My new Nintendo Wii is so much fun!

Since picking the console up from EB Riccarton at the midnight release (I was 15th in the queue), we’ve had loads of fun playing Wii Sports (as I didn’t pre-order any other games for release night) and have generally been messing around with the console operating system.

I’m really surprised how cool the Mii characters are to play with and design. Mii (Miis?) are cartoonish avatars that you can create from an assortment of eyebrows, noses, wigs, and more, resulting in hillarious and sometimes scarily realistic representations. My current Mii count is at 14, including: Mike, Michelle, Kezz, John, Andy, Adam West, Chuck Norris, Shigeru Miyamoto, Ryu, Ken, and, of course, myself… The remaining three are library celebrities!

From left to right: Stephen Abram, Michael Stephens (complete with ponytail when he turns around!), Jenny Levine. You can see bigger versions on my flickr account; just click on the images.

One of the most exciting things for me about the Wii and it’s Mii characters is the ability to leave your Wii on and connected to the internet, even while it’s powered on. You can set your Miis to “Mingle” and they’ll wander off and visit your friend’s consoles!

This means that Michael Stephens, for example, may stop by to hang out at my friend Kezz’s Wii, and, if Kezz likes Michael (the Mii version, that is) he may choose to copy him to his own Mii collection. The Miis that you have in your collection then appear in the background, or as participants, in some Wii games. Of course, it makes all the difference in some of the Wii games where you have to pick Mii out of a crowd to be looking for familiar faces you created yourself!

It’s really awesome to be playing Bowling on Wii Sports and suddenly notice Stephen Abram having a friendly chat with Chuck Norris in the background. What ever could they be discussing? Is Chuck giving Stephen advice on how to deal with librarians who don’t use IM? Is Stephen going to silence the next mainstream journalist to ask if Google is making libraries obselete …with a swift roundhouse kick to the face?