And the "killer app" for the Wii was Wii Sports. A multi-game disc that contained boxing, golfing, bowling, baseball, and tennis. It was the original Pack-In for the original white Wii console. It came with a stand (later omitted because they found it was killing CD drives), sensor bar, 2 wiimotes (without jackets), wrist straps, Wii Sports, AC Adapter, and a AV cable for connecting it - with all the wires in gray. It was a different experience from say, the GameCube or older, where you put in the game, this was more like a computer. It kept the date and time, later had WiFi, had Ethernet, had the capability to talk to other Wii in the area, and you could look up news, weather, inteet, and other stuff on it. But Wii Sports was the centerpiece - along with the new Virtual Console service (which I'll talk about later).

However, unlike other old curmudgeons who would take one look and go "nuh uh, I gotta move around, forget that dreck!", I like to sample today, so I appreciate yesterday more! This was about as close to the image Nintendo had for the NES yet. The darned thing does not feel like a game system but as someone who worked in NOA's dealer returns dept the Wii felt more like one of those "Hobbyist Kit" type things you buy that has attachments thaht if you did not know what they were for, you'd be utterly confused. I'm talking stands for the console, clear lexan mounts for the sensor bar...that sort of thing. I liked the Wii, don't get me wrong, but it felt more like when the NES came out, also in part due to how universally accepted it was.

See, I think gaming in the last 20 years has become an "Exclusive" thing since the dawn of "Geek Culture" and "Nerd Culture". It's not longer just a thing everyone does for fun and "big whoop", now it's this exclusive thing. You're either Call of Duty or Roblocks, you're either a Minecraft Kid or a Unreal Engine expert. Wii Sports however, brought us all back together - the family unit, as a gaming family. And that's the beauty I saw in Nintendo's work with the Wii. It brought gaming back full circle to the halcyon days of the Atari 2600 - when you plopped infront of the TV with a joystick and the rest of the fmaily, the smell of pancakes in the air, and the saturday morning cartoons freshly over, and now everyone wants to compete at Space Invaders and Pac-Man - but with a more "mature" feel like the NES had, where it feels like an "activity kit" and not a "game console".

I would go on lunch at Nintendo and would play Wii Sports occasionally when the NES display was down, or when I just felt like playing something new. I found I was pretty good at Wii Bowling off the bat, this was encouraging. I think that's the only one I ever played though. While I worked there, I took a lot of Wii Consoles apart, ran tests on them, and put them together, so I was pretty well acquainted with the Wii by design anyway.

My wife bought us a black one in 2010 for Xmas that came with New Super Mario Bros Wii, and we got Wii Sports, Just Dance 3, and Fling Smash for it. Wii Sports got played the most. Usually we play Tennis though. I still like bowling but only play it on my lonesome. Honestly, the biggest part to me was the VIrtual Console.