I had an occasion to play on a Wii Demo unit recently.  Read on.

First, I own a 360 and a PS2, I have a PS3 on order.  I also have a GBC and GBA and PSP.  I had a N64, Genesis, SNES, 2600, N-Gage (Yeah, I know)...blah blah blah.  The point being, I am making sure you understand I am not a console snob, I tend to get a console based on what games I like to play. 

That said, I have not owned a Nintendo console for a while now.  The main reason being I find the big N's games to tend towards a younger crowd.  So while I casually watched the Wii announcements and news, I really paid little attention to it.  In fact, I admit I scoffed at the first descriptions of the Wii-mote.  I'm a couch potato at heart, and the concept of getting my lazy butt up to swing my arms around wildly just seemed inane.  I don't own DDR, why would I want this?

So I found myself in some office space on the West Coast shortly after E3.  And I am there to listen to some marketing folks drone about this and that and the future.  Making sure my iPod was fully charged I was prepared for a boring day.

I was greeted by the receptionist and ushered into the conference room with about a bajillion other stinky folks in rumpled suits it seems.

In the room was a nice projector setup and a ROKN video showing off some pretty graphics.  Suddenly I realize this is a game I'm not familiar with.  Some sort of 1st person shooter with a yakuza-mafia story element to it.  I lean over to my co-conspirator, and nudge him about the demo.  He looks at me like I'm a Mexican guest worker in Maine and says, "Dude, where have you been?"  I again inquire.  His reply is in a shushing manner as our presentors are arriving, "It's Red Steel.[You idiot]"  The [you idiot] was implied.

I was impressed.  Somehow I had avoided enough marketing and media coverage as to miss what was looking like a pretty outstanding game.  I had to press, "What for?  PS3?"  Again, my lost-patience-with-me-2-questions-ago friend looks at me and says, "Oui!" I note his french sounded a bit tested, and there is a definite dangerous look in his eyes.  I never know he was so into marketing presentations...I was just here for the free mini sandwiches.

I slouch in my chair and snooze for a few minutes.  Then I notice my fellows getting up and moving to the front of the room.  Ah, lunch time.  My belly is rumbling, it's about time.  I shuffle with my friend and he looks at me and says, "This is going to be cool."  What?  It's just lunch.  I glance at my watch, 9:47AM.  What?  I ask out loud, "What?"

Knowing my predilection for napping, my friend graces me with the 5 minute synopsis of what I have missed...just like back in high school...and college...and grad school...and uh, now.  Apparently we are all going up to take turns turns on the new console from Nintendo...the Wii...ah...that explains the French.

******************

So the prior fiction aside, I did get an op to try it out.  The controller is lighter than I expected.  But comfortable.  I played the tennis game and my assessment is still that you may not be able to pull all nighters with this system, but it is not as physically strenuous as I expected.  The game play is actually very intuitive. 

I was able to play a few other demos and all of them were top notch.  Following my experience, I immediately placed my preorder for the system.  If I had as much fun playing these unpolished and (at least with the baseball game) buggy games, I can only imagine what fun the final games wll be.

I love the backward compatibility with GC, and the old-school download fests that are going to arise.  Now to go ask my boss for a raise so I don't go broke this Christmas.