The Wii: Back to the Future
I spent some time with my family this weekend, including my 85yr old Grandma, and my 3 nieces, all <10 years old. I packed up the Wii and brought it home for the day because the weather wasn’t ideal for outdoor activities. It’s always fun to set that up and watch the madness unfold.
Predictably, my nieces were the first out of the gate, playing through several games of tennis, bowling, and baseball. My coisin Tom stopped by with his two girls (both <5 yrs old). They got a kick out of the Mii creation, where I’d use the Wii-mote to manipulate Mii’s while they stood by the television pointing to different character features. Throughout all this time, my parents and sister-in-law were cheerleading from the back row, while my brother, cousin, nieces and I all played various games. Eventually Grandma got into the mix (she used to be quite the bowler back in the day) to throw a strike or two.
I guess it was just being in the home I grew up in, but I started to think back to my days of Atari with my brother, and the similarities between the gaming experiences.
I don’t know if this was standard, but our Atari came with COMBAT, a large collection of mini-games (enter Wii Sports). We also played a lot of Target Fun, another collection of accuracy-type games (enter Wii Play). After looking back over my collection of Atari Games (yes, they are actually sitting in two shoe boxes here in my office with an Atari 2600) and looking at the collection of Wii Games out there now…the similarities are almost scary. The Wii is also primed to see a bunch of new input devices released over the year, similar to the Atari wheel controllers, the single, cockpit style controller, and other game-specific devices.
I’m starting to migrate from very long, time-intensive games to shorter games that can be played in quick bursts. The Wii seems to be embracing this type of gameplay, and hopefully will continue to release family-friendly, fun games that can be experienced in <30 minutes.
FYI: I found this while Googling for this post…I’ll probablly try and get this going on my Wii today after work. This could open up a whole new channel to short, fun mini-games on the Wii.
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/games/wii/
