Creating Mii’s (Nintendo Wii avatars) are often as alot of Wii games.

FamousMii.com is a very cool blog showing Mii celebrity-look-alikes.

And Joystiq has a very cool Mii creator:

And for the curious, this is my Mii

There are lots of recorded incidences where the “Wii-mote” (a Wii remote, lingo courtesy of JD ) goes flying and damages TVs and people. In fact, Wii Damage has many examples such as this:

But a few days ago, in an effort to hit some home runs on Wii Sports Baseball, I think I actually strained some muscles in my arm (as embarrassing as that might be to admit!). Self-inflicted sports-injury while playing the Wii!

I did turn 37 last week, so I guess old age is catching up to me! Must remember to warm-up before playing the Wii in future LOL

I am thoroughly enjoying my Nintendo Wii. While I love and still play the Wii Sports (that came with the game), I thought it might be cool to check out another game.

Gamespot has always been one of my trusted sources for gaming information, so I naturally turned to their Wii section for their recommendations. I noticed that WarioWare: Smooth Moves had an extremely high score (Gamespot hardly ever gives things in the 9 range). This was also backed up by an average score of 8.2 from other reviewers and 8.8 from 1,742 other Gamespot users. I was sure this was going to be a winner!

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I bought it and played it… for 5 minutes! This game totally sucks. Maybe it’d be a “cool” game if you’re drunk, but not if you have any speck of brain cells. It’s basically comprised of mini-games (so you don’t actually get a chance to get “good” at any aspect) and the game’s challenge comes in springing up different mini-games (so you don’t actually get any time to figure out what you need to do to win, before the 7 second time-limit is reached).

So that’s another $50 down the drain… another game to join my pile of unopened Xbox games

I must say, setting up the wifi connection on my Wii, was surprisingly not-obvious!

As I previously mentioned, the Wii comes with wifi, so it’ll connect to the Internet if you have a wifi-router. I figured that it couldn’t be that hard (famous last words).

Due to my heightened sense of paranoid (been working with Network Security people for too long ), my home router has a hidden SSID and secured by WEP. This is what happened when I tried to configure my Wii…

• Go to Options (bottom left on the Wii Menu)
• Select Wii Settings
• Click on the Right arrow (middle of the right side of the screen) to get to the next page
• Select Internet
• Select one of the Connections (e.g. “Connection 1″)
• Select Wireless
• Because I have a hidden SSID, I could not use the default Auto-find. Consequently I have to do the Manual Setup
• Enter the SSID code (aka “the name of the wireless network”)
• It has been awhile since I setup my Mac (my most recent computer), so I take a guess at the SSID
• Press OK. Wii thinks about it, then says something to the effect of “network not found” (sorry I don’t remember the exact error message!)
• Run upstairs to my PC, login to wireless router, make sure I correctly remember the SSID
• Run downstairs to re-enter the SSID into the Wii
• Press OK. Wii thinks about it for well over 30 seconds, then returns “network not found”
• Growl. Thinking that I might have mistyped the SSID, I enter it again
• Press OK. Wii thinks about it for well over 30 seconds, then returns “network not found”
• Run upstairs and google “how to setup wifi for wii”. It returns 1,260,000 results, none of which actually steps me through the Manual Setup process (OK, I admit I didn’t actually read all 1,260,000 links, but I didn’t see anything in the first 3 pages).
• Sigh. Walk downstairs, to see if there are any buttons or options that I may have missed
• Looking closer, I see two triangles (like the ends of an arrow) on either side of the place where you enter the SSID. Eureka!
• Turns out the “right” button will move me to the next page, which prompts me for the wireless encyrption type of the router. Select WEP.
• Not being able to remember the WEP key I try to guess it (come on, do you remember your wifi-router’s 10 digit hexadecimal key?)
• Press OK. Wii thinks about it for well over 30 seconds, then returns “network not found”
• Sigh. With head down, I trudge upstairs.
• I log into my wifi-router to get the WEP key. Roll my eyes, and mentally admonish myself for having forgotten such a simple WEP key
• Walk back downstairs, and enter the WEP key
• Now that I know about the “right” button thing, I’m smart enough to keep scrolling right to see all the options before clicking on OK
• Scroll through 5 pages of “other” options. None of which needed to be changed from default, so a total waste of time. Sigh again. Press OK
• Wii returns a “successfully connected” message
• Make mental note to blog my findings, as a warning to others…

Here are some useful links about Wii and wifi that I did find on google (but didn’t help me with my specific problem):

• Official Nintendo site all about how to setup and troubleshoot wifi. It’s got a section dedicated to WEP, but not a word about where you’d actually enter the WEP key (yes, I’m still bitter about it!)
• Wikipedia article on Nintendo’s wifi system

My friend Tony recommended that I check out the Nintendo Wii. After reading some positive reviews, I thought it might be good to get one for my kids (yes, and maybe for me ). Luckily my wife managed to pick one up at the local Target!

They go for ludicrous markups on eBay (about the only place that has it in stock). Which leads me to believe that people are buying 10 at a time, so that they can resell on eBay. If everyone just bought one, I’m sure there’d be enough to go around…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that the Wii is the latest “3rd generation” console (along with the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony Playstation 3).

Anyway, setting it up was pretty straight forward.

• Install the Sensor Bar (this is a thin plastic strip, around 1 foot). The instructions say to put it centered, either above or below your TV. It has sticky pads that you can use to attach to the TV, but I just rested it on top of mine.
• Attach the audio/video cable. It’s a standard Red, White, Yellow AV cable. Apparently the High Definition cable is an available accessory, but it’s got plenty good resolution on my 53″ TV.
• Plug in the power adapter, and then turn the unit on.
• Sync the remote controller with the base unit.
• Insert the included game disk (Wii Sports) and start playing

Now that I’ve set it up and played with it for abit, here are some random thoughts…

• Wii Sports (the included “game”, which lets you play Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf and Boxing) is pretty good and will give you a good feel of what the system and remote motion-sensing controller is all about.
• The system comes with one controller. It’s actually comprised of two parts - the “remote controller” and the “nunchuck” attachment. For Wii Sports, the “nunchuck” attachment is only used in boxing game (and you have to detach it for the other games).
• I would definitely recommend that you buy an extra “remote controller” at the same time as you buy the system. You can skip the extra “nunchuck” for now, because that accessory is readily available (unlike the game system and the “remote controller”, which seem to be always out of stock and overpriced on eBay). The extra “remote controller” will let two people play tennis together (I think the tennis game is the most fun).
• Once you get the system running, you might be tempted to dive right into the games. I would recommend you setup the Mii (your “avatar”) so that it remembers your scores and settings.

Things that I haven’t done yet…

• Setup the Internet connection. The Wii comes with built-in wifi, so you can connect to a wireless router (if you have access to one).
• Checked out or bought any other games.

I’ll admit I’m not a big video games fan. I have an (original) Xbox with 15 games, 10 of which are unopened. I just prefer to play games on a PC. But I have to say that the Wii, with it’s motion-driven control system, is fun to play. I’d like to say that it’s more than a gimmick, and that I’ll become a hardcore Wii’r (if there’s such a word), but only time will tell!