The Wii

About three weeks ago, my husband and I stood for an hour outside of Best Buy in order to buy ourselves a Wii.

We have an XBox (the first version, not the 360) but it's hard to find games for that anymore. We hadn't used it in ages.

I wanted the Wii Fit game but so far have yet to make that purchase too. It apparently is as hard to come by as the Wii console itself.

I have noticed all the peripherals for Wii are very expensive, including the things you need for the Wii Fit. I did not do my homework very well before we bought the Wii, having succumbed to my need and desire to exercise and being bored by present routine and seeing the commercial of people happily doing yoga with their Wii.

So this was for all intents and purposes an emotional purchase and not a rational one.

By the time we bought the Wii ($250) and a crossbow thing ($25) and a Wii Play game which had an extra controller ($50) and a Cabella's Trophy Bucks video game ($50), we spent $400 on this wee bit of entertainment.

I have since bought a sports game that has ten different sports on it and Laura Croft's Tomb Raider's Anniversary for another $50 "investment".

The Wii Fit, whenever I finally get it, will add at least another $100 to the price of this thing.

And it's amazing what I don't know about it. I don't know how big a hard drive it has on it. I don't know, therefore, how many game saves the thing will take before it starts telling me it's out of memory.

Because I didn't really research it well, I don't know exactly what games are available for it, although a look at list on Wikipedia indicates that while there are a good number many are not the kinds of games I really like to play.

I like RPGs like Morrowind or Fable. I don't care much for shoot-'ems like Halo or weird games like Sonic Hedgehog or even the Mario and Donkey Kong games, which seem to be staples for anything put out by Nintendo. They haven't gotten past that for 20+ years.

I also like puzzle games and brain games that make you think. My husband likes racing games and deer hunting games.

I haven't put the first game save on the Wii for the Laura Croft game, which means I haven't played it much. My husband and I both have played the Trophy Deer game all the way through its 96 different hunts and then some, however. He is greatly enjoying that game, which certainly counts high in my estimate of the purchase.

We put this system in the living room which makes it much more accessible. However, it is not on our 42 inch TV but rather on a 26" TV because we couldn't hook the thing up to the 42" TV screen without making radical changes to our DVD/DirecTV setup and then having to hook and unhook wires every time we wanted to play or watch TV. Anything that was that much trouble would have been swiftly set aside.

The XBox, by the way, was on this small TV but it was located in the bedroom I use for my office. This change has made the gaming system more accessible, anyway.

So we now have two TVs in the living room, one on each side of the fireplace.

I do not think buying a Wii was a bad purchase, and I think we'll get enjoyment and kill a few hours with it, particularly since we've taken to trying to stay home more because of the price of gasoline. But I can't say that it is the best, most rational and appropriate purchase I have made in a while.

Oh, and this is also, I guess, our 25th wedding anniversary present to one another, even though our anniversary isn't until November.