A good friend of mine sent me an instant message the other day. To paraphrase, he said ‘you have a Wii? I have two…‘
SOLD! I said, without hesitation, and proceeded to write a check.

Since their initial release, I’ve been telling myself that when the Wii becomes more readily available at retail price, I’d buy one. I’m not a huge gamer (in fact, I realize now this is the first game system I’ve ever purchased new), but I’ve been keen on this new little system and shift in gaming mentality that it brings with it. Now one was quite literally laid at my feet, while others are still clambering to purchase them for above retail price elsewhere. I couldn’t pass it up.

I brought home the box with the game system, one controller set (remote & nunchuck) and two games (three if you include the bundled Wii Sports.) After about 10 minutes of setting it up and configuring it, I was in business. By ‘in business’ I don’t mean that I was actually in and playing a game right away – though I easily could have been. I found myself plenty entertained by just navigating around the menus, creating Miis, and generally playing with the various features of the system. Of course, at it’s heart it’s a video game system. After a 10 or 15 minutes of mucking around I reached for my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess settled in to give the new toy a good test run.

More than any other game, it was the new incarnation of Zelda that most interested me when I first heard that Nintendo was to release a “next-gen” console. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the SNES was still is my favorite video game of all time. As I write this, I’ve only logged maybe 2-3 hours of game play on a game which Nintendo claims will take up to 70 hours to complete. I’ve seen enough of this game, and the others to come up with a couple of initial conclusions about Zelda and the system however. Here they are in an only a somewhat particular order:

Pros:

• The Zelda game lives up to it’s pedigree. The story, and general look and feel are completely engrossing. I don’t typically like playing story line adventure type games, but Zelda feels like reading a really good book. Each puzzle that you solve and area you unlock feels like a new chapter in a novel you just can’t put down.

• The interactivity created by the motion sensing controllers is excellent. After decades of video game consoles developing on one basic path (faster games, more graphics, more buttons on an a basically universal controller design) it’s incredibly refreshing to be controlling a game in a way that is not only more fun, but usually more intuitive. I can only guess as to the potential for future growth in gaming here..

• It’s friendly. That is to say, it’s easy to like the Wii. It’s small, cute, quiet and relatively inexpensive. It’s also (as mentioned above) very pleasant to interact with in or out of a game environment.

• The extendibility created by features like the Internet and virtual console ‘channels’ keeps you busy even when not playing a game. It’s great to be able to (legally) download and play some of my classic favorites on this system.

Cons:

• Everybody knows that the Wii isn’t about ‘next-gen’ graphics and I’m OK with that. Still, there are bits in some of the games that look pretty horrible compared to what I’m used to in this day and age. To a large extent, this is caused by the fact that I’m using the included composite video cable to connect to my widescreen HD LCD TV. I’ll be upgrading to the component cables for sure, but the fact remains that the Wii brings up the rear in the graphics quality race among it’s next-gen competitors.

• The interactivity created by the motion sensing controllers isn’t fully leveraged by game makers. The Wii sports title really exists to show off the capabilities of these new controllers, and it utilizes them brilliantly. Zelda on the other hand uses the technology but I feel that it doesn’t live up to it’s potential in this regard. That being said, it’s still 10 times better (in my humble opinion) than the control of the Zelda games on N64 and Gamecube. I feel like there is a very high ceiling for game companies to work with in this department.. and so far this gives me more to look forward to in the future, than be exited about at the moment.

• It’s extendibility is limited and monetized. I love that I can download Super Mario Brothers from the original NES and play it on my Wii. I don’t like that I have to pay extra to do so. Maybe it’s wrong for me to feel that after spending $425 on a system and games, I should be entitled to download a game they offer from 20 years ago for free – but I do. I also worry (thought I haven’t done any research) about the fact that the Internet channel (basically and Opera browser for the Wii) is only available as a “Trial Version”. Will we have to pay for this feature in the future?

• The Wii only comes with one controller set. To be fair, most game systems only come with one controller. But the Wii is all about interactivity and encouraging people to be social, and think about video games differently. I would like to be able to play a game of Wii Sports tennis with my Wife without buying another $60 controller.

That makes 4 pros and 4 cons, with the majority of the words being written on the side of the cons. Don’t let that stat fool you though, the benefits of the pros far outweigh the detriments of the cons. I experienced very little if any buyers remorse after purchasing this thing (which is saying something for me) and would happily do so again.

One thing is for certain, really looking forward to trying some of the next wave of games which are truly built from the ground up to support the Wii and it’s innovative control system. I’m a sucker for sports games, so I’m especially interested to see how that genre adapts to the new possibilities.

The bottom line? I’m very happy with this toy. Could I be more impressed? Yes. But hey, I’m hard to please.

Tags: Nintendo Wii, Video Games, Wii, Zelda

Inspired by Chris…

I like that harmony created Conor Oberst and Jim James when they sing “The whole world’s waking up”.

Brilliant backup vocals from James.

iTunes Song Link

Tags: Bright Eyes, Music

Base jumpers and budding equipment designers are scrambling to create what amounts to a human flying squirrel rig. The wearer will be able to huck off a typical base jumping cliff, but rather than pulling a chute after a period of free-fall, they will be able to spread their wings, and glide gracefully to a landing.. or so they hope.

Notice the guy testing this particular design is still wearing a traditional parachute during testing. One of the advantages of such a design is that it can easily be stored in a small backpack during the approach, and whatever climb is necessary to reach the launch point. This benefit is undoubtedly negated however by the large cases required to cary the wearers balls in..

[link]

Tags: base jumping, extreme sports

After some effort, was able to get all of the broken old bits out of the way with the help of a blowtorch, saws-all (gotta love power tools) and two heavy duty pipe wrenches. This was the first point in the operation that I began to think I might actually be capable of fixing this problem without digging up the front yard and replacing the entire thing with a new pipe as the plumbers had suggested would be required. They also mentioned that, provided I had dug then entire trench to a depth of 6 inches below the pipe, and 24 inches wide before they came out, it would still cost at least $600 to replace the pipe.

Some of them like the tremendously successful X prize have helped the world realize that we as a people are capable of much more than public funding can pay for and standard motivation would suggest. Today came word that Sir Richard Branson has once again raised the bar, challenging the worlds top minds to address the very real problem of climate change.LONDON (AP) — British tycoon Richard Branson dangled a $25 million prize before the world’s top scientists Friday seeking to spur research into devising ways to suck greenhouse gases out of the air.Former Vice President Al Gore lent his support to the challenge, which came a week after a landmark report by the world’s leading climate scientists and government officials warned that global warming will continue, creating a far different planet in 100 yearsThis is only one small step in the overall battle to put right what we have for so long been making wrong. That’s saying something considering the twenty five million dollar sum.

Charlie Brooker writes:

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don’t use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

I completely disagree, but this made me laugh.

Rather than writing on and on about all the reasons I feel that Charlie is wrong, I enjoy sitting back and watching the Mac vs PC dirt fly. With the help of my macs, I’m a very satisfied computer user these days which is something I’ve never truly been able to say before.

I know very well that I’m not going to convince anyone of anything by adding to the fight, so I’m happy to just ignore most of it, and enjoy some of it.

Tags: Apple, Mac, Mac vs PC

fall-line and I will whisked away to London from Seattle where we will briefly explore before taking a fast train to Scotland.I’ve been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to visit the land from which so much of my family history (and hair color) comes from. This year we decided that enough is enough – we’re going!Before buying the tickets this evening I was feeling kind of stressed out about the expense of airfare, hotel, car rental, train tickets, whisky and the like….. Weather that subsidy came in the form of a fully expensed business trip or, as with our recent trip to Russia, we were provided with lodging, food and gifts by family members, it significantly reduced the out of pocket expense.

Seth Godin has shared some very good insights on how to use Powerpoint (or Keynote) to deliver an effective and powerful presentation. I feel that his suggestions could have improved nearly every presentation I’ve witnessed or delivered in recent memory. I’ll certainly be rereading this article when it comes time for me to prepare my next deck.