Are Wii Ready To Play...Part I

I've always liked arcade games. At least I used to until they put so many different buttons and knobs that you have to push simultaneously, or singularly, or randomly, or intermittently or whatever while constantly pumping quarters or tokens into the slot. Back in the day, or the mid 80s, games like Galaga, Centipede, Pacman, Qubert, Space Invaders, and my favorite, Tempest, had basically one or two movements: A left-right (controller) motion with one hand and an up-down (trigger)with the other. Quite simple, yes, but I bet there are a lot of folks out there that can remember how sore their wrists became and developed a callus or two from spending hours playing those crazy games. My neighbors, the Alexander's, had an Atari system and we spent many sleepless nights during sleepovers playing Pitfall, Frogger and Asteroids. I loved spending the night there. As I've blossomed into middle age I have tried to keep up with the gaming industry. (Without much luck) I have a Nintendo 64 gathering dust in a closet somewhere. I have the newer Atari gaming system that came out a few years ago stuck underneath the guest room bed. I just had to have the Xbox when it came out a few years ago and I don't even know where it is at the moment. To me, there was just too many buttons to push, and even though the vibrating controller was exciting, I was so unskilled at the games and I got tired of playing at the same level, that I chucked it somewhere. Lately, all of the attention seems to be about the Wii. The what? I know, when I first heard about it, I was like what's a Wii? And the first commercials didn't help either. Two Asian men showing up in folks' living rooms with outer space looking gadgets. What are we? The Jetsons? Ruttro!...