Andrew Wilkinson

Yesterday Ellen managed to find a shop that actually had WiiFit in stock - this was after two months of looking! We spent a reasonable amount of time playing last night, and my first impressions are that it is both fun and useful.

I'll probably spend most of my time playing the balance games like Ski Jump and Hula Hoop as those are the most fun, but jogging and the other aerobic exercises are enjoyable too. They are quite hard work though! WiiFit is not a game which you can spend all day playing!

It allows you to specify a weight target and will nag you to play the game until you reach it. How annoying this nagging will become remains to be seen...

I decided to enter the Get Up And Play competition that Coca Cola are running to win an 'Ultimate Wii Games Room'. Admittedly I already have a Wii, but I'd give the second one to my brother and I just want a free TV.

When you click to find out more about the TV you can win they say...

The R8 also comes equipped with 2 x HDMI connections so you can enjoy playing the Wii in the highest digital quality.


That's funny, I thought the Wii only had composite S-Video and component connectors. There's no HDMI connector to be found on the back of my Wii...

After being completely unable to get online with Mario Strikers last night (as was the case for most people it seems) I decide to play a few games this morning. It was working well, but in my third series I won the first game 1-0, then thanks to a lucky 4 goal mega-strike managed to take a 6-0 lead with 30 seconds to go. Easy victory I thought - except the screen goes black, apart from a "connection lost" message.

Friends code and no voice or text chat might make the online play safe for all the kiddies out there, but it's not going to get people to play fair. Grr. It seems that Nintendo still credited me with the points I would have got for a victory, but it's just not the same as actually winning.

After playing ten or so online matches, and winning the fire cup I have changed my mind somewhat about the game. I still think it's great, and loads of fun - but I no longer think it's as heavily geared towards mega-strikes as I did. Once you get the hang of it defending against mega-strikes is fairly straight-forward, and the fact that sidekicks now have special moves means it is fairly easy to get goals if you just pass it around a bit. The ball charges up as you pass it, and it's only really possible to score once you've passed the ball five or more times in a row. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making it worthwhile to ping the ball between players back near your penalty area, then lob the ball forwards to try and get a volley. That's only a minor gripe though.

If you've not got a Wii, get one!
If you've not got Mario Strikes, buy it!
Buy it now!

My copy of the new Mario Football game arrived today. I was a big fan of its Gamecube predecessor, so I was really looking forward to this one. I've only managed to play it for just over half an hour, but it's loads of fun - if a little complicated. I also found it difficult to distinguish my players from the opposition, which is quite a big problem.

After a couple of warm up games I decided to go online. Seeing as this was my first go I was way down the league in 1195th place. My first match placed me against the 4th(!) placed player, who promptly kicked my arse 9-0, 2-0. The second game was against the 38th placed player, which I also lost 5-0, 9-0. Scoring goals is very hard, and if you let the opposition get a mega-strike then you can quite easily go 3, 4 or even 5 goals down in the space of ten seconds. It's hard to come back from that! It's a shame that the game seems (at least my first play) to be so focused to scoring mega-strikes and not on goals from open play.

Anyway, if you want to add me as a friend on Mario Strikers Charged Football my friend code is 339402992656. If you haven't added Ellen and mine's Wii then that friend code is 2223191855460218. Don't forget to comment with your friend code(s) so I can add you back.

So many stupid numbers. Why not just have the one? Gah.

In my last post I mentioned the rumours of a Wii homebrew development kit, unfortunately GDC came and went without a mention of it - in fact there was barely a mention of anything new for Wii. This is probably due to Nintendo requesting the Japanese government sell their stake in the company to increase the number of individual shareholders. They were prevented from disclosing new information at GDC in case it affected the share price. I haven't been able to find out when this gag order ends, so I've no idea when we will hear more.

Over the past few days, while gazing out of the window and avoiding the hideously large pile of thesis related work that remains, I've been trying to fill the void of information in the only way I know how - by making stuff up. Below is what I'd ideally like Nintendo to do, to really send interest in their console through the roof.

( Click for more made up Wii ramblings... )

At 6:30pm this evening the creator of Zelda and Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto will give his keynote address to the Game Developer Conference on his vision for the future of computer games. As part of the talk he will no doubt be introducing a range of new applications for the DS and Wii.

There are rumours that Nintendo intends to support indie game developement, and I'm hoping that Miyamoto will announce something along the lines Microsoft's XNA for the XBox360, and not just better support for flash games in the Wii's browser. Only a few hours to wait until I find out if I get my wish I suppose.

I went to the Science Museum's exhibition on the history of computer games. From the very earliest games of Pong where you had to keep your own score, through Space Invaders, Frogger, Tetris, Lemmings and various Playstation, PS2, N64, Gamecube and X-Box 360 games Ellen and I spent an hour and a half in video game heaven. It's definitly worth a trip if you're in the London area.

In addition to the classic games we got to play two games of Tennis on the Wii. It was everything I had hoped it would be, and then some. In an excellent turn of events Ellen, who thus far had just listened politely to my ramblings about how great the Wii would be, was so impressed that she said she would be willing to go halves with me on the console. Score!

Afterwards we followed the Codex trail round the British museum, which was fun if you've been watching the Crystal Maze-like show with Tony Robinson. Come ON then!