It’s pretty fair to say that I’m the Alpha Gamer in the family. We purchased a Wii (or rather, a very good friend of mine purchased a Wii and then mailed it to me) way back in January. And then we proceeded to play it for a week, and never touched it again unless the wife wanted to impress some friends. I had a lot of fun with Wii Sports, but once I figured out that you can’t rush the net in Wii Tennis, I lost interest. We have Zelda, Mario, and Metroid for it, but never really played them at all. There is a very stupid reason for this.

You see, my wife really wants us to play these games together. So this is the pattern every single time we play these things.

A) We’ll start the game.

B) I let the wife take control, and I play an “advisory” role. What this basically boils down to is: I tell her what to do, and how to do it. She proceeds to run Link/Samus/Mario into a wall/lake/hole/nearby enemy, while pushing random buttons and waving the stick around. Eventually she hits a part that is difficult, and she hands control over to me. Of course, this adds tremendous pressure, as I’m expected to instantly, instantly mind you, conquer the objective. Which I only have a 50% chance of doing, as usually I only have 25% life left.

C) The wife decides she’d rather watch the Home and Garden Network, and we essentially never play the game again, but it’s too confusing or hard.

I’m being fairly aggressive with Mario, as I actually want to play the damn thing this time.

I have a feeling this is the experience of the majority of the “casual” users that Nintendo and it’s team of financial and marketing analysts practically drool over every time they view their gaudy sales numbers. Either that or they get sucked into the mini-game hell that I experience every once in a while.

My mother-in-law has discovered the Wii, and she loves her some Wii Tennis. She loves Wii Tennis to the exclusion of nearly every single game on the Wii. When I load up Bioshock on the 360 once I put the kid to bed, I usually get “gently reminded” that I have work tomorrow, and playing any games for longer than 10 minutes will apparently hork my sleeping schedule so much that I will lose to ability to listen to the alarm and will be fired once I stumble into work at 11am with no pants. And of course, I have to put headphones on, so as to not wake the sleeping child (of course, this NEVER happens when they watch TV during this time). I can understand this though, as the games I prefer have a lot of gunshots and other sudden loud noises. It’s a bit of a pain when you want to play some mp though.

I digress. Anyway, my MIL loves Wii Tennis so much she’ll play it every chance she gets. Anytime. Problem: she’s not particularly good at it, and so her Wii Tennis Ranking was low. I say “was” because she figured out that as Alpha Gamer of the family, I probably rock at Wii Tennis. Which is true, I do. So doubles it is then. All the time. When I get home from work, it’s Wii Tennis right after I get out of the monkey suit and into some normal person clothes. Wii Tennis after dinner before I take the kid out to run around. Wii Tennis after I get back for a few minutes. Wii Tennis after the kid goes to bed for a few rounds. There was a bit of a problem, as the disparities in our rankings caused us to face off against either a ridiculously good team or a horrifically bad one. Whenever we faced off against the ridiculously good team, we usually lost because the MIL couldn’t aim her shots and that’s pretty much what you need to do. So we lose maybe 50% of the games. The horrifically bad teams give no satisfaction to either of us as it’s pretty much a cakewalk and no one gains any rank. If one were able to view my Wii Tennis ranking chart, you can see the EXACT moment I started playing with my MIL, as the ranking tops off at one point and barely rises over time. You look at HER chart though, and it’s METEORIC rise through the rankings.

In many ways the Wii is a very welcome addition to my gaming life. My wife and Mother-in-Law no longer sneer at the hobby I’ve partaken in since I was 6 years old, and I can actually bring up the subject of getting new games without worrying about being laughed at. Before the Wii, discussing the purchase of a new game was like discussing some weird fetish (and not some vanilla fetish, something really disgusting, like Furries). It kind of had a resigned feeling to it, as I knew it would be summarily rejected, but I gave it my half-assed all anyway. Also, it’s nearly impossible to top in a “keeping up with the Joneses” sort of way, as it’s still fairly rare (even moreso now that I’ve moved to Connecticut). But it does get frustrating, as my tastes in games have changed with the vast experience I’ve gained in jumping on/through things, shooting things, saving things, and in some cases having sex with things in a car to gain life and then killing them afterwards for bonus points.

However, playing Wii Golf with my 3 year-old-daughter is always a delight. Even though she can’t hit a soft shot to save her life, she has a good time doing it and I like watching her have a good time. I would rank it as my #2 multiplayer experience of all time. #1 would be playing NBA Jam and Gunstar Heroes with my brother on the Sega Genesis.

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