For a while now, I had been anticipating the release of Guitar Hero III for the Wii.  I had played demos of the prior versions in the store on the PS2, but my PS2 has done little more than gather dust the last few years, so I decided to hold off on buying the special controllers and everything.

However, last week the waiting ended, and I'm very happy to say that I wasn't disappointed at all.  Guitar Hero III has a great set list, is easy enough to pick up and play on beginner difficulty, but ramps up difficulty enough to push players to their limits.  I'll admit that I'm not great so far, but after coasting through most of the songs on easy, I found the medium difficulty to be quite a step up.  In some ways it's aggravating, but what fun would it be to breeze through all the songs?

Just like I thoroughly enjoyed Frequency and Amplitude, the titles that made music-based gaming popular in the first place, I am very enthralled with Guitar Hero III.  I've found myself losing hours at a time playing the game as I continue to tell myself "just one more song".  And I haven't even tried the online gaming yet!

If you're up for playing some, feel free to drop your friend code below and maybe we can thrash together!

As I promised, here's the footage of my family playing Wii Sports Boxing on Thanksgiving. It's pretty funny to watch!

This was the first day any of them besides my sister had touched the console, and they really got into it quickly. It's that inviting, and that easy to pick up and play. I'll say again that Nintendo really seemed to get things right with the Wii!

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, and despite a few food-related setbacks (remember to leave the oven on the whole time you're cooking a turkey...however, the two hours of letting it sit after an hour of cooking left the bird extra juicy!), my family and I had a great time playing my Wii. We spent hours playing Wii Sports after creating a Mii for everyone.

While we played a little bit of everything, the bowling and boxing games seemed to draw the most interest. Bowling I understood because it's easy to pick up, but hard to master. Plus you can get four people going with just two controllers, which is all I've got right now. Boxing was popular just because it's hilarious to watch people duke it out. I've got some footage of my parents going head-to-head, and it's like they're just flailing at nothing. There's not much strategy to it either (at least none that we've been able to discern yet). Of course, the best part is seeing the winner throw their hands in the air like they just won an actual match.

I'd like to get that footage off the camera eventually (along with all the other stuff sitting on the video camera from the last year) and get it posted on here. Very entertaining!

With family fun like this, the whole Wii phenomena may just become huge!

Edit: Oh yea, if anyone else out there has a Wii and their friend code handy feel free to drop it in the comments below. Let the Miis mingle!

So, I spent Saturday evening at my local Wal-Mart Supercenter, sitting in the Lawn & Garden section with my sister. What were we doing there? Waiting in line for the Wii, of course!

After about 3 hours in line, they let us know that they only had 27 available (after they had earlier told us 30+ would be available) and passed out tickets. We were a little nervous, because we knew we were pretty close to the 30th in line. So, as they came down the line, we got ticket number 26 (and were thankful at that). However, it took them another hour for them to start taking people back for the sales, and almost another 45 minutes before I got my chance to get one.

That experience in itself was interesting. I was just happy that the crowd there was much calmer and relaxed than many of the PS3 crowds you've seen on TV. Probably a combination of twice as many Wiis as PS3s being available and a more family-friendly crowd (I actually saw a few whole families in line! )

So, of course we raced back to my apartment to check it out. An few hours later, we had created Miis of ourselves, played tennis, bowling, baseball, and boxing (all in Wii Sports), and tried out several mini-games in Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz. By then it was 3 AM, and it was time to crash, whether we wanted to or not.

After having commitments most of yesterday, I still haven't gotten a chance to try my hand at Madden '07 and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess yet, but I plan on doing that soon. Add to that the downloads of Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda (original NES) that I grabbed for the virtual console, and I've got lots to keep me busy!

I have to admit that the new controls so far are very foreign for me as a gamer. They're intuitive, unlike most video games, and that takes some time to get used to for me. The full level of control is impressive (though some games aren't implemented as well as they'd like to think...Monkey Ball has a few of these problems...hopefully Mario Party won't have these when they get around to releasing it), and the controls are responsive. It's also more tiring than average gaming, since you actually have to move to play! Can't say that hurts, since who couldn't use a little more exercise (besides Jack LaLaine, of course)?

I'm very happy with the purchase! I'll also let you know what the rest of my family thinks after we get to show it off while hosting Thanksgiving at our apartment this year (and with my little brother already a PS3 fanboy, it'll be interesting to hear what he thinks).