No more ban on the water

I was in Metrotown mall yesterday, which is not all that exciting, since that is also where I catch the bus. So I'm pretty much there every weekday. But it was different yesterday.

Yesterday they had the Nintendo Wii on display.

There were four units available to be tried out, and they even had a fair amount of Nintendo staff to assist people with trying out the games. The whole thing was very well planned, and drew the kind of crowd I think that Nintendo would have been hoping for. They were also pretty smart to include a wide selection of titles to display. There was a bowling game, a first person shooter, a boxing game and another sporting title that I failed to pay attention to.

What interested me the most was the first person shooter. The staff on hand spent most of their time explaining how to use the controller to play the game. Some of the moves required were somewhat non-intuitive, I thought, but until I try for myself, I'll reserve judgement. An example of what I am talking about is the reload action, which involves 'shaking' the 'nunchuk' half of the controller. (I didn't actually speak with any of the staff, so I'm not 100% certain on the terminology.) The same action was used to open doors, and to change weapons. At times the player would crouch in the game, but I got the impression that he wasn't completely in control of that action.

The game also supported a zoom feature, which was very slick. The player would merely thrust the wand forward and the view would zoom in. Pull back, and the view would zoom out. From watching the people playing the Wii demo units, it looks like Nintendo hopes to reintroduce exercise into the living room. I think it is this factor more than any other that will relegate the Wii to the recreation rooms of family's households, instead of hooked up to the big screen in the living room. Mom's not going to want the kids jumping about, flailing their arms wildly in the living room.