"We would like to play." That motto is something I don't think any Nintendo fan will forget. When the Wii was finally shown off for the first time none of us knew what to think. The ditched the standard controller in favor of motion controls, and the trailers showed people doing some crazy things in order to play. The remote like controller was being used as a sword, tennis racket, and one guy was even curling up in a ball to transform Samus into her ball form. It was kinda obvious this wasn't a requirement in the game, but Nintendo wanted to make sure fans would believe they'd be a "part" of the game when in control of it. Many people thought this looked stupid, but I wasn't one of them. I was 15 years old, and I wanted it now! But how would we find it?
My parents flat out said they'd get me one, so I didn't have to worry about that. The real problem lied in finding one of the darn things. They were selling out instantly, and Nintendo was being typical Nintendo. Just like we still see today, they never release enough units into the world. They hype up their new products, send out small shipments, and then that is that. If you aren't lucky enough to buy one, then good luck finding it in a year or so. I really didn't want that to happen to me. I wanted the Wii really badly, and because of that most of my family agreed to help us look. Of course my parents wouldn't tell me if they found one, so I was pretty nervous as Christmas approached. It's all I wanted, and if it wasn't going to be that, then what else was there? (Besides a 360 and Sonic 06... Yeah...) Thankfully my aunt happened to be at a store just as a shipment arrived, so my worries were for nothing.
I loved the Wii. It might have had it's problems, and was unable to keep up with the 360 and PS3, but that didn't matter to me. Wii Sports was amazing to me, and me and my family ended up spending most of the day playing it. In fact we played until we could hardly move our arms! Then there was Excite Truck and Elebits. While Excite Truck was an action packed racer with motion controls, Elebits let you explore a house and interact/throw nearly everything in your path as you looked for these little creatures. Then there were the Mii avatars that were used in games like Wii Sports. I had so much fun making characters that I quickly filled up my allowed limit. Plus on top of all the new Wii games I could play, it also had access to GCN games as well. I still remember playing Paper Mario Thousand Year Door on it. I had just gotten the game earlier that year, but hadn't quite finished it yet. Being able to play on the Wii was a lot easier for me, and meant I had less game consoles I had to carry with me when I had to stay at my mom's work. (Although I rarely did so once I was 15, so my Wii ended up staying at my house the majority of the time.) Really I thought the Wii would become my new favorite console, but it's limitations did start to show.
Eventually I did get an Xbox 360 to play all the games the Wii wasn't getting, and sadly the Wii started going unused. It just didn't have a whole lot to offer me as I got older, with a lot of games being pretty pointless. That did change later on with the release of games like Xenoblade and Zelda Skyward Sword, but by then my original Wii's disc drive had died and I had to get a new one. Even so I kept that broken Wii in the living room to use with Netflix so it wasn't a complete loss. But despite all of this that Christmas is a great memory for me, and I'll always see the Wii as being somewhat special. I'm glad I owned one, and I'm glad I got to experience the some of the gems in it's library. Games like The Last Story, and even more well known games like the Metroid Prime Trilogy will always be favorites of mine.
