And little Jimmy, what are you thankful for this year? Nintendo, for bringing my whole family together! Awwww….

Ok, so my day wasn’t that corny, but once my cousins (and their kids) showed up, it was Wii day all day. Everyone has a 90 second learning curve on the Wii, hold it like this, there’s a button on bottom, one on top. Now hold on to it, cause I’m going to kick your ass. Baseball is my favorite starter game, but that didn’t last long because it’s only 2 players. My cousin is an active bowler, and when I described how it works and how you can throw hooks as naturally as you normally would, he demanded we play that next. Thankfully this was a 4 player game. But keep in mind, it’s very much like real bowling, so 4 people to go through ten frames takes time! We ended up bailing on the first game because dinner was called. But bowling is now easily my favorite Wii Sport. Very easy to learn and real life bowling skills do translate well. The better bowlers ended up winning over the better gamers.

Next we tried Excite Truck to play some 4 player split screen. Imagine my surprise when it only had a 2 player race mode! Lemme see that box! Oh, 2 player, that’s so lame. OK, let’s play Rayman, that’s supposed to be a party game (so I thought). It isn’t. It’s fun, but you have to start off in Story mode to unlock anything, so that didn’t last long.

Eventually DDR and GHII won out the rest of the night, but Wii was a hit with everyone. How does it work? What else can I do with it? How much does it cost? Can I get one? I think Nintendo is in a great spot right now. Let’s just get those component cables out, get more titles in the Virtual Console and we’re going to be cruising!

Edit:
My cousin did end up throwing the bowling ball behind him one time, and we all had a good laugh. For a list of other tips and tricks you can do with your new Wii, check out GoNintendo!.