With the Wii Fit Nintendo has decided to really make the Mii match your weight as I quickly found out.  Once I got on the Wii Fit it took me through some tests and then pumped my Mii up to match my weight.  My poor little Mii must have a glandular problem now because he is so plumped up that he looks stuffed and uncomfortable.  It’s too accurate!  Poor little guy.  I guess I better start using that Wii Fit to get my Mii (and me) back down to a more reasonable density.

This is not the exact same game that was available for free if you were jailbroken.  This version has a lot more polish and the graphics are very professional.  The game play is very smooth and the little touches of animation are pretty slick.  Another big difference is that the game is no longer free – it costs $3.99.

I’m sure there will be people that enjoyed the jailbroken version complaining about the costs, but I think it is definitely worth the few bucks it costs.  The game is every bit as polished as any other professionally developed game and I see no issue with the developers getting paid for their work. 3.99 – what’s that – a cup of fancy coffee or a pack of cigarettes?

Hopefully they will make a ton of money from this little application and put some of it back in to the game to provide over the air multi player capability.  That would be pretty cool.

If you grew up playing the game Yahtzee you should take a chance and spend the few bucks it costs to try it out.  It’s definitely worth it.

Since I am on vacation I took the liberty of trying a few web sites to see how far I could get.  My own site (the one you are reading now) works fine.  Outlook Web Access for Exchange 2003 works great as well.  The Citrix Web Interface lets me login to the interface, but you can’t select any of the icons that launch published applications.  I didn’t really expect that to work, but I  figured it was worth a try.

I’ll have to hop back on it later and see if sites like GMail and Google Reader work.  I can’t say that this would become my preferred way to use the internet, but it’s kind of nice to have it there if you need it.  Right now the Opera browser is free because it is in beta testing, but long term Nintendo should not try to charge for it as I don’t think it would drive people to purchase a Wii.  Keep it free – as in beer.

Not sure how much I’ll ever use this feature, but it is nice to see Nintendo pushing the Wii to do more than just play games. Rumor has it that we should see a beta version of the Opera web browser out for the Wii some time this Friday, which is slick, but long term they need to come out with a keyboard or a better way to input data in to the Wii as selecting letters one by one with the remote will become a pain over time.

If you don’t have a Wii yet you need to stand in line and get one. Today the extra nunchucks that I ordered showed up and now we can play against each other with a few more games. As soon as the remaining remotes show up we should be able to play a little 4 person tennis. This thing is a blast.

Did you get yours yet?

According to the site everything should be back in production the week of 12/18. We’ll see. As much fun as we are having with the Wii it would be a lot more fun if we could all play at the same time against each other.

While at Circuit City today I saw a little video of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on the PS3. It stopped me in my tracks. The video quality was amazing. I see that it is available for the Wii as well. I wonder how the graphics hold up. It’s a shame the PS3 costs as much as it does and is as hard to get as it is, because it really does look like a decent game console, but I’m not sure it is really that much better than the XBox 360. If I had to make a choice today between the two I would probably go XBox 360.

Now, if I was in the market for a Blue-ray DVD player I would rather get a PS3 with built in Blue-ray player for $600 than get a Blue-ray DVD player for $1000. I can’t wait to see the status of the game industry at Christmas 2007. Should be a very interesting year for video games.

If you see a Wii in stores – buy it. You will not be disappointed.

I was out there almost 2 1/2 hours when a few Best Buy employees came out and told us that they had 30 Wii’s to sell and that they were going to issue tickets for the first 30 people purchasing a Wii in line. I was person number 31 but thankfully there were a few couples and parents with their kids so I ended up getting ticket number 26. I am now the proud ownder of a Nintendo Wii, or as ticket holder number 29 kept yelling “I’m finally Wii-tarded!”

So far we’ve just played with the Wii Sports game that comes with it but the games are a blast. Nintendo really went after the average gamer and made it a pretty good value. If you go buy an XBox 360 or a PS3 (if you can find one) you are going to spend between $400 – $600 just for the console itself – no games. The Wii is $250 and comes with a game. It also plays all the GameCube games and you can download all of Nintendo’s older games across the internet as well as some games from Sega. Even the controller from the GameCube are suppoed to work with it.  Nice touch.

Now I just need to pickup a few more Wii-motes and the kids and I can play against each other. Great job Nintendo.

On a trip to Best Buy we found the PS3 up and available to play. I stopped and talked to someone that was playing an NBA game and the graphics were interesting. The court, stands, crowd, uniforms, etc. looked amazing. The court looked unbelievably real. The player’s skin, however, looked plastic to those of us in the store watching. That was the only game you could demo so I have no idea how the PS3 holds up under high speed game play. What was surprising was that the PS3 locked up on us. The guy playing it mentioned that the Walmart up here has been through a dozen of them because they keep locking up. I hope he was just exaggerating because people are not going to put up with freezing and minute and a half (his comment) start times after paying $600 for a gaming device. He also mentioned that he owns a XBox 360 and that he thinks the graphics actually look better on the XBox. Interesting.

I’m just disappointed that there is a DVD format war happening between Blue-ray and HD-DVD. Sony is supporting Blue-ray and Microsoft is backing HD-DVD. I would guess the Blue-ray drive is what is pumping the PS3′s price so high. I’m one that will wait and see what the Nintendo Wii looks like. They had a space reserved for one but did not have one you could see or touch. I believe that will come out this week some time.

I did play one of the coolest video games ever while there. It’s called Guitar Hero and I had a blast playing it. If you’ve ever seen the Dance Dance Revolution games, just picture the same concept except instead of the dance mat you hold a small guitar in your hands. Instead of using your feet to land on the arrows you use your fingers and the guitar – all to rock songs. It was definitely a blast, but it looked like it was a Playstation only kind of thing. Too bad, because I don’t have a Playstation. If I did I would have bought the game. It was a blast.

Lastly, I had replaced the internal hard drive on my 15″ G4 Aluminum PowerBook a little while ago with a 160GB drive and I’ve been very happy with it. Unfortunately I didn’t test the Superdrive once I put everything back together, because I learned the hard way that I must have done something to break the drive. I tried to load a couple CDs in it yesterday and it just keeps spitting them out right away. I kept trying over and over and now it won’t even accept a disk in it anymore. I don’t have any of the necessary tools away from home, but I am hoping I can get it working again when we get home. I don’t use the drive that much, but it will be a requirement when I want to upgrade to OS X Leopard later. If you’re doing your own hard drive upgrade, be careful and take your time.

You’re gonna want one.