The closest I have been to a video game until this evening was when the guy sitting next to me at work talks about his Wii.  I’m old enough to remember when Pong first came out (and I wasn’t crazy about that either).

I was at my brother’s house tonight and he bought his son a Wii.  It’s probably up for debate as to whether it was for his son or him but I’m not the debating type.  I’ve long held that he is such a good father simply because he can relate to his (four year old) son on his own level.

My wife was recently over there, also relating to her nephew on his own level, as well as several other ages, and really enjoyed the game console herself.   I can’t exactly see one in our immediate future ($250 for a frickin’ video game?) but who knows.

So this evening I got to see the thing in action.  Things, as one would expect, have come rather far from the days of Pong.  I read about the wireless controllers and was impressed to see them work.  Keeping in mind that I don’t really like video games, they did a really good job with it.

Regardless of the suspension of disbelief involved in Pong, it was pretty weird to watch people bowling in my brother’s family room.   After watching a few throws, some things occurred to me:

* can you get a left-handed bowling ball?   (apparently you can)

* you can’t do that really funny thing where you drop the ball on the person standing behind you

* I used to bowl in real life.  The thing I enjoyed most was picking up the heaviest object (hopefully a ball) I could, and heaving it with all I had at some pins (hopefully the ones in my lane).  The only way to simulate this would be to tie a sixteen pound weight to the controller :)

* it will never feel real until you can get Old Bowling Alley in a Can spray for your living room

* no pink balls?

Oh shut up.  If you had wanted a serious review of a video game, you would have gone to a real review site.