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Originally posted by: Rhoq
I've decided not to look for a kiosk. The launch is less than 2 weeks away. I can wait until I own a Wii to play, however if GameStop happens to have a kiosk when I stop in to buy my Wii launch titles next Wednesday afternoon - you can bet your ass that I'll be playing.
OK, so I couldn't hold out until my "Wii Wednesday"...I decided yesterday that I wanted to swing by my local Game Stop and see if they had a Wii kiosk set-up. I never made it there to find out. This morning, my best friend called me and said "Do you still want to go to Game Stop today and play the Wii?". Of course I said "Yes". So we ended up at EB Games and, yes, the Wii was there.
I'm absolutely loving the fact that Nintendo's policy requires a deposit (major credit card and photo ID) before you given the Wii-mote. This ensures that the hardware will not suffer any damage beyond the normal wear & tear that typical plague these demo kiosks...The Wii was mine.
Now before I continue, let me fill you in my best friend. He's 27, was raised on the NES/SNES and to this day considers those to be the greatest consoles ever made. When Nintendo first revealed details about the "Revolution" and I told him about the virtual console service, he was sold on the system right then and there. He's known that the controller is different and shaped like a TV remote, but beyond that he didn't really know anything about the Wii and how this new controller actually works. He left EB Games to run into another store. More about him in a few minutes...
I didn't bother to play around with any of the menus or the "Mii" channel. I just dove directly into Excite Truck. (A side note - I did notice that the Apple influence runs deeper than just the case design and packaging - the WiiOS features a look similar to MacOS-X's "Aqua" interface). Anyways - I ran through the first 2 tutorials and then did a race. I found the controls to work very well and are highly intuitive. The learning curve was less than 5 minutes. I'm satisfied with the graphics. Nothing impressive, but nothing to scoff at either. Graphics whores will hate it, but the average Joe won't have any problem. Case in point, while I was playing, 3 different people thought I was playing the XBox 360 - just based on what they saw of Excite Truck. When I told them about the Wii, they were highly impressed and said that it looks just as good as the 360 to them. Once I mentioned the $250 price tag, they couldn't believe it.
So after a good 15 or 20 minutes of playing, my friend comes back inside the store. He can tell by the smile on face that I was have a great time. When this race finished, I call him over and placed the Wii-mote in his hand and told him to try it out. At first he held like a TV remote and asked how he's supposed to "drive" holding it like that, I told him to turn the Wii-mote onto it's side, "NES style". Even before starting his race, he was thrilled. He loved the fact that just by holding the Wii-mote it brought back many great memories of playing the NES as a kid. Once the race started, he found himself trying to use the D-Pad to steer. I told him "just turn the controller in the direction you want to, to steer and press the D-Pad only when you need a nitro boost". The learning curve for him was also less then 3 minutes. He played through a few races and bragged about how he better at Excite Truck than I was.
Afterwards, he ran over to the Wii section and began looking at the games. He immediately picked-up Call Of Duty 3 and said that it looks like a must-have game. He also said "Don't laugh, but I would get Monkey Ball, too". I re-iterated the fact that I love the Super Monkey Ball series. I actually got him hooked on it when he was looking for a game that he could play with his kids, but offered him a challenge too. I informed him that it's now official - he has "Wii fever". He denied it, started to grin and then asked, "What time does Target open next Sunday?". When I told him 8 AM his reply was "be ready before 5 - we'll be there". When I mentioned that finding 1 Wii next Sunday might hard let alone 2 he then said, "I've got not problem camping-out all night, I need this." He's also still looking forward to the virtual console.
I'm amazed how he went from being kind of nonchalant about the Wii - interested in the virtual console, but probably would have waited a while before picking one up, if ever. Once he experienced it for himself, it sucked him right in.
Topic: The Official "I've played ExciteTruck at GameStop" thread (Read 26455 times)
