My experience with the Wii.

So I'm in Cairo for a few days, before I begin all the craziness of SLU again, and today me, Pete, and Mary Helen (hi Mary Helen!) spent the day at their family's house, where we hung out, ate lunch, and played with the Wii.

Okay, well, I grew up with mom, dad, and a younger sister, so (in the cliche way) we didn't have any video games around. Until I was in high school, I had never touched a video game controller, unless you count the up, down, and across arrows while playing the Oregon Trail game for the old-school Microsoft computers. In high school, I clocked in NO more than ten hours playing MarioCart and stuff like that...and until today, that was all I had ever done.


[this picture isn't really crucial to this story, but this is my dad cutting his 50th birthday cake, and I love the face he's making. Do we REALLY expect a man like this to teach his daughters how to play videogames? Although, he would kick major BUTT at GuitarHero]

Now, today, I spent about five hours playing with either the Wii, or Rock Band...and both were pretty interesting. So, here's my run-down:

Entered Peggy's house around 11:30, immediately fired up the Wii. Pete somehow knew exactly what he was doing, so he instructed me as I stumbled through the introductory training "Wii Age" session, which throws 50 tennis balls at your face, ten baseball pitches, and allows you to bowl a couple of times. I was nervous that I was doing this at all, since I'm not sporty, nor appropriately set with great hand-eye coordination, nor handy with video game equipment. And, the game told me that I wasn't; my "Wii Age" was originally 56. FIFTY-SIX???? COME ON. I'm out of shape and yes, I really do have an old woman living inside of me (how many 19-year-old girls get excited about a double silverware drawer? As in, the silverware goes in the bottom, but THEN, on top of that, there's another little pull-out drawer? THE ANSWER IS NOT MANY.), but I am NOT 56 years old.

Anyway. This is a long, rambly post (and it's nowhere near finished), but after I got over that small shock, Pete and I played each other in baseball and then tennis. Maci, Delaney, and Christy showed up, and after they watched me completely obliterate Pete in bowling, Pete showed Maci how to hold the little controller thing and Delaney spun around the whole room, giggling and watching occasionally. They are SO cute. I can't get over it sometimes.


[Maci, me, and Delaney on a walk after Christmas sometime]


[stolen from sjgardiner's flickr]

After doing some Sudoku, watching the Wii games, and occasionally playing with the girls, we ate a quick lunch and headed over to hang out with Essner, Pete's high school friend. We sat in his room and talked about movies, music, etc...and of course, the two of them talked about comic books. I played with the cat. Then, we headed over to his friend Matthew's, who owns the coveted ROCK BAND.

EVERYTIME we go by any place that carries any sort of video game, Pete erupts- "I WANT ROCK BAND SO BAD". I quickly tell him that he can't really afford the Xbox 360 required to play the game, nor the equipment needed (a couple guitars, drums, microphone) to actually play. Then he gets sad. It's pretty much the same way I get whenever I wander into Anthropologie.

So, Pete takes the guitar, Essner takes the bass, Matthew sings, and I drum. Um, it was HARD. Like really super-duper hard. The four of us cycled the instruments, with me spending the most amount of time on the bass. I drummed a few more, jammed on guitar, and sang a couple of songs ("Heroes" by David Bowie and "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash).


[didn't have my camera to document, so this is taken from tim.lange's flickr feed]

After two hours of that (!) we played a quick game of Scene It and took off, where we played more Wii at Peggy's, ran some errands, stopped by Arby's, and then went back to Peggy's. This was probably my favorite part of the whole day- we somehow managed to coerce Mary Helen into playing GuitarHero. We had her play "Slow Ride", and the first time around, she wasn't so hot...but THEN she was GREAT. Like, better than I was when I first played the game. I was super impressed. And she had this cute smile the whole time, it was great.

Anyways. So that was my day. I've never, EVER spent so much time playing video games. I kind of feel as though GuitarHero/Rock Band is built for people who can't really play instruments, but have tried...but that isn't a BAD thing, because I'm in that group. I'm pretty hopeless on guitar. I don't know, it was an interesting day. I'm sleepy.

All in all, I would want a Wii. I'm not huge on sports (okay, besides hockey and badminton...two sides of THAT spectrum) but there are LOADS of games that aren't sporty that I would love to play with.