Now I can go Wii

Thanks to an early Sunday morning phone call from Thee, I now have my Nintendo Wii. I had tried an early morning Wii mission prior to Christmas, but that fell flat. After that I had pretty much told myself that getting up early for a Wii was futile and I would just wait until they became available. But there was something in Thee’s account of his own Wii score.

It was at a Meijer that the Wiis were abundant. Apparently their stock was not announced in any advertisements so no one (in theory) knew about it. How Thee found out I still don’t know, but I’m glad he did. Also fortunate was that the Meijer was only a few minutes from my house, so it was no big deal going even if they ended up being out by the time I got there.

Meijer on a Sunday morning is pretty dead, both in customers and staff. I found the Wii stash behind the glass as usual and there were at least 8-10 in the case ripe for the picking. But of course, there were no staff in that section to help a customer in need. I had to track around the store to find an employee. That employee then called another employee who then called another employee who called the employee that could actually open the case. I happily dropped by $250 and then skipped out of the store, clicking my heels all the way. Actually, before the skipping, a guy was pushing his cart down the video game aisle and saw me with my Wii. He then looked at the case in bewilderment as he saw the stash. He looked over at me and I just nodded, telling him he was not seeing your all-to-familiar empty box mirage.

The only downside to the trek was that Thee apparently ganked the last Wii remote Meijer had! And of course Wii remotes are as hard to find as the Wiis themselves. Oh well…

The packaged Wii Sports game that I thought looked promising way back when is just as I expected and delivers in the way I had hoped for. It is so much fun that after 4-hours of play I am now more sore than I have probably ever been. My wife tells me this is due to this thing called “excerise” - well, whatever it is, I’m sure it will go away as did my guitar arm soreness after hours of rocking out to Guitar Hero.

The only trouble I had with the Wii was getting it online. You don’t have to be online to play games, but naturally being online is rather hip right now and gets you some frivilous extras. If nothing else, being online gets you free Wii updates direct from Nintendo. Upon trying to setup my connectivity, however, I came across an immediate problem. The Wii detected my wireless newtork but would not connect.

I have my wireless encrypted - as any good wireless network should be (Thee!) - but the Wii just didn’t like my encryption key. My first attempt at a resolution was resetting the access point to change the password key and some settings. That didn’t work. Then to make sure the Wii was not at fault I turned off security entirely…that worked. That concluded that the Wii was fine, the problem was my network. I quickly turned my encryption back on.

After some forum searching I read something that sparked an idea. The post I read didn’t give me the solution but made me try something different. You see, my laptops that use the wireless need a password to connect to my network. This password is just like any password, just letters and numbers - usually some sort of word-number combo that is easy to remember. This is all my laptops ask for, so naturally I thought my Wii was asking for the same thing. Turns out that it wanted something else.

I discovered that my password is NOT the actual password being used by my wireless router or what the Wii wanted. The password I enter generates a hex password - basically a seemingly random bunch of letters and numbers - and then that hex password is what is used. The laptops handle that part for me, so I never had to worry about the hex part. The Wii isn’t as user-friendly in that aspect.

So I tried entering the hex password into the Wii - which was a pain - but after that it logged on to Nintendo’s network perfectly and speedily. Now I can enjoy weather, news, and game play online without having to worry about the rest of my network. So for anyone else having issues connecting their Wii to a secure wireless network, there you go…one possible solution to your problems.

I have played hudreds of video games in my life and owned numerous game systems, but not since my first NES have I wanted a videogame system so bad. The Wii had promise of putting fun back into video games. And not just nerd fun where you run, shoot, and drive - but where you actually test your abilities without being too hard or too easy. Nintendo hits the challenge sweet spot with the Wii. Their games are ones everyone can play and enjoy themselves - from expert to total beginner.

But that “Wii Elbow” you’ve heard of…totally true.