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In a moment of pure geekery, Maxator managed to convince me to camp out for the Nintendo Wii. It may not have been a pure example of convincing per se, but the end result was that we both agreed to lend one another company in line at a local Target. By sheer chance, it turned out that the Target we arrived at was in a strip mall whose policy it was not to have people camping out, so we ultimately didn’t need our camping after all, and were issued numbered bracelets at 10pm. The idea was to return at 6am the following morning, get back in line, and be issued Wii according to our position in bracelet-designated line.

The event was a success, and time-in-line was approximately seven hours total. Admittedly, this reeks of dorkery, but it’s not like I had anything planned for Saturday night anyway that wasn’t accomplished in line. That is to say, Maxator and I ate unhealthy food and drank a lot of whiskey.

One of the miraculous things that occured during out wait in line was the transformation of a normal citizen into a god for the duration of our time in line. And by “god”, I mean “jackass”. I refer here to Mr. Plastic-Cuffs, the head security guard of the strip mall in which our Target was located.

This balding fellow took the time out of his otherwise empty schedule to issue silly orders such as “stay out of the road,” whike himself standing in the road. Mind you, at 9pm, no cars wanted to drive around Target anyway, unless you include Mr. Plastic-Cuff’s sidekick, the near-comatose Security Driver.

Security Driver would spend his time on duty driving around Target again and again. He didn’t really check for dangerous situations, but rather stared dumfoundedly at the line of people waiting in line for the Wii, which I gather was around 210 people, since this Target in particular had an inventory of 210 Wiis. (As an aside, this proves that PS3seerker actually had positive intelligence.)

I found it rather interesting that Security Driver and Mr. Plastic-Cuffs didn’t really have the equipment to deal with a potentially hostile situation. Though Mr. Plastic-Cuffs did have a pair of metal handcuffs in addition to his quick ties, he had no method for neutralizing anyone, unless he has a hidden affinity for the martial arts. Even then, I would discount his ability to issue a quick dirt-nap to a perpetrator, but then again, what do I know? Suffice to say, neither of these two skilled security guards carried a gun, nor mace.

In any case, the result of our waiting, in my case, was a Wii, an extra remote/nunchuk, and Zelda: Twilight Princess. Apparently, no retail outlet on earth has the composite cables necessary for HD-viewing. Unfortunate, but reasonably acceptable.

Over the past couple days, I’ve had the opportunity to play both Twilight Princess and Wii Sports, which came with the Wii. The former is a thoroughloy enjoyable game, even though I’ve found the bobber fishing to be positively retarded, and the lycanthropy to be overdone. In truth, the lycanthropy itself isn’t so bad, but rather it’s the accompaniment of a childish shadow-thing, and the overindulgence of TRON-imagery in what is supposed to be a fantasy world. Creative differences aside, however, Zelda is a delightful title whose control scheme is many times more enjoyable than the N64 titles that I briefly played.

Wii sports is pure fun. It’s not exactly a single-player title, but the more players who participate (and the more beer involved), the greater the fun becomes. As far as party titles go, Wii sports is top-notch, and probably the best tech-demo of the system Nintendo could have included. Speaking of which, the console gods have surely shined on us to finally include a game with a release system, unlike the past couple generations of systems.

I am also fondly awaiting a good first-person shooter for the Wii. Sadly, Red Steel has been getting horrible reviews, and Call of Duty 3 has not received the reviews I would have liked. Still, between the two, the latter sounds far more appealing, which is rather unfortunate, since I was hoping Red Steel would redefine console FPS games.

Overall, I am quite pleased with the Wii. The interface is solid, and doesn’t feel as cluttered as the X-Box 360 dashboard, or the PS3’s interface. Sadly, however, the Wii interface is relatively lacking in features, with the online component offline. Not only is the web browser not available yet, but the Internet news channels, and the weather forecasts, remain unavailable. Worse, neither will be active until at least December 20th. Why this feature isn’t available yet is beyond me; it is not difficult to get that kind of functionality out the door.

I’ve not downloaded any of the virtual console titles yet, but I am hoping that independent titles become available, akin to the X-Box Live Arcade games. As much fun as legacy titles are, I am not that interested in very old titles, as I either have those systems and games already, else didn’t buy them for a reason. However, I have to say that the Wii has a lot of potential. Hopefully, this potential will soon manifest in online games, a headset component, and rechargable controllers.

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