Wii would like to get your fat butt into shape
Initial impressions following the jump. First, a preamble:
It’s clear to me why the Nintendo Wii is still such a hard item to find on store shelves. I hadn’t intended on buying Wii Fit on its release day, and it seemed that by waiting the decision was taken out of my hands, since it’s sold out on every online retailer I checked. However, I live in the hinterlands of Virginia, so when I got a whim to go out and see if I could find a copy today after all, I figured I had a pretty good chance. As I got out of my car in front of the local Best Buy, I saw a fairly average looking woman walking towards me. . . carrying a box full of Wii Fit. I chuckled, since clearly they had at least a preorder stock. Once inside, I found a nice display of boxes, probably 30 or so still sitting out, so I grabbed one, thinking how this nice aspect of small town living totally doesn’t make up for the rest of the shortcomings. Ahem. Anyway. As I made my way to checkout, I saw something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in all my years of buying video games: everyone wants one of these things. Everyone. I may have been the nerdiest person in line. There were a couple of business looking guys, a couple of normal mom-looking women, there was one man who very likely was a grandfather, there were a couple of average sorts like me. And bear in mind, I’m unemployed, so this was at 10:30 AM - on the release day! I’m not sure that there’s any other conclusion to reach but that Nintendo has in fact tapped into the so-called ‘casual’ gamer market, bringing the video game back to people who probably stopped playing when Atari went out of style. Go figure. If you’re interested in my take on the game itself, read on…
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