The WII is not for MEE!!!

Today we had our office holiday party. (Hmmm, my holiday ended the day before...)

To try to make it interesting and boost morale (etc. etc.) they set up a mini golf course around the cubicles. Then as a tie breaker, the boss brought in his WII, and hooked it up to the office 42" plasma TV. Well, all productivity went straight down the drain! (and there wasn't even a tie!) :-)

Now, back in the days when I was growing up, I used a ColecoVision, an Atari 2600, and even the original, PONG!! So I figured I'd give this "WII" thing a try and see what modern technology is up to.

YIKES!!! Major overhaul. The picture is certainly much better, but instead of just pressing buttons and moving the joystick around, you really get into it. You swing your arms for baseball, bowling, tennis, etc. Over the day I played several. I did pretty good in bowling (194, better than I do in real life), and in tennis my team won! Whoo Hoo! Then we tried boxing. Ouch!! And golf, forget it, I was always several shots above par.

But man, after playing a few games (and this is spread out over the full day, not all at once) I've worked out a good sweat! My bowling arm is SORE!! I think I'll just stick with card games on my computer! :-)

Update: (14 Dec...) My dad emailed me with: "If you ever do get one be careful. The first Wii had no wrist strap on the contollers, many tv screens felt the result!!"

I completely forgot to mention this part. One of my co-workers, let's call him "Tom" (that's what we call him in the office ;-) ) was a very enthusiatic player. Especially in tennis. We had to keep telling him to move back because he kept jumping in front of the screen to make a shot (despite the fact that you don't have to walk around to play the game), blocking our view. Then on a backhand shot we learned that he didn't put the strap on. The controller shot out of his hand and WHAM, right into the ceiling! Then it shot back down to the floor, barely missing another co-worker's head. A piece of the ceiling tile fell to the floor too. After that, whenever Tom would play, even a nice game of golf, we'd make sure he had his wrist strap on... tightly.