So my cousin and my Aunt and Uncle came out to visit. For the most part, this went off well, but one thing that they brought with them that I was not expecting was the Nintendo Wii. Now we had just gotten the PS3, primarily for the BluRay capabilities–which by the way are fantastic! So in all actually I wasn’t prepared to spend close to $500 on another gaming system and all the things that comes with it.

After we hooked up his Wii, the first game that we played was Boxing. Now I haven’t played Wii much before this, once at Marvel’s place after he got the Wii for Alexis, but I have to admit, I had a blast! For 2 days, we played the Wii and aside from some technical problems, we had a grand old time.

Needless to say, you can see where this is going–when they left for Jersey on Saturday, I immediately went online and started to scout out businesses to see who has the Wii. Wouldn’t you know it, after almost a year of being out on the market, the demand is still very high for it, and no stores had Wii’s in stock. But I did find an interesting tidbit:

  • Circuit City will get their Wii’s on Saturday to go on sale Sunday
  • Best Buy will get their Wii’s on Tuesday to go on sale Wednesday

So with it being Saturday, I checked with the local Circuit City, and wouldn’t you know it, they had just gotten a shipment in that day, to go on sale Sunday. So we talked about it, and decided to go ahead and get one. Sunday came around and we got up early to be one of the first in the store. Luck played it’s part and we were the first ones in the line and got our hands on the Wii. As far as other stuff, be prepared to get the following:

  1. Wii Console
  2. Wii Play
  3. Nyko Charge Station
  4. SD Card
  5. Wii Nunchuck

In addition to this, we got the Dance Dance Revolution Hottest Party. Now there are other things out there that you might be thinking about getting, namely the HD cables. After getting the Wii setup, I found that the highest resolution that the Wii will go up to is 480P with HD cables. This compared to the 1080P with an HDMI cable that the PS3 can do, save your money! The regular stereo cables (Yellow for Video, Red and White for Left and Right Audio) does fine given the graphics of the console. If you are looking for better graphics, put your money into a PS3 or Xbox 360.

The Wii Play is necessary because you need to get at least 2 controllers, unless you are going to be playing solo, and let’s face it, that’s no fun at all! You could by another controller separately; however, if you pay $10 you get 8 more games to play on the Wii Play disk, so it’s that worth it?

The SD card is something that you may nor may not have to buy. We have a Nikon D40 so we have a few 1GB SD cards laying around that we use as extra cards when we go on vacation, so LUCKY, I just took one of those cards to put into the Wii instead of spending the extra to get another SD card. Look around the house, you may find you are in a similar situation.

While both the Wii Play and the Wii Console come with 2 AA batteries for the controller, please please please, do the right thing and don’t be someone who just uses AA disposable batteries and fill up our landfills with more waste that doesn’t biodegrade and is harmful if it gets into the underground systems. The Charge Station is great, as it comes with 2 rechargeable batteries, nice rubber battery covers, and a 2 controller dock.

You do have to purchase another Nunchuck as the Wii Console only comes with one controller and one nunchuck, but at $20 this isn’t that big of a challenge.

All in all, this was a painless experience, granted it could have gone differently, and perhaps I wouldn’t be with Wii today! My favorite game at the minute is probably Wii Tennis, but the wife is loving the DDR be it there is a bigger learning curve for that.