CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

Judging from the gaming messageboards and online polls, the Nintendo Wii made quite a splash at the recent E3 show this past week in Los Angeles. Extremely long lines were the norm at Nintendo's booth, making those who wanted a crack at playing the Wii system have to anxiously wait their turn. After months of hearing Nintendo's new slogan "Playing is Believing" it was finally time to put the Wii to the test. Anyone that got a chance to play the system will tell you that you really have to experience the console for yourself to fully appreciate just what Nintendo has been able to accomplish with their new spin on video game control. This is the type of revolution (sorry I had to say it : ) that could dramatically change the way we play video games from now on. Never before has a player been able to control the action taking place in a video game with so much precision or participation. You can do things in a video game on the Wii that's just not remotely possible on any other video game console out there. Couple this innovative new control system with the fact that Wii will most likely cost less than half of what the Playstation 3 will retail for, and you can see why the Nintendo Wii now has such a buzz surrounding it.

By now most people have seen the demonstrations of using the Wii Remote and Nunchaku controller. If you haven't you need to build a raft and get off that deserted island you've been living on. Nintendo is changing the level of personal interaction a gamer has with a video game by putting more ways of controlling the game into the player's hands. This allows for an almost infinite number of new and innovative control options that developers can now incoporate into their video games. No longer will the player just sit and press buttons on a game controller, instead players can now take a more vital role in the way they control what's happening onscreen. As if these innovations weren't enough, Nintendo is also making their Wii system a "virtual console" as they like to call it. This means that not only will the Wii play new games made specifically for the system, it will also play games from past Nintendo consoles including: Gamecube, Nintendo 64, Super Nintendo, and even the 8-bit NES, not to mention rival consoles like the Sega Genesis and the Turbografx-16 system. Along with the online service that gamers will use to play games online, Nintendo has also promised a huge library of these past games to be available for download via a service similar to iTunes in which the player can pay a small fee to download the games they want onto their Wii system or an optional SD card. Nintendo is obviously not only trying to appeal to current gamers, but also old-school gamers from the past as well.

Nintendo did show off several of their new Wii game titles that included a few of their well-known franchises like Mario and Zelda, as well as some original titles like Project H.A.M.M.E.R. and Excite Truck, all of which made use of the Wii's new style of play control, to the excitement of anyone that was lucky enough to play them. It remains to be seen just how well Nintendo's new philsophy on video gaming will be accepted by the general gaming public, but judging from the reception the system recieved at E3, it's fairly obvious that gamers are ready for something new and different and Nintendo looks primed to offer that with their new Wii system this Fall. Nintendo didn't announce a specific US release date or price, but they did say that the Wii system would be out sometime in the 4th quarter and would be cheaper than both of the other next generation consoles. We'll just have to wait a little longer to know exactly how much cheaper that'll be. My prediction is that we'll see the system here in the US sometime near the end October for around $249.99. Personally, I can't wait!