Adriaaaaaaan!

As I said before there would probably be a video of me boxing online before soon, well a friend sent me the link to a video on YouTube today. Now it's here, for your viewing pleasure:

I hope you all get your jollies out of that, I was having FUN!

A night to Wiimember

After not getting a Wii this morning and coming home and sleeping for a few more hours, I called a friend to see if a couple of us guys could hang out and sure enough, around 7 PM we were all over at a friend's house playing his Wii. Now this was the first time I'd ever played one, and for all my wanting one, I can now say that I REALLY want one now. Never in my life have a played with a gaming console that so involves you in the games that you sweat in more places than your hands. Nintendo made this to get people off the couch and into the game, and they did an awesome job of it.

We started the night off by making Miis for people who hadn't played on the box yet. That was a lot of fun with other people telling you how you look. I don't really think mine looked like me, but everyone else said it did... probably needed a bit more tweaking over time. After that we all did the test which involved basically doing a quick round of tennis, bowling and baseball to see how well you perform. They rank you by age and I was ranked at 76 (I'm 22) -- that's pretty bad. After that we all played a game of bowling together, a game which I am terrible at, and then went to baseball. Baseball was interesting. With a new way to play games (especially with a revolutionary controller design as the Wii-mote) things seem to go differently. People seem to blunder through things and you have to get used to more -- or fewer -- buttons, or different button placement, but with the Wii-mote you pick it up and it seems like you just instinctively know what to do with it.

When we played baseball the batter... well... he swings. What more would you do? The pitcher throws. It's that simple. Of course, when you are the pitcher you can change the way you throw, and press different buttons, and the ball does other things, but to simply pitch, you just make a throwing motion. When we played the bowling game, you hold the Wii-mote in front of you and then you swing back and swing forward, just like in bowling, letting go at the optimal time and swinging with force enough to get the ball down the alley.

After many frames of bowling and innings and innings of baseball, everyone was pretty tired. So I decided to try the boxing game, much to the delight and amusement of everyone else (I'm sure, as I'm writing this, there is a video of me boxing somewhere on the internet). The boxing game was the most fun out of the ones I played, just because it made you feel like you were really in it. You had to swing a certain way to land a punch, but once you got the hang of it, it was easy to land some great hits. I played two matches, didn't get a K.O. but I did win by the judges vote both times.

Now I can't wait to get my Wii, both for the chance to play all those games at home, and also to be able to whoop my friends next time I'm over.

My Black Friday morning

I've been planning on going to my local GameStop all week to pick up a Wii and when I heard on the Amazon.com message boards that GS wasn't selling them until Black Friday (BF) I decided to just wait and get up early.

So, this morning I awoke at 5 AM to get to our mall store, which was opening at 6 AM. I drug my sister along -- after agreeing to buy her breakfast once we were done -- and got in line outside of the mall GS around 5:20. There were about 5 people in front of us so I was happy. After all, GS had already gotten a shipment in that week and was holding back to sell it today, they must have at least 10 I thought. *rolls eyes*. Well, the door was rolled up and soon we were all in line and the registers were ringing and people were talking. We hadn't moved up but about 3 people and we heard, "I'd like a Wii." "We just sold out." Everyone busted out talking. How could they be out when they only sold 3?

As I was walking out of the mall I told my sister we would try the GS in the Target shopping center nearby, as they weren't opening until 7 AM. So we rode over there -- in surprising light traffic -- and got in line around 6:30 AM. We got to talking with the couple in front of us about Toys 'R' Us and how they had gotten there at 3 AM and there was a line wrapped around the building, and went on to other subjects such as how Circuit City has the best Extended Warranty. It felt like no time and we were waking into yet another GS. The line went crazy as soon as we walked in and people were all over the place. Two lines formed somehow and there were about 5 people in front of me again. This time I was going to cont how many Wii there were. The line was moving slowly as the GS employees tried to push warranties, add-on sales, and anything else they could at the restless customers. People behind me were starting to talk loud about how they should just let them buy what they came in for and forget all the extra stuff.

A little off subject, there was this one kid at the GS who was like second in line but he was waiting for his mom to get there with money and he waited forever. I'm sure that one of the employees put his to the side until his mom got there, but I was really afraid he wasn't going to get one. I'm sure he would have been real mad if his mom didn't show up and they sold out. But back to my story...

I was the next person in line and then I noticed the manager climbing up on the counter behind the registers. "I no...," I thought, I knew what was coming, and sure enough he stood up and said that if anyone was waiting for a Wii he was all sold out; I had counted 6 sold. About half of both of the lines walked out of the store.

So, apparently, even after not selling any Wii all week and making a HUGE fuss over buying a Wii on BF, the stores still didn't put out like people thought they would. Why would as big a chain as GameStop not stock more than 3-6 Wii on the biggest selling day of the year?