The word "Nintendo" might be synonymous with videogames the world over, but make no mistake: Nintendo's latest console isn't for gamers. Eschewing conventional wisdom, Nintendo has correctly declared Sony and Microsoft's constant battle for prettiest graphics to be a useless dick-wagging contest—so instead of trying to wow hardcore geeks with fancy visuals, Nintendo's tapping into folks who don't play games at all.
The suggestively named Nintendo Wii's biggest innovation is its motion sensitive controllers, which offer players a sort of interaction that's simply not possible with previous button-based controllers. There's a vast swath of humanity for whom the words "Press the X button" will always seem frightening and confusing—but the idea of grabbing a stick and swinging it like a tennis racket is hardwired into our monkey brains, and that's precisely what the Wii allows you to do. It's also why every console comes packed with a copy of Wii Sports—an addictive collection of five sports-themed games that are so ridiculously intuitive that both your Pabst-addled buddy and your granny can play with relative ease. (Coincidentally, I believe that a drunken frat boy Wii boxing a grandmother could go down as the greatest YouTube video of all time.)
While sports games are relatively easy to grasp (especially Wii Sports' best game— bowling!), there's still a gap to be bridged between traditional, button-based controls and what's possible with the Wii's remotes, and no game displays this better than the Wii's flagship title, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While undeniably fun, Zelda suffers from a kind of inside-the-box thinking where the freehand motion controls are used simply as "X button" substitutes instead of something more original or intuitive. Much like the Nintendo DS before it, developers will need an adjustment period before they really learn to use Nintendo's innovative hardware.
Still, the final word(s) for the Wii remain "fun fuckin' accessibility." Sure, you can delete the expletive if you like, but the point needs to be driven home: Laying hands on this system will make you an instant geek.
