The Wii! And Scariness.
Ok, so I got myself a Wii. It was a misadventure full of waking up at 5 in the damned morning, freezing my ass off for 6 hours outside a future shop, and getting the last one that the store had, while feeling guilty seeing the crestfallen expression on my little sister's boyfriend's face because he missed getting one by so little. We'd arranged and agreed in advance on what would happen if the three of us (Myself, him, and Monica) couldn't get three consoles. Monica was first, because she did the driving and was getting it as a birthday present for someone else. I was second because I'd planned fucking everything, had been calling stores all week trying to set up the best attack route for Wiis, and generally had been pulling out my hair trying to get everyone who wanted to camp (There were 5 of us going for 3 systems. Scheduling sucks.) coordinated. Mike was last as he was along for the ride, but didn't really have to do much for it. Also, he wasn't able to show up until 2 hours after the rest of us. Not his fault, but still. Man did I feel awful when it turned out that there were only 2 systems left when it got to our group. Monica got hers, I got mine, and Mike... yeah. Poor guy's face just dropped. Luckily Nintendo seems to be on top of shipping more consoles out with some regularity so he should have one in a week or so. I think I'm going to get him one of those "2000 Wii Points" cards as a "sorry you got screwed on launch day" token. He's 16 and doesn't have a credit card, so he needs those things if he's going to get anything off of the Virtual Console. He's a good kid and he really did deserve to get one, as he was out there with chilling with us for the majority of the time. Basically I'd be giving him a few retro games downloads. Nothing like a couple of N64 games to say "shit dude, tough break."

As for the system itself, lemme put it this way. The night before Wii came out, thanks to finally scraping everything together at the last minute and having to wake up way early, I got less than 2 hours of sleep. I was working that night at 6:00. I got home around 1:00, set up the Wii, and played until 5:15 when I had to leave. The smart thing to do would've been to take a quick nap in the time I had so that I'd be good for work. No way in hell though. The Wii is awesome. Motion sensor works better than I expected (It's not perfect, but it's the first time this has really been tried, so it's more than acceptable) and the graphics, while not as awesome as my 360 pumps out, are perfectly respectable. Wii Sports is a lot of fun, but I wish they hadn't been sold out of extra controllers when I got to the front of the line. I'd really like to play some multi with others. As it is, Mat and Monica have their system set up now, so I've gone over there a couple of times with my Wiimote and we've had some two player stuff going on. (they have one Wiimote, so do I) Tennis is solid, but the real star is Bowling. Too damned fun. Don't know what it is about it, but it's great. I've heard people saying that Golf isn't so good, but I don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's crazy awesome is what it is. I've gotten quite good at it, and it's by far one of the most relaxing games I've played since Animal Crossing. Turning your TV room into a virtual driving range is just so fucking cool. Boxing and Baseball suck. That's all there is to say about them. Still, for a free game that was shipped in the box with the system, 2 great games, one good game, and 2 crappy games is a decent deal. If I'd paid, I'd feel a bit slighted, but this was a free disc that has two really good games on it. I'll take it.

Also got Rayman and Monkey Ball. They were sold out of everything else, but I didn't care. Those were the two I'd intended to get anyway, so I'm cool with that. I know, I know. Zelda, right? Why didn't you want to get Zelda? Well, I do. Thing is, when I play it, I want to play it properly. I've ordered the component cables for the Wii direct from Nintendo, and as soon as they get here, I'll buy Zelda. In the meantime, I ain't playing it without widescreen progressive scan mode when the option will be available in a week or so. I've waited this long, I can wait the week while the cables get here. Quick impressions on the games:

Rayman
Lots and lots and lots of fun. The bunnies are adorable. The minigames all work great, with a couple of exceptions. The exceptions are infuriating, but whatever, it's still fun. My only real gripe is the reuse of the same minigames over and over. It was kinda irritating when the same mechanics would show up in a different setting, essentially making two or three games out of the same activity, but now I'm about halfway through the game and they're throwing games at me that are just faster versions of games that I've already beaten with "2" added to the end of the name. If your game boasts 70 minigames, this is not the kind of shit you should be counting. Grrr... Still love it though.

Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz
The single player game is fantastic. Don't know if you've played monkey ball before or not, but it was pretty much made to be played with a tilt sensor. The Wii now makes that possible and it doesn't disappoint. Also, the boss fights are ace. So, we have stellar single player modes, how about the multi on this one? Let's face it, as fun as the single player always is, Monkey Ball has always been about the party games. Unfortunately, although this game does boast 50 minigames as well, and they are all different, (which Rayman can't claim) only a few of them are any fun. Some feel completely and fundamentally broken. (Paraglider, for example) Others are just incredibly tedious. Monkey Target is still fun, always has been, and some new ones like darts are spectacularly entertaining for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. On the whole though, it's more thna 4 times the minigames of any previous Monkey Ball, but still about the same number of games that are actually worth playing. You just need to wade through a bunch more crap than before to get to them.

So, that's the Wii. I'm sure I'll have more to say on that later, but for now there's that "Scariness" part of the post title. What's scary? Well, It's now almost 5 in the morning, I've been writing for a while. At around 4:30 I was standing in my bathroom and decided that I didn't want to get ready for bed yet. What did I do? Well, on a whim, I decided to see how much of a trendoid I could make myself out to be. I did my best Trendy McPopcollar getup. This started when I decided that I had a bunch of hair gel left over from those times in High School when I actually wore it that I was never going to use again. I thought "Hey, why not have some fun with it?" and made myself a nice little trendy hairstyle. I gotta say, if it weren't so un-me, I could pull this shit off. I looked pretty good. So then I thought about the idea of personal Halloween. It's something I've been toying with for a while. Get myself and a bunch of friends together, the kind of people who hate the one-night-stand bars. Bars like Cowboys or the Roadhouse. All of us dress up like we actually fit in there and spend the night pretending to be like them. It's Halloween, but nobody knows it but you. Could be a fun time, if only for the chance to play act as someone you'd never want to be, just for the hell of it. I decided that I was going to start on my costume. Light yellow polo shirt, (collar popped, of course) tight, ripped jeans, (not actually pre-ripped. I ruined this pair myself, but nobody needs to know that) and of course, aviator glasses. Then I took a look in the mirror. It was very, very unsettling. I looked way too natural dressed up as the anti-me. Sometimes you gotta wonder about alternate dimension versions of yourself, and I kinda met one tonight. This is the Peter that goes to Cowboys every Friday night to pick up some barely-18 drunk girl. I didn't like him much. *shudder.* Odd, disturbing experience for me. It started out all in good fun, but there was just something about how easily the look hung on me that freaked me out. Anyway, now it's 10 after 5 and I really wanna go to bed. Night.