. The game has a few other tacked on modes: a Brain Age style Wii Sports Age (Meh…) and a selection of fifteen training mini-games. I haven’t played through them all yet, most of them are pretty fun and I believe all of them have multiplayer, too. This game may not have been enough for Nintendo to sell as an individual game, but it is an awesome free pack-in and a great way to get familiar with the Wiimote.

I’ll hopefully have a review of Twilight Princess soon, or at least comments on it. It’ll take a while to play through. I can already tell this game is going to be awesome, but challenging. There is a get this to do this to get this to do that kind of quest in the first ten or so minutes of the game. I got the wooden sword today, and the sword-play has been done very well from what I can tell. I’m also surprised at how early you turn into your alter ego…enough on that, though. Hopefully you’ve gotten your Wii and are enjoying it as much as I am. If you’ve already got it connected to the internet, please post your Wii number as a comment. Mine is as follows:

• Wii: 0403 1016 1897 8788
• Mii: Kenneth
  

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