Today we had the opportunity to get annoyed at the one who set us a task, gave us eight minutes to complete it, and talked for four of those eight minutes, thus making it rather hard to concentrate on the activity.

To be fair, I would hate to train my colleagues and would do a far worse job.

Besides, that’s not the point of this post. It is, indeed, just the preamble to explain why I’m currently at home playing Mario Strikers Charged and celebrating the fact of having finally won a few games— two of them against online opposition. I play a passing game (this is a euphemism: it means method of play in which one player keeps losing the ball to the opposition but sometimes mistakenly gives the ball to a member of his own team) thus my possession averages at around 28%.

Defensively my playing style leaves a lot to be desired but I’ve been learning the advantages of the shoulder barge as a means of winning the ball.

He did, after all, spend much of the 1980s playing its BBC Micro equivalent.

In other news, I had a premature attempt at an online game of Mario Strikers Charged this evening. Someone somewhere on the internet is wandering around with a broad grin having beaten me 83-0. I’ve now finished the training and had my first victory: it was against Kate, who hasn’t finished the training yet.

I was quite taken aback at how responsive an online game can be. I assume the programming involves all sorts of jiggery-pokery and other technical stuff to get it to run so smoothly.

The solitary Diamond race is actually quite simple: it took a couple of attempts to get the requisite B grade. Should I manage to get S grades on all the Super Excite races, I shall manage to unlock Mirror mode.

(No, I haven’t even begun to run out of bad puns yet.)

The game continues to be the only racing game (other than Mario Kart 64) that Kate’s been willing to play against me more than once. What makes the two player split screen mode quite hard is that, even on a widescreen television, the view is narrower than I would like.

Having learnt how to fly the trucks, I finished Platinum tonight only to discover that I need to complete all the races with an S grade in order to progress to Super Excite level, which I assume will be superbly exciting.

The two player mode has also demonstrated that, although I am quite consistently quicker than Kate, she drives with more style.

If that’s what Nice crash means.

It’s frustrating to finish first only to find that I’ve run out of points-scoring (read: crashing) opportunities and have, therefore, lost.

Well, first of all I’ve discovered much to my shame that I’m not bad at golf: both Kate and I have managed to finish the expert level with a score of zero. Secondly, Kate’s a scarily good boxer. She’s K.Od me twice. It’s a seriously hard game to play, just because I end up physically shattered, having used muscles that haven’t seen any significant use for years.

Hannah loves WiiPlay. Pose Mii and Find Mii in particular have proven popular.

Our Virtual Console currently contains Galaga, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Mario Kart 64. Of those, Galaga and Mario Kart have seen serious use. Donkey Kong has not withstood the ravages of time.

GT Pro Series truly is a rip-off of Gran Turismo. It’s fun and it feels quite natural to steer using the Wiimote with the supplied wheel yet the game lacks the variety of both courses and cars of GT2. All the cars are Japanese and there are perhaps only ten or twelve courses.

I’m slowly getting into Meet the Robinsons. Using the Wiimote to control the camera and the nunchuk to control movement can get a little confusing but the game is a pleasant enough diversion.

A great surprise to me has been how much Kate has taken to the machine. She never liked the PlayStation, a system on which many of the games seemed aimed, perhaps obviously, at gamers.

Technorati Tags: Wii, GT Pro Series, Meet the Robinsons

Yesterday I received my Threshold pay-rise, backdated to 1^st September. Having danced a little jig around the staff room I pottered off to the local retail park to join the waiting list for a Wii.

Currys, PC World, Game and Argos had no stock and were either not taking deposits or were not expecting any stock for a long time. Indeed, Currys claimed to have had only one Wii arrive in the previous six weeks.

I was not, therefore, optimistic as I wandered into Toys’R'Us.

I remained doubtful when I asked the member of staff who was not busy chasing a thief whether they had any in stock. And promptly answered in astonishment when told that they had just had twelve delivered.

When I arrived home, Kate, who had never liked the PlayStation, rapidly swiped the box out of the boot of the car. As I write, Kate is bowling in the living room. Last night, we nearly injured each other playing tennis in WiiSports and I discovered that my golf swing is terrible.

Today, Steve sent me his and Joshua’s Miis. Steve now keeps appearing in the background in games such as WiiPlay. It’s kind of creepy to see more evidence that big brother is watching me…

Apart from the aforementioned, we have Meet the Robinsons and GT Pro Series. The former has proven surprisingly good for a game I had never heard of until yesterday. The latter appears to be a blatant rip-off of a certain racing game from Sony’s console stable.

Having downloaded the Internet Channel, we were pleased to discover that we can listen to Last.fm, blog, access our RSS subscriptions and, indeed, do everything else we’ve so far tried to do.

Oh, and that 16 figure number up there is my Wii Friend code.

Technorati Tags: Wii