The Wii Comes Home

I accept defeat. I gave in to the wee Wii, from Nintendo, last week. The boys have been waiting for it since its release in November and owing to its limited production, the wait has been prolonged. (It however gave us sufficient time to collect funds to pay for it!) The local EB Games stores were wiped out within minutes of its release in late November. People were standing in line for days prior to buy the system. Even on the next consignment due date, the systems sold out within an hour.

When we reached our local Target store 2 days before the release in November, there were already some 20 odd youth smoking cigarettes, standing in line on the sidewalk, with sleeping bag, soda pop et al. It is one thing to remember lines awaiting the "Lord's" Darshan at Thirupati in the wee hours of the morning and quite another awaiting the Wii!!

The much touted Playstation 3 with its state-of-the-art graphics has captured the imagination of the older "kids". But the experience of the Wii and its remote is something else. For one, no more sitting down to play games. We have cleared out the living room floor to bowl, golf and play tennis and basket ball. We have to wait our turn to play with the remote, firmly ensconced in young hands. With the 50 inch screen TV, it truly appears as though we are in a bowling alley "throwing" the "weightless" ball with a click of the finger and a flick of the wrist!

I have always "fought" against the sahib veneer of golf and never wished to play it owing to its ultra capitalistic pretensions. The Wii's game is something else- harmless, in its very access- in one's own living room! The green stretches lushly about with a distant red flag pointing to the hole. The TV screen also teaches us basic golf vocab with words such as birdie and hole in one.

Of course, my gripe is why all these strides made in virtual reality technology are already consumer viable when basic human issues such as dish washing and house cleaning are yet to get viable robots? The Roomba is yet to distinguish between wires and dirt. It cannot determine which area has been cleaned and which hasn't. The dish washer needs someone to scrub the dishes and stack them in. The washer still needs human eyes and hands to distinguish colors from whites and cottons from perm press. The food processor needs pre-processed veggies to do its job, that is a poor second to precisely cut cubes by human hands. And there is yet a "dust buster" to be created that needs not the human touch!

Oh! When will my Irona step out of the pages of Richie Rich and become a reality in our home?