4/7/2009 - Wii Breakfast

I'm not sure it's fair to say that the Nintendo has become the laughingstock of the hardcore gaming community, but since the release of Wii Music, it's hard to find any first-party properties Nintendo is rolling out specifically geared to the hardcore gamers. Punch Out is probably the only game I'd look forward to, but I'm a retro gamer. Sega's Mad World looks to be a decent effort, but such games on the Wii are few and far between. Go to any Gamestop and just look at the Wii section of games. I guarantee you'll find a dozen titles that will make you go "What the f---?" With such a sad state of gaming on the Wii, it makes videos like this seem plausible:

12/14/2008 - Wii Theremin (2 videos)

Not much can be said about the Wii as a hardcore gaming console. Besides Nintendo's first-party offerings, Wii games have largely been mediocre party games. You're certainly not going to see any Wii games being nominated for Game of the Year at tonight's Video Game Awards. It's a big mystery to me as to how the systems are still selling out to this day. While the Wii has lost my interest as a gaming system, it's still interesting to see how people are utilizing the technologies in the Wiimote controller. For example, here's a guy who turned the Wiimote into a virtual theremin. Yes, that's the instrument you can play without touching it.

8/3/2008 - E3 2008: Wii Music

Two years ago, Sony gave an embarrassing press conference at the annual E3 conference that led many to think that their $600 Playstation 3 console would be a flop in the marketplace where the XBox 360 has been out for a year already and where the Nintendo Wii would later dominate with its emphasis on casual games. If you watched the press conferences this year at E3 however, you would have no other impression than "Oh, how the mighty have fallen."

Sony has since recovered from its ugly stepsister status with its emphasis on hardcore games and with price cuts on the PS3, of course. The demise of HD-DVD also helped the Blu-Ray playing PS3.

Nintendo still dominates the sales chart with the Wii, however. Games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Smash Bros. Brawl have so far kept the interests of longtime Nintendo fans. But with those core games having been released already, what would Nintendo give us at E3 to show that they're not just catering to the casual gamer? Well, do you know what they gave us? A big middle finger:



Unlike the 2006 Sony press conference videos, this one was not edited to look bad. Nintendo, what the hell were you thinking? You may be printing money with the DS and the Wii, but stuff like this really diminishes you in the eyes of your longtime fans. We grew up playing Mario and Zelda games and stuck with you during the 16-bit wars with Sega. A lot of people strayed to the Playstation and the XBox, but at the time the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube were on par with them hardware wise. You made a decision to emphasize gameplay with the motion controls of the Wii, but after a couple of years of waggling and casual games, it all just seems gimmicky. Diminishing online play with shoddy online support and no voice chat doesn't help you either.

And do you know what the worst thing about this video is? No, it's not the horrible rendition of the great Super Mario Bros. theme. It's that they dragged in Shigeru Miyamoto himself to make a fool of himself in front of the gamers who have so much respect for him. Nintendo, if you are seriously intending to make this kind of casual gaming the focus of your productions in the future, then you will have no future. You'll fall back to third place again and it will be much deserved.

1/26/2008 - Cynergy Labs: Project Maestro

It looks like somebody took Johnny Lee's idea of using the Wii remote as a finger tracking device and really running with it to create an interface that's even closer to the Minority Report experience. It looks like the difference here is adding functionality to the glove to make a left mouse-click action when you pinch two fingers together and perhaps a right-click action when you pinch three fingers together. The result is being able to do click-and-drag type operations with two mouse cursors. Of course, you're not using a mouse on a surface. You're just waving your hands around in mid-air like a conductor. Again, I don't know if this would really be practical in real life, but it's undeniably cool.

1/10/2008 - super mario galaxy DS !!!

When I first saw this video, I said "Whoa!". When I heard later that this video was a fake, I said "Whoa!" I mean, if that's a fake, it's probably the best fake I've ever seen. Most of the time when people create fake videos through clever video editing, you can see the seams and you can tell it's a fake. It's like that Superman video I featured earlier with Tom Welling in costume. You can tell it his face was superimposed on Christopher Reeve or Brandon Routh. In this video, I can't tell where the seams are. Everything looks like it would be if Nintendo themselves produced it.



Not only does this video look real, it plays on the hopes of all the owners of Super Mario Galaxy out there that this kind of functionality with the Nintendo DS was there in the first place. Supposedly, the Wii was going to be a hub for the DS to download demos or even full games from. The PS3 has that kind of functionality with the PSP, so why not the Wii and DS? And before the videos was revealed as a fake, I'm sure people were excited by the notion that progress on the DS version of Super Mario Galaxy would translate into Wii points. Something like this would make a lot of sense. Gamers have plenty of incentive to finish a game and unlock all the extras, but winning Wii currency would be pretty sweet.

1/8/2008 - Tracking fingers with the Wii Remote

A lot of people now are trying to duplicate the whole gesture interface technology they conceptualized in the movie Minority Report. While it seems like it might be tiring to wave your hands all day instead of using a keyboard and mouse on a table, it was very cool to see in the movie. There aren't any products out there now that completely gives you the exact Minority Report experience, but some clever programmers are getting very close with some surprising help from the Nintendo Wii.

When Nintendo presented the Wii remote interface, they made it seem like a magic wand. But there is some high technology built into the remote, and while many point out the accelerometer inside, some programmers are using the infrared sensor to create some fantastic applications. One of the leading individuals in this area is Johnny Lee, of Carnegie Mellon University. Here he is demonstrating how he's able to use the Wii remote to track his fingers. We are closer to the year 2054 than we think.

9/30/2007 - Super Mario Galaxy Trailer : RETRO Version

I don't own a Wii, but if I did, I would probably get Super Mario Galaxy. It wouldn't be because I am eager to see how the Wii controls would work for a Mario platformer. In fact, I'd be apprehensive about how the game plays based on the videos I've seen. No, I'd buy it just to say that I have every Mario platforming game for every Nintendo system I've owned: Super Mario Bros. 1, 2, and 3 for the NES, Super Mario World 1 and 2 (Yoshi's Island) for the SNES, and Super Mario 64 for the N64. The NES and SNES games are definite classics and have reached legendary status in their genre, while Super Mario 64 pretty much defined how 3-D platforming should be like. I don't have a GameCube, so I can't really give a review of Super Mario Sunshine, but from what I've seen and read, it was only an evolutionary step up from Super Mario 64 (and heck, the name sucks).

It's actually heartening to hear that Super Mario Galaxy is the "first true successor to Super Mario 64" because that means they've acknowledged Sunshine's shortcomings, and it means that Galaxy had better be that damn good. I mean it had better be a revolutionary step up from the N64 and GC games, rather than just Mario Sunshine with a better name and Wii controls. I would just hope it had the same kind of magic all the older Super Mario games had. Being a nostalgia junkie, I couldn't resist highlighting this next video that's similar to that Super Smash Bros. Brawl trailer made with 16-bit sprites. Of course, this one is for Super Mario Galaxy:



I do have one question, though: WHERE IS LUIGI?

6/28/2007 - An Incredible Mii

One of the Nintendo Wii's greatest features is the Mii Channel, where you can create an avatar of yourself (or anyone, really) and be able to use them in some Wii games. It's so much more satisfying to play a game using a character that looks like you rather than some generic sprite. The Mii characters lack realistic figures and are cartoonish, but they're still fun to create and you can make some great caricatures with them.

The Mii creation process is very forgiving in how you place facial features so you can do some pretty wild stuff. I've seen some very accurate looking celebrity Miis and some resembling various cartoon characters. This Mii in particular is probably the most creative one I've seen, though. I didn't think something like this would be possible, but here is a Pac-Man Mii that is about to eat a ghost!



Again, I love it when people make an effort to bring a touch of retro to these newfangled systems. And Pac-Man is just about as retro as it gets.

5/16/2007 - Nintendo Wii: Welcome Back

There's definitely a market for the classic games out there. Microsoft started to really capitalize on it with the XBox Live Arcade. What's cool about some of their classic emulations is that they've enhanced the games to include multiplayer gameplay online and achievement events. Of course, Sony and Nintendo had to get into the act with their next-gen systems, the PS3 with the Playstation Network and the Wii with the Virtual Console.

The Wii's virtual console doesn't have all the bells and whistles of the XBLA, and that's a shame. I'd really love to see the original Super Mario Kart with online capability. I think I'd get a Wii on that basis alone! What it lacks with the extras, it makes up for in the games. You're never going to see any of the Nintendo games on the other emulation engines. That will be the biggest advantage Virtual Console will have in the long run, and this "commercial" exemplifies that fact. It' truly a well-done piece of fan-work:

Past Favorite - Son Wins a Wii o.o

Rated R for language.

I've always thought the Stacker games you find at the malls are rigged. I mean, they look so easy. Even if you have no gaming skills, you should have enough hand-eye coordination to stack the moving blocks to reach the top. But no. I always see people "miss" on the last stack. They're doing perfectly well for the bottom stacks, and the drop exactly matches their button bush. But with the last stack, however, they're one block off and they lose. It's as if the timing for the last stack is different than the other stacks. Does this next video disprove my suspicion? Maybe, but I still wouldn't put my hard-earned cash into a Stacker game.



Man, how lucky is that guy? Winning a Nintendo Wii from a Stacker game? That's just unheard of. I was able to secure a Wii after waiting an hour and a half outside a GameStop store and I still consider myself lucky. Before that, I waited two and a half hours outside of Best Buy and I couldn't get one. And this guy wins one from a Stacker? The cellphone camera operator says it all for me.

4/28/2007 - WiigoBot: The Perfect Game

My favorite game on the Wii is still Wii Bowling. It's so simple, and yet it mimics the real game so well. I really feel that every minuscule angle change or velocity modulation I make with my swing makes a difference in the outcome of the bowl. I know I'll never bowl as well in real life bowling, but I believe that Wii Bowling is good practice anyway. It's all about getting that precise swinging control ingrained into your muscle memory so you can get a strike every time.

So when I saw this video on YouTube, I just had to laugh. Of course when you have a robot bowling for you, a perfect game is automatic. The problem is that it defeats the whole purpose of someone playing it as a bowling simulator! Still, I have to admire the work that must have gone into programming the robot. You'd have to get the Mii to move off-center, hold the B trigger, swing back then forward with a slight tilt to get some spin, release the B trigger, then press the A button to start the next throw. All that with Lego Mindstorms... amazing.

4/22/2007 - Baby laughing at the Wii

If you have small children, start exposing them to videogames as soon as possible! This next video shows you the hilarity that can ensue if your baby joins in your game of Wii golf:



Well, I'm not sure what so funny about the dad swinging one-handed, pretending he's like DK in the Gamecube golf game. You gotta love that laugh, though. I'd be scared for any comedian that has to perform for a grown-up version of that baby.