000108 - Wii

Last night, at around 10pm I headed out to my local EB Games store for the launch of the Nintendo Wii.

Since last I blogged, I've totally succumbed to the fact that I do want a Wii and I was to get one at launch. I had to be honest with myself since if I didn't want one, why was I reading anything bit of news online about it I could find or why I paid extra attention to the news and tv ads whenever there was any mention of the Wii. I even made up scenarios where if I was to get more freelance work, I'd definitely pre-order (and luckily I got just enough to cover my end of year bills).

Anyway, never been to a games console launch and after last night's experience I doubt I'd bother again (unless I was busy during the day of the launch). There was quite a turnout actually, I say around 80 people all up. I know for sure there were around 50 actual pre-order people there since that's how many tickets they ended up giving out. Basically how it worked was that we got there, paid off our pre-order, got a numbered ticket (I was 18) and then wait until midnight where they let each numbered customer in the store to pick up their Wii.

Apparently, the EB Games in my suburb had over 110 pre-orders which pretty much being all their first shipment of the console. The store had ordered 80 copies of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, of which 76 were on pre-order. All 10 copies of Super Monkey Ball were gone by launch as well. They are expecting a second shipment of 85 more, and I've seen plenty of advertisements from JB HiFi (who seem to have a slightly cheaper deal), Target, Kmart, Myer and Toys R Us as well, so I think availability should be reasonable in Australia during the Christmas season. It might be a good idea to get your copy of Zelda though, before it gets too hard to find.



So I ended up getting a Wii console including Wii Sports, Zelda, a Wii Play bundle with an extra remote and a free PowerWave Wii bag and then ended up getting out of the shopping centre by 12:30am. Probably took me no more than 10 minutes to set everything up at home. One of the main hardware thing I was a bit worried about was whether my wireless signal was strong enough to reach the living room to the Wii. Luckily it was and 2 updates later I was fully updated and connected.



There are currently 11 Wii Shop Virtual Console games available and none of them really interest me. They aren't that cheap either. I think I'll wait for Street Fighter II and maybe Bomberman if they ever release any of the PC Engine / Turbo Grafix games here in down under.

Now I'm off to clock in some hours on Zelda.

Some personal big news coming up in the next post.

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