Wiiview 2.0

Our first GameFly rental was a bust, Game Party is not worth renting let alone purchase. The graphics are patchy; the static backgrounds are well drawn, this only makes graphics for the players and crowds even worse. Unlike the cartoonish Miis, these characters look and move more like inflatable dolls. This is made all the creepier by the method used to make them emote. Instead of the characters expressions changing; to express joy or frustration by smiling or frowning, the image of the mouth and eyes increases or shrinks. It looks like some one is squeezing and releasing them, making other body parts expand and contract like a stress ball.

Not only the players but the crowd characters standing around, in fact the characters standing around are one of the creepier aspects. Unlike Mii spectators in tennis & boxing or the ones bowling in other lanes; these characters all act as if they have money ridding on the game. Cheering when you succeed and looking like they want to shank you when you miss.

Game play also suffers along with the graphics; the darts and beer pong games require you to select an aiming point on the game field. As far as I could tell these aiming points had little to due with the flight of the darts or bounce location of the ball. The skeeball game plays nothing like Wii Sports Bowling, which is annoying. The air hockey game stuck on me both times I tried to play it. The software and hardware were fine but my player got stuck in the bottom of the screen, annoying as hell. Also the view for a single player game the standard view is overhead, I gave up before discovering if there are any other view points. The Trivia game was random and hard to understand, the only game that was the least bit enjoyable were shuffleboard and basketball, neither of which could redeem the rest of the game.

We would give this game one wiimote.

Wiiview 1.0

We finally found a Wii; one of the kids in the electronics section at the local Target told me they were getting a shipment on Sunday. I lucked out and was able to get one of the fifty they had. We love the system it makes the games more fun then I remember from the old Atari or NES days. You can intuitively understand how to play the games. I am not saying anything I have not heard lots of other people say in singing the Wiis praises.

Now on to what I don’t like. First is Nintendo only including one wiimote it would not have hurt their bottom-line to sell the units with two of wireless devices. Of course I purchased a second wiimote and nunchuck when I picked the unit up. So that my wife and I can play either versus or against the Wii.

I also got an aftermarket accessory that makes the wiimotes rechargeable. Great in theory but bad execution, Psyclone made the unit I purchased and then returned on Tuesday. When I looked online the other rechargeables appeared to use same system. The tines that connect the base to the wiimote broke off on one side when I inserted the wiimote. To insert the wiimote you have to remove the jacket and the wrist strap, bad if you have kids who may not put the strap back on.

If you are worried about the batteries go with standard rechargeable AAs from Energizer or Duracell don’t waste your money on these units. As far as games go we got the standard Wii Sports game and enjoy it very much; tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing. All fun and get us moving around. The only thing that I do not like is the tennis game in training mode, the volley game needs to be more forgiving. As soon as returned serve lands out of bounds or is missed; game over you start from scratch. All of the other training games allow you to learn as you play.

We joined also GameFly because, the monthly rate is cheaper then purchasing games we don't like. We would give the Wii and Wii Sports three Wiimotes & nunchucks.

The New Boarder Blasters

I was at work listening to the podcast of On the Media, the November 16, 2007 episode. The final story for the episode was about the Boarder Blaster radio stations and this got me thinking.

According to the story back in the 20's, pirate radio stations were built on the US / Mexican border. These stations were built for two reasons. The Americans who built the stations had been run out of the states for doing things like prescribing patented medicines and running other scams. The Mexican government allowed these stations to be built because they wanted out of a treaty that limited Mexican access to the prime sections of the broadcast radio spectrum.

These stations were very powerful; one of the first was licensed at 50,000 watts, but was built to broadcast up to a million watts. You could listen to this station everywhere in North America. Supposedly you could hear this station on barbwire fences or bed springs and it knocked birds out of the air. These stations were the sources for pop culture; country music, rock 'n roll, televangelists, infomercials and shock jocks were all started on these stations.

This got my brain spinning; I listen to the next generation of Boarder Blasters. Whether it’s Jonathan Coulton's “Thing a Week”, Beatnik Turtle's “Song of the Day”, or the artists involved in the F.U.M.P., C.C. Chapman and Mathew Ebel or other indie music bands and podcasters. New fiction markets like; Stranger Things, Variant Frequency, Jack Mangan’s “Deadpan”, Prometheus Radio Theater, or Escape Pod, and its buds of Pseudo-Pod and Pod-Castle, or the various writers on Podiobooks. Shock shows like Wingin' It 3d, Distorted View and Dawn and Drew. Talk shows like Skepticality, Open Source Sex, Truth Seekers, ShadowDance, The SciPhi Show, Polyamory Weekly, The Dragon Page, I Should Be Writing, and The Geologic Podcast, all of the leaders in Podcasting community.

These people and the varied media they produce, whether its music, shock or talk, are the new Border Blasters. Anytime you download a program you can find open, honest and frank conversations about subjects as diverse as skepticism, sex, politics, alternative religion, philosophy, responsible non-monogamy, literature and writing, any of these subjects and many more. You can see and hear their shows not only in the United States but everywhere in the world. The truly earth shattering and amazing point about the New Media Border Blasters is not the fact that you can listen to shows from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Aberdeen, Australia from Phoenix, Arizona to Paris, France. These conversations are not one way, from the producers to the listeners; instead these conversations go back and forth from listeners to producers and back. Not only podcasters but the participating listeners are the new Border Blasters.