December 8th 2006, the day that changed the gaming world forever?

Well, after a day spent trawling around town, I finally managed to get my hands on a Nintendo Wii. Not without hassle however, getting it was a journey starting at 8o’clock in the morning. Nearly all places were pre-order only, as expected, the only place we could find who didn’t take them had already sold 6 Wii’s off the shelve.

My only hope was Currys, the incompetent store of woe. There was a small gathering outside the doors, 8:50am, you could pick the chancers from the look in their eyes. Darting from shop to shop in the vein hope that one of them, just one, will have a console to sell outright. We had our pre-orders though, so everything seemed rosy at the time.

The manager casually opened the doors and wished us a good morning. Everyone bounced excitedly to the customer service desk, eager to find out who was getting their console.

“Sorry we haven’t had any delivered yet”
- “You do realise it’s launch day, right?”
“Yeah but our delivery van hasn’t arrived and we don’t even know how many we’re getting”
- “How long will it be?”
“Dunno”

Currys, living up to their incompetent name yet again. In the end we just walked home giving in to waiting for the next shipment of consoles to come in for our original pre-order at gamestation. That was until, gamestation phoned me to say their next shipment of consoles had just come in and mine was ready to be picked up.

Rejoice! I hurried excitedly to the shop and picked up my console there and then, with a copy of Wii Play and Zelda. Rushing home to ensure I didn’t get mugged on the way (some of these things are going for £600 on eBay, a perfect target for criminals.)

Opening the box was a joy to behold, Nintendo have arranged all the components for the console in two easy to retrieve ‘drawers’ labelled 1 and 2 respectively. Putting the lot together was a quick and painless process and I was able to turn the machine on within 10 minutes or so.

One thing that surprised me the most was the size of the wiimote. From the videos and photos online, it seemed quite big, but in reality it’s small and compact and fits like a glove in your hand. At first pointing at the screen was weird, but you adapt easily to the new scheme and it becomes a natural way of movement.

First port of call; Wii Sports. Nintendo’s flagship free title to demonstrate the genius of the wiimote. We set up a quick game of four player tennis in the lounge (there are 3 wii consoles in this flat now) and I honestly can’t believe how much fun that was. Nintendo have seriously hit the nail on the head, it was so great prancing about the lounge playing virtual tennis, yet it seemed so real.

I haven’t ventured into Wii Play yet, nor Zelda.

But the verdict so far remains a pure thumbs up from me. Little Nintendo like nuances such as the controller vibrating as you hover over buttons are a stroke of pure genius and the speaker is amazing.

It’s no surprise that Nintendo believe they sold 50,000 consoles in the first 12 hours yesterday. Anyone hoping to pick one off the shelve now will probably be disappointed.