The Nintendo Wii

I own a Nintendo Wii and I must admit it is absolutely as cool and awesome as I thought it would be. Here's what I like about it:

A way to exercise
Nintendo made a smart move to create Wii Sports. As any other blog will suggest, it's simply great fun. My favorite is the baseball game - especially going through the training games. It's exciting to connect the bat to the ball and see it soar out of the stadium. I'm also getting pretty good at tennis as well and have been regularly using tennis as part of my morning wake up routine.

Jessi likes it
This was huge for me. I wanted to get something that both Jessi and I could enjoy and play together. Any couple knows that it takes planing to find an activity both people enjoy and thankfully playing theWii is one of them. We especially like playing against each other on Wii Play with all of it's mini-games. Jessi is pretty good too, often leading me with overall wins.

Internet browser
OK, we all love YouTube and other video content sites. You have seen the latest Ask A Ninja and Homestar Runner updates, right? What's great about Nintendo is that you can surf the web and watch all of these videos right on your home TV! I realize that Apple is claiming to be the first to bring YouTube to the television with their appleTV, but the Wii already has this cool feature.

Backwards Compatibility
Sony originally came up with this idea with the PS2: be able to play your old games on the new system. This was one thing I really disliked about Nintendo's new consoles, but no more. It would have been cool to just be able to play GameCube games, but Nintendo made one more smart move. Owners can now download classic games and play right on the Wii. Nintendo was equally smart in how they priced the games. I can buy any NES game they offer (they are slowly releasing them though) for $5. That's enough money where I don't think twice about buying a game I know I want and like, and it's enough that Nintendo will actually make some money off the sales. Brilliant. I have recently been enjoying three classics: Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda and Excite Bike.

So, thanks Nintendo for making a console that I fun, nostalgic and at least more physically healthy than alternative game systems. It's no surprise to me that Nintendo is leading the pack in console sales by 5 to 1 in many areas.