Canadian Nintendo Wii Launch Event

As promised I did attend the Canadian launch event for the Nintendo Wii console yesterday with my fellow blogger eMadman. It was held at Ontario Place, in downtown Toronto secretly tucked away at the end of a long tunnel. We managed to arrive thirty minutes before the official launch time and were forced to stand outside with a massive statue of Link. We even took a few photos with our buddy Link; he didn’t seem to mind.

As we entered the event floor at 10:00 am we saw around twenty-eight Nintendo Wii consoles just sitting there crying out to be played, “Play Wiiiiii…” is all I could hear. Of course we were held back till a speech was given about how great the Wii was and will be blah blah blah…as if the hype wasn’t killing us already. The best news for fans we could gather was Nintendo's dedication to release ten Wii titles each month starting in 2007.

I ran across the event floor as soon as the TVs were turned on, stumbling and bumping into other media personnel, I was venturing towards the crowd lining up to play Call of Duty 3, and yes Zelda was there too. First off, don't expect mind blowing graphics the Wii isn't a super hyper-realism graphics machine like its competitors; it’s a “fun” machine for a larger audience. I stood at a bit over a meter's distance from the Sharp LCD TV and grabbed the Wii nunchuck in my left hand and the Wii remote in my right. I was immediately thrown into a battle against the Germans. The Wii remote was configured to such great sensitivity that whenever I moved it I did a 360 degree dance in the game. I quickly got the hang of it as the Wii representative there told me to only twitch the remote a little to look to the left or right. All forward and backward movements were controlled from the Wii nunchuck, moving the Wii nunchuck to the left let me swap through my weapon inventory and that was a very cool experience.

Although I only got 4 minutes of playing time with the game since other media hogs wanted to get in on it, I discovered that it was going to take great skill and practice to use the Wii remote for an fps game. When I first started playing I assumed an extended arm position as if I was holding a gun, after a while that started to hurt my shoulder and I had to experiment to find a comfortable position.

I searched for eMadman and found him boxing with the Wii, literally! eMadman and I decided to go for a round in the virtual ring in Wii Sports’ Boxing game. I was really impressed at how easy it was to discover the basic moves; my mom could have easily done this! I grabbed the Wii nunchuck and Wii remote and brought it up to my face, to assume a defensive position against my opponent. I even tried shifting my feet to the left and right and my character moved along with me, it was incredible even with a lacking photorealistic character on screen. I swung my left then my right then my left again, and let eMadman have a piece of my Wii powered fury. Once again I only had 4 minutes and discovered that the character could not swing past a certain speed, if I tried to punch really fast or hard he would still move slower, so I was forced to match his average speed.

Next I decided to move onto Marvel: Ultimate Alliance for the Wii. Playing MAU wasn't as rewarding of an experience with the Wii remote. I almost felt as if the use of the remote technology was forced onto the game. I still wanted to see what the wireless gestures would make me do in-game. Unfortunately I was not so impressed: tilting the Wii remote up, down, left and right made me produce different moves, I came to a point where just twirling the remote clockwise easily cycled through the 4 basic moves, it felt sort of cheap.

As the crowd died down we jumped over to the Wii Sports’ Tennis game. This game, even though simple in function still proved to be fun, more enjoyable than MAU. I was forced to actually serve a ball and do a backhand on a return shot. I’ve played “real tennis” regularly, playing it on the Wii made me forget it was virtual as I tried to dive to the right to return a serve. Suddenly it dawned on me that my character automatically moved regardless of where I positioned myself and I had made a fool of myself. This was a great disappointment as the experience could have been taken so much farther if the character on screen moved relatively to my real-world position.

I moved onto Rayman Raving Rabbids, a game that made great use of the Wii remote. I had the chance to sample two short mini games within this game. One forced me to rapidly move my arms and shoulders holding the Wii nunchuck and Wii remote to simulate running action. My objective was to deliver a present from point A to B as fast as I could, and how fast I “pretended” to run reflected my speed in the game. The second mini game I tried involved throwing a cow. The cow was lassoed and I had to use the Wii remote and twirl it as if I was going to twirl a real cow around my body. Believe me this was difficult; I couldn't twirl it fast enough to gain enough virtual momentum. My timing was also off; I now know I suck at throwing cows.

My concluding thoughts…
I couldn’t sample everything and 4 minutes per game is hardly enough time to enjoy a game fully especially with so many people walking the event floor. From the games I tested, I did not like using the Wii remote for cross platform games that were not designed specifically for the Wii such as CoD3 and MUA. I felt that those games would stay best played with a controller. The Wii really showed its full potential with the Rayman and Wii Sports games, I can see where Nintendo is headed with the remote technology in those titles and I hope to see even more innovative titles designed specifically for the Wii. Cross-platform games I don’t see doing so well from what I sampled.

Stay tuned for my Canadian PlayStation 3 launch event coverage this Friday. Until then I leave you with our buddy Link.