Way back in 2006 when the Nintendo Wii system was first introduced to North American households, I was a very excited little video gamer giddily anticipating how the revolutionary new console would change gaming forever.
My wife, if I remember correctly, was not quite as giddy at the prospect of purchasing yet another video game machine for the house.
Yes, it's all coming back to me now. Lots of sighing and eye rolling, but not so much with the giddiness.
The Wii is currently one of the big three names in this generation's 'next generation' video game consoles, along with Sony's Playstation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360.
The Wii, aside from having an intolerably cutesy name, distinguished itself from its competitors with its Wii remote controller, which detects movement in three dimensions.
No longer did gamers have to sit on a couch mashing buttons with aching thumbs to control gameplay. Now we could stand in the middle of our living rooms flailing our arms ridiculously and waggling our Wii remotes to feel like we were actually in on the action.
Playing tennis, golf or baseball games was a lot of fun on the Wii as the motion controllers let you mimic the actions you'd make were you playing the real sport outside.
My family particularly enjoyed the bowling game on the Wii sports disc and I almost wept when I actually got my 70-year-old father to play and enjoy the thing.
However ,like a lot of first generation technologies, the Wii does have some drawbacks.
For one the Wii controllers' one to one tracking of movement is - to be generous - not always exactly accurate (and to be completely not generous, it sometimes feels about as responsive as trying to drive a truck with a steering wheel made of pudding).
Also, the graphical capabilities of the Wii are quite inferior to its two competitors.
But, at last count, the Wii is still outselling both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 worldwide because those motion controllers do make gaming more accessible and maybe sometimes even more fun for everyone.
This past weekend, Sony introduced its own motion controller system for the Playstation 3, appropriately called the 'Playstation Move.'
I wonder how much a marketing person got paid to come up with 'Move' as the name for a controller that relies on movement?
While the Wii Remote looks like a small white TV remote, the Playstation Move
controllers resemble a cross between a microphone and an electric ice cream cone.
But that little lighted ball on the end of the Move controller helps it track movements much more accurately (using the Playstation's Eye Camera) and in actual three dimensions, not just inferring movement like the Wii controller.
OK, it's still you standing in front of your TV flailing your arms ridiculously and waggling a glowing ice cream cone instead of a TV remote but it's much more accurate waggling, and the Playstation's HD graphics really do blow the lid off anything the Wii can churn out of its meager video processor.
At least that's the logic I plan to use while giddily trying to convince my wife of my need to purchase yet another piece of video gaming technology.
Let the eye rolling and sighing begin.
