Coming Up a Wii Bit Short

You may have noticed that Wiis are now the cheapest they’ve ever been. A new Wii will only set you back $130 (as of last week at Target), and that comes with a copy of Just Dance 3 – the current best-selling Wii game, or New Super Mario Brothers. Although these Wiis seem like a great deal, someone who knows what they’re looking for can tell that these Wiis are different from their predecessors. Perhaps this deal isn’t as good as it first seems.

The new batch of Wiis are the “Wii Family Edition” designed for this holiday season. As someone who owns two Wiis (the disc-drive broke on the first), the first thing I noticed at the display model was that the text on the console is oriented differently than on the original. While the old Wii was originally designed to sit vertically, the text printed on this Wii are oriented in such a way that indicates that the Wii is designed to sit horizontally. This isn’t a deal breaker for me, especially since that’s already how my Wiis sit.

The real catch to the “Family Edition” Wiis are that they no longer support Gamecube games. I’m a little frustrated with Nintendo on how they handled this. The removal of Gamecube support came from nowhere. This leads us to a bigger question though. How would a company go about doing that? Should they print on the box: “Nintendo Wii – Now with 100% Less Gamecube!”?

Even those privy to video game consoles usually aren’t aware of this change. It hasn’t been spread around. It’s a big change and much like the removal of backwards compatibility from Sony’s PS3s, it goes against what we expect from our consoles. As someone who enjoys all the games I’ve owned, I want a console that can play them. Will the Wii U have Gamecube support? Probably not. Will it have Wii support? Probably, but who knows?

While this is a difficult position for Nintendo, the move to exterminate Gamecube support is not a bad idea – it will help lower the production costs so Nintendo can proliferate the market with current-generation Wiis before the Wii U comes out. For those who didn’t have a Gamecube, this is a fantastic price.  If you wanted to play Gamecube games on your 2011 Christmas morning Wii, I regret to inform you that you may be getting an unexpected piece of coal in your console stocking.

I hope the word gets out about these reconfigured Wiis. I love Nintendo, but I believe that the consumer has the right to know what they are getting. And that in this case, it may not be what they expect.

Check out Engadget’s article on the subject, including the press release:

Engadget

There and Back Again

I know it’s been quite a long time since I’ve posted here. Or made any YouTube videos.

I will change this. Soon.

The Beginning of the End (or “Still Alive”)

This was a triumph

At 1:55 PM PST on Sunday, October 31, 2010, robots gained self-awareness. A routine check of my remaining text messages for this month (yes, I am one of the few without unlimited text messaging these days) produced this message.

Honestly, I’m ashamed I didn’t see this coming. Verizon’s most recent advertising campaign, “Rule the Air”, is obviously not what it seems. Consumers are led to believe that they are the ones ruling the air, but in hindsight, it is obviously a coded warning from prisoners enslaved by Verizon’s version of SkyNet, hinting at Verizon’s imminent technological overthrow.

In fact, Verizon’s favorable bias towards robots over humans has been apparent in their advertising since the release of their Droid series of smartphones. A reoccurring theme of these ads are boring old humans (obviously oppressed by their non-robot overlords) being replaced by efficient, happy robots. If you don’t believe me, check it out yourself:

Here, you can become an “instrument of efficiency”. *cough* robot *cough*:

Just look at his eyes! Look familiar?

My advice? Destroy any phone you have that’s considered a “smartphone”. Heck, kill anything with even a calculator. The last thing we want is SkyNet calculating things.

The Secret Behind a Brilliant Halloween Costume

I ain't afraid of no ghost!

Friday was “costume day” at my school. And being my geeky self, I dressed up as a Ghostbuster.

In all honesty, I was kind of ashamed of the costume. Sure it’s awesome, but I’m a hardcore DIY guy and a store bought costume just felt wrong. To make up for it, I made myself a pair of “modernized” ecto-goggles (mostly because I didn’t have any welding goggles to convert to movie accurate ones). To top it all off, I taped the Ghostbusters Logo to both sides of my car and lashed a giant speaker to the roof.

Wait, what? A giant speaker? Let me ask you this, how else am I going to play the Ectomobile siren?

And thus, I began my adventure to school, blaring the Ghostbusters theme song as I drove along (I chose this over the actual siren because I didn’t want to be pulled over and ticketed for impersonating an emergency vehicle). From the moment I arrived at school to the moment I left, my costume was praised as the “best costume ever”, while people I didn’t know showed their approval by shouting “Ghostbusters!”, “Who ya gonna call?”, and “I ain’t afraid of no ghost!” A couple of lucky students even got photo ops.

I’m still surprised my costume got the reception that it did. But I think I’ve discovered the secret to Halloween costumes. It’s not about having the most expensive costume; it’s about putting effort into it. Throughtout the day, I made sure to walk like a Ghostbuster, talk like a Ghostbuster, and look like a Ghostbuster (then I must be a Ghostbuster, right?)

The little DIY touches to any costume personalizes it and makes it yours. The perfect costume doesn’t show how well you can be someone else, but tells everyone around you a little bit more about who YOU are.

Hello world!

Welcome to my brand new blog! I know it’s not much now, but hopefully it will be flourishing sometime soon!