I’ve really been digging NPR’s Press Start podcast. It lets me – a LAMZ0r who only owns one game at any given time – to vicariously enjoy gaming without actually spending time or money on the hobby. (The seebelow community performs the same function for me and comic books, and Slate’s Audio Book Club for highbrow fiction.) I’m also relying on this podcast and The Weekly Geek to get me up to speed for the Penny Arcade Expo this coming weekend.
This week’s episode of Press Start is all about the upcoming Nintendo Wii game console, which Nintendo demoed for the group. The motion sensor action that they described sounds awfully cool. There’s a tennis game in which you serve the ball by making a throwing motion upward, as if you’re lobbing the ball into the air, and then whacking the air with the remote like you’re holding a tennis racket. Apparently you can feel the impact of the racket against the ball through the controller.
The bit that I really dug was when they described WarioWare, which consists of lots of mini-games that make creative use of the hardware. In one, you blow out candles. By blowing. You blow on the device, and the candles go out. Nutty. (Not sure if they were referring to WarioWare Touched for the DS, or WarioWare Smooth Moves for the Wii.)
Tags: Nintendo, Wii, WarioWare, NPR, Press Start, Slate, seebelow, podcasts
Wade Rockett 