When You're a Kid and You Just Wanna Go Wiiiiiii, But You Ain't Got Drugs Yet!
You hold on for your life...
You hold on to your little gonads...and strife...
Yes. Wii day has come and gone, and I am now here to drop the mad disclosure along with the lyrics above from internet music luminaries Threebrain.
Saturday: 10:45 AM -- No one was waiting at Wal-mart the night before so we decided that we would camp at Wal-mart instead of Best Buy. Two main reasons made this an ideal camping place. A.) Wal-mart sells stuff. and B.) Wal-Mart was opening at Midnight, thus cutting our wait time by more than 12 hours.
We pulled up at Wally world and see a huge crowd of people standing in the wait line outside the store. I have a momentary flash of paranoia before I realize that half of the people were old guys selling peanuts. We're 7,8 and 9 in line.
After about 20 minutes of waiting in the chilly but-not-as-fucking-bad-as-what-the-PS3-morons-got weather the store manager informs us that they are allowing us to camp inside, in the garden center. It's a cement warehouse-type area, so it's a little below room temperature, but still fucking badass. I'm sitting across from 300 christmas trees.
Nothing especially exciting happened, I played Final Fantasy V for close to 8 hours (DS Light performed admirably) read comics, and bullshitted with everyone. The people waiting in line were genial and polite. Gamers, comic book dweebs and 40-something parents. The kids in the front of the line brought a Laptop and played Ultimate Avengers: The Movie, Transformers: The Movie and The Goonies. There were no riots, tramplings, shootings, robberies that then became shootings like the PS3 launch. Good times.
Wal-mart is on my "happy list" right now.
11:30 PM comes. We are prompted to pack our belongings up and get in line for our tickets. The tickets were numbered, but it didn't matter, all 20 people waiting got their Wii, but there were only 19 copies of Zelda, so there was a quasi-civilized brisk walk to the electronics section at midnight. We weren't last, so I got Zelda, and an extra Wii-mote. But something was amiss, no virtual console controllers OR COMPONENT CABLES (a necessity for HDTV owners, otherwise the games look blurry)! Not good...
We buy the Wii, take it home and then I made out with her. No...seriously.
Tasted like Seattle!
So sorry for that. I was overcome with joy at the time and temporarily lost my damned mind.
So I unpack, set up, sync controllers, update the system via the WiFi network, get the whole shebang going. The first thing I do is try to get into the Wii Shop channel. I want to buy me some Donkey Fucking Kong...but sadly, so did like a million other Wii owners, the system got slammed so hard that no one could download last night.
Oh Well. On to Wii Sports...
Cardboard-alicious!!
Yeah, so Wii Sports came in a really dumpy cardboard sleeve. Luckily I rectified that with a case that I had from the one time I ordered a movie from Amazon and there wasn't a disc in it.
So how is Wii Sports? Well, the long and short of it is that it is very fun and very flawed. I liked tennis, bowling and basebal. Golf kinda sucks, and boxing is fun but the controls are really random. All of the games are really demanding if you play them like a real sport. I broke out in a sweat playing boxing, and I could easily see doing a "workout" with these games.
After Wii Sports I went to bed.
The next day we went to Best Buy, Target, Gamestop, Toys R Us and some other places. No one had the damn component cables, Nintendo brand or otherwise. Target did have the Classic controller though. It's pretty cool looking, the D-pad is much better than the DS Lite's, and despite the internet pictures, it's pretty freaking small.
Purple Gamecube controller meet your little brother.
It's a good thing I found the classic controller, cause I got the Virtual Console store to work and got Donkey Kong and Super Mario 64!
I have not really put any time in on any games other than Wii Sports and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, there is a lot of dialog in Trauma Center, so I am waiting for my component cables, and Zelda really deserves to be played in the best resolution possible.
Games and my neato remote holder. Behind the Wii-motes is my 360 controller.
Up Close! So Sexy!
Ain't she a beaut?!
Steve Jobs couldn't have made a better looking system.
Rockin' the Wii60 combo! They're just letting the PS2 hang out with them out of pity.
Probably the ONLY Wii-Virtual Boy comparison shot that you will EVER see. You should feel privileged.
And that is my Wii day in a nutshell. In addition, below is a copy of the angry letter I sent to Nintendo in regards to their bungling of the component cable sales. Let's see how thet respond. My money is on: "We appreciate your business, yada yada yada." Oh well.
To whom it may concern,
I have been a loyal Nintendo customer for more than 20 years. I eagerly anticipated purchasing my Wii today. I waited 13 hours in front of a store, in the cold, to do so.
The whole time I was waiting the only thing that I could think about was whether or not the Wii component cables would be in stock. You see, I (like many other gamers) own a HDTV set, and games played on an HDTV look terrible with standard A/V cables. Blurry and fuzzy.
My Gamecube looks so terrible on my new set that I have a back log of about 7 games waiting to be played on the Wii because I was assured by websites reporting the news that NOA would have the Wii component cables in stock in stores on day one. Numerous websites quoted your Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Affairs as saying that those cables would be available day one. Then late last week yet another news story hit the web, that the previous stories were in fact incorrect, that the Nintendo brand cables would not be available in store until the middle of December. The end of the week. Sure I could order them from your website, or your phone line, but there was no way that those cables could get to me in time for the Wii launch.
Then came the news that so many people ordered those same cables that they were now back ordered. They won't ship until the 28th. MORE than a week after the launch.
I must say I am shocked. I am shocked and dismayed at this blatant disregard for your customers. This ridiculous breakdown in communication between the press, your company and the consumer was completely and utterly laughable.
Now I have a new Nintendo system, that I dearly wish to play but cannot bring myself to get into it because of how bad it looks on my TV without those cables.
I hope that you take this complaint to heart, and I dearly hope that you are flooded with numerous complaints such as these. Because I am not alone in this, there are many more of us who are dismayed by the lack of professionalism displayed towards us. I hope that the next time a Nintendo system is launched there is more consideration taken in these matters. Thank you for your time.
William Barlett
BTW, working on my next Retro Game right now, should have something up before Thanksgiving (cross your fingers)!
You hold on to your little gonads...and strife...
Yes. Wii day has come and gone, and I am now here to drop the mad disclosure along with the lyrics above from internet music luminaries Threebrain.
Saturday: 10:45 AM -- No one was waiting at Wal-mart the night before so we decided that we would camp at Wal-mart instead of Best Buy. Two main reasons made this an ideal camping place. A.) Wal-mart sells stuff. and B.) Wal-Mart was opening at Midnight, thus cutting our wait time by more than 12 hours.
We pulled up at Wally world and see a huge crowd of people standing in the wait line outside the store. I have a momentary flash of paranoia before I realize that half of the people were old guys selling peanuts. We're 7,8 and 9 in line.
After about 20 minutes of waiting in the chilly but-not-as-fucking-bad-as-what-the-PS3-morons-got weather the store manager informs us that they are allowing us to camp inside, in the garden center. It's a cement warehouse-type area, so it's a little below room temperature, but still fucking badass. I'm sitting across from 300 christmas trees.
Nothing especially exciting happened, I played Final Fantasy V for close to 8 hours (DS Light performed admirably) read comics, and bullshitted with everyone. The people waiting in line were genial and polite. Gamers, comic book dweebs and 40-something parents. The kids in the front of the line brought a Laptop and played Ultimate Avengers: The Movie, Transformers: The Movie and The Goonies. There were no riots, tramplings, shootings, robberies that then became shootings like the PS3 launch. Good times.
Wal-mart is on my "happy list" right now.
11:30 PM comes. We are prompted to pack our belongings up and get in line for our tickets. The tickets were numbered, but it didn't matter, all 20 people waiting got their Wii, but there were only 19 copies of Zelda, so there was a quasi-civilized brisk walk to the electronics section at midnight. We weren't last, so I got Zelda, and an extra Wii-mote. But something was amiss, no virtual console controllers OR COMPONENT CABLES (a necessity for HDTV owners, otherwise the games look blurry)! Not good...
We buy the Wii, take it home and then I made out with her. No...seriously.
Tasted like Seattle!
So sorry for that. I was overcome with joy at the time and temporarily lost my damned mind.
So I unpack, set up, sync controllers, update the system via the WiFi network, get the whole shebang going. The first thing I do is try to get into the Wii Shop channel. I want to buy me some Donkey Fucking Kong...but sadly, so did like a million other Wii owners, the system got slammed so hard that no one could download last night.
Oh Well. On to Wii Sports...
Cardboard-alicious!!
Yeah, so Wii Sports came in a really dumpy cardboard sleeve. Luckily I rectified that with a case that I had from the one time I ordered a movie from Amazon and there wasn't a disc in it.
So how is Wii Sports? Well, the long and short of it is that it is very fun and very flawed. I liked tennis, bowling and basebal. Golf kinda sucks, and boxing is fun but the controls are really random. All of the games are really demanding if you play them like a real sport. I broke out in a sweat playing boxing, and I could easily see doing a "workout" with these games.
After Wii Sports I went to bed.
The next day we went to Best Buy, Target, Gamestop, Toys R Us and some other places. No one had the damn component cables, Nintendo brand or otherwise. Target did have the Classic controller though. It's pretty cool looking, the D-pad is much better than the DS Lite's, and despite the internet pictures, it's pretty freaking small.
Purple Gamecube controller meet your little brother.
It's a good thing I found the classic controller, cause I got the Virtual Console store to work and got Donkey Kong and Super Mario 64!
I have not really put any time in on any games other than Wii Sports and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz, there is a lot of dialog in Trauma Center, so I am waiting for my component cables, and Zelda really deserves to be played in the best resolution possible.
Games and my neato remote holder. Behind the Wii-motes is my 360 controller.
Up Close! So Sexy!
Ain't she a beaut?!
Steve Jobs couldn't have made a better looking system.
Rockin' the Wii60 combo! They're just letting the PS2 hang out with them out of pity.
Probably the ONLY Wii-Virtual Boy comparison shot that you will EVER see. You should feel privileged.
And that is my Wii day in a nutshell. In addition, below is a copy of the angry letter I sent to Nintendo in regards to their bungling of the component cable sales. Let's see how thet respond. My money is on: "We appreciate your business, yada yada yada." Oh well.
To whom it may concern,
I have been a loyal Nintendo customer for more than 20 years. I eagerly anticipated purchasing my Wii today. I waited 13 hours in front of a store, in the cold, to do so.
The whole time I was waiting the only thing that I could think about was whether or not the Wii component cables would be in stock. You see, I (like many other gamers) own a HDTV set, and games played on an HDTV look terrible with standard A/V cables. Blurry and fuzzy.
My Gamecube looks so terrible on my new set that I have a back log of about 7 games waiting to be played on the Wii because I was assured by websites reporting the news that NOA would have the Wii component cables in stock in stores on day one. Numerous websites quoted your Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Affairs as saying that those cables would be available day one. Then late last week yet another news story hit the web, that the previous stories were in fact incorrect, that the Nintendo brand cables would not be available in store until the middle of December. The end of the week. Sure I could order them from your website, or your phone line, but there was no way that those cables could get to me in time for the Wii launch.
Then came the news that so many people ordered those same cables that they were now back ordered. They won't ship until the 28th. MORE than a week after the launch.
I must say I am shocked. I am shocked and dismayed at this blatant disregard for your customers. This ridiculous breakdown in communication between the press, your company and the consumer was completely and utterly laughable.
Now I have a new Nintendo system, that I dearly wish to play but cannot bring myself to get into it because of how bad it looks on my TV without those cables.
I hope that you take this complaint to heart, and I dearly hope that you are flooded with numerous complaints such as these. Because I am not alone in this, there are many more of us who are dismayed by the lack of professionalism displayed towards us. I hope that the next time a Nintendo system is launched there is more consideration taken in these matters. Thank you for your time.
William Barlett
BTW, working on my next Retro Game right now, should have something up before Thanksgiving (cross your fingers)!