Wii adventures

My husband and I just bought a Wii, a compact yet stylish Nintendo next-gen video game system with most games requiring you to wave the controller (that looks like a remote control) around like a monkey flinging bananas.

After missing the pre-orders, we wandered into Target the other night and happened on to a whole pile of Wiis just waiting for purchase. This was far more exciting to him than to me - we also have an X-Box 360, which not only has better graphics and a superior roster of games, but also a controller you can use like a civilized human being.

It turns out the Wii is far more player-friendly than it looks. The controller is fairly easy to use except when games purposely complicate it (such as in "WarioWare Smooth Moves," where you have to do everything from dancing while spanking yourself with the controller to holding it to your face like an elephant's trunk). "Wii Sports" is my new guilty pleasure. How else can you (physically) play tennis, baseball, golf and bowling in your bedroom - alone or with friends - at 2 a.m. without waking your neighbors?

And the Wii is cute - not just because the actual console is tiny and somewhat reminiscent of a wireless router, but because you can design an avatar for game play called your Mii. You can make your Mii actually look like yourself - or have fun creating goofy-looking (or spoofy-looking, with caricatures of celebs) Miis to play with.

The Wii may not have as many titles as the other next-gen systems, but there is plenty of downloadable content in the way of older Nintendo games (which you can purchase with Wii Points). Still, the Wii is not without its major titles - and I look forward to the Wii's take on the "Resident Evil" franchise in October. I'm not saying I'll ever give up my X-Box 360, but I can enjoy a game of tennis or bowling, then check the weather (in Hammond, California or Guam, for that matter), which is at least as amusing as convenient.

Originally published in The Chronicle in September 2007.