John Rodman, group product manager for the Xbox platform and Xbox Live, pointed to a recent Microsoft survey that revealed that nearly 40 percent of the time that Xbox 360 users spent with their consoles was for activities other than gaming. Yet when it comes to gaming, Xbox 360 users are serious, Mr. Rodman says. Six out of 10 Xbox 360 users use Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming service.

“We don’t feel like the Wii customer and the Xbox customer are the same thing,” he said. “We think that as soon as the Wii customer turns 14 they want something else.”

Thanks a lot, Microsoft. So because I don’t have an XBox or XBox Elite, I’m a 13 year old?

Gulliver in AC: Wild World is a lot harder to talk to. You have to shoot his spaceship down from the sky with your slingshot when you see it going by the top screen. I decided to post my sister’s theory on Gulliver, which has worked for me this week.

1. During any weekday, talk to Booker. If he says something along the lines of “I’m so sorry! I’ll be more careful!” that means either Gulliver or Pete will be flying across the sky during the day.
2. Stand outside the town gate. When the time has a “7″ in the minute spot, Gulliver should fly by. If he does not, then Pete will fly by at 9 AM and 5 PM and you can shoot him down. According to my sister, all he does is talk about Phyllis which is lame because she a lot more rude than Pelly.
3. According to my sister, Gulliver tends to fly by every other week.

Isn’t that interesting? Of course, it would really only be interesting to people obsessed with Animal Crossing. Heh. No, seriously, I’m not crazy.

Link’s jouney onto the Wii (in all fairness, this game was released for the GameCube as well) was a fun one. I can say I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, perhaps for the nostalgia for Ocarina of Time. After all, it was my constant playing of that game that earned my suite at Copeley the moniker ‘Zelda’s Loony Bin.’

Spoilers are ahead, so don’t read this if you haven’t played/beaten the game yet.

Story
I won’t bore you with the details, but all Zelda games involve some sort of dimensional shift in which you have to conquer two worlds to truly defeat evil. In this case, it is the world of twilight, where Link plays as a mythical wolf. Nifty! Also, like all previous Legend of Zelda games, Link is greatly admired by almost all of the main female characters. What a stud!

Gameplay
Weapons: A few new weapons grace Link’s arsenal, among them water bombs, the gale boomerang, double clawshot, rotating hover platform, and one of my new favorites, the big metal ball & chain. There is something very satisfying about smashing a big metal ball into stuff. Seven hidden sword techniques look really neat on screen, and heighten’s Link’s badass swordsman image while keeping things fun. Certain techniques are very useful when fighting heavily armored or humungous foes.

Dungeons: A total of 9 dungeons makes this Zelda great. Each is full of unique puzzles that make use of all of Link’s items. The only annoying part is if a treasure chest containes rupees and your wallet is full, you’ll put them back in the treasure chest, for safekeeping I suppose. If you’re the type of person that likes to complete dungeons and get all chests, that can get kind of annoying.

Sidequests: There are several sidequests in this game, two are similar to the Gold Skulltula sidequest from Ocarina of Time: collect a lot of something, then get a cool item. Link can collect 24 golden bugs for the large wallet and giant wallet. He can also defeat 60 poes to get an infinite supply of rupees from Giovani. Of course, heart container pieces are scattered around Hyrule. In this game, it takes five heart pieces to complete a single container, so there are quite a few. The fortune teller in Castle helps you out by pointing towards containers you have not yet obtained when you ask for a ‘Love’ fortune.

Fishing (both bobber and lure-based) are in this game, but I didn’t really figure out the point (no items came from filling up my fish journal). I played the ‘RollGoal’ game found at the Fishing hole and completed all 8 levels, however all I got was the ‘frog lure’ which helps you catch bass and loach but is extremely difficult to use.

Wii Controls: A lot of reviews say that the control mechanism for the Wii felt ‘tacked on’ but I was totally amused by it. The only part that seemed somewhat out of place was when the numchuck was used for the spin attack. All other sword attacks were done using the Wii Remote while the numchuck was reserved for controlling movement and using the shield.

Aiming the Wii Remote for weapons like bow/arrow, boomerang, and clawshot was very intuitive but somewhat annoying during battles when you are moving both of your hands to fight, but still have to remain within the range of the sensor bar. Damage is taken while the message ‘Please aim the Wii Remote at the Screen’ flashes at you in big letters.

Graphics
Sadly, this is where the game lacks. It is clear from the graphics that this is a gamecube game that was ported over to the Wii. So, it can’t compare to the images produced by the PlayStation 3 or XBox 360. The twilight world is rendered in muted, fuzzy colors and textures which give it a neat effect, however overall the graphics are somewhat dated.

WiiKitty.com is a concept that began at the launch of the Wii™ with a ridiculous picture taken on Emily’s camera phone. What began as a message board phenomenon birthed the site that stands before you.

Of course, the only reason I mention this is I love kitties and I love my Wii. I tried to take Wii related pictures with both of my cats, but so far, only Xandy (Alexander) has made the cut to be a WiiKitty! Follow the links below to see Xandy! He managed to make it onto the site three times — wow!

• Xandy hunts the Wii Remote.
• Xandy’s sleepy.
• Numchuck Power

You can also take a look at my twin sister’s cats Tobie and Ian (Li’l Orange). All of the pictures I took can be found here. I only sent in what I thought were the best five.

I own a Wii!! Please leave me a message. You won’t be hearing from me in a while. Chris has one too but that’s her Christmas present. She already knows because she had to buy it for me (limit one per customer). That’s ok though. We can play mine now. :)

YAY!

Anyway, my only complaint about the game so far is the sound that plays when something is near. An exclamation point is displayed about your head, and at the same time a noise is heard. However, the action can’t actually be done (opening a chest, moving a switch) until you move a little bit closer to what caused the exclamation point to appear. Many times I’ve heard the noise and just pressed X by reflex, only to open the Battle Menu.

But, that’s a small gripe compared to a game that’s been great so far! The graphics and storyline can only be described as a Star Wars meets Lord of the Rings hybrid. There are fantastic airships that sort of look like sailing ships but fire laser cannons, etc. But on the ground, the forces fight mainly with armor and Middle Ages type weapons: swords, maces, bows, staves, etc. Personally, I’m ok with that. Leveling up a blaster feels different than leveling up a sword or bow.

Few more observerations: Square Enix seems to have changed the names of the spells slightly (yet again) and the enemies no longer drop gil (or gold/gp if you’re old school). They drop loot, which you can chose to sell. I haven’t yet encountered a use for most items so I have sold them. It would be a real pain in the ass if later the only way to upgrade to Ultima Weapon or something similar would be to have 99 of some item.

Anyway, the whole point of completing the journal was to see the extra little movie after the end credits — which really didn’t reveal too much except for “yes, there will be a Kingdom Hearts III.” Well, go figure. This bizarre mixture of Square-Enix characters from Final Fantasy and Disney characters from all over has proven to be pretty profitable.

I didn’t play the first Kingdom Hearts, so I’m not going to make comparisons. I really enjoyed the battle and system and menu layouts/status screen for this game. They were very clean and self explanatory. Although you can’t control the other characters in your party directly, they do a pretty good job of doing what you tell them via the menu options. You can have them attack the same enemy you are, concentrate on an enemy until it dies, attack the enemy you aren’t, and so forth. There aren’t a super large number of extra armor and accessories, you can keep a huge inventory, and the armor, etc doesn’t sell for a huge price so you don’t have to worry about selling something and wishing you didn’t later. Money (munny) isn’t a problem in this game either. By the end you’ll have tons of it.

The graphics are also very nice. Some of them are of the neat/detailed/shiny variety — others are clever bits of animation — think the curly smoke in the Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. I also thought Sora and the others had pretty good facial expressions.

Sora can also interact with Donald and Goofy in powerful combo attacks that can hit for a lot of damage. Sora himself can master four different forms, Valor, Wisdom, Master, and Final. These forms allow him to take advantage of certain stat boosts at the cost of losing one or more party members for the duration of the form. These forms make Sora uber-powerful — but only last a limited amount of time. Like everything else in the game, they can be leveled up.

The Gummi Ship is another large part of the game — large but inconsequential. I never completed that mini-game. The gummi ship is a ship that allows you to travel in between worlds — while you are travelling, you shoot things. One can upgrade ships, collect rare ship parts by defeating rare enemies, and custom build gummi ships to master other “gummi routes.” Well, let’s just say I wasn’t even going to go there. :) I was bad enough at Star Fox: Assault.

Of course, that being said it’s definitely a kids game. It isn’t gory, the story isn’t too dark, and everything works out in the end! Friendship rules! Some of the levels are downright easy, and a bit annoying. For instance — the “Little Mermaid” level, called Atlantis. BORING. I could have done without it. Also, the 100 Acre Woods was cute, but what was done? Nothing. Also, there were a few worlds that seemed a bit out of place, namely Space Paranoids. I haven’t seen the movie Tron, so I can’t say how accurately it was represented. But yeah, Hollow Bastion, a quaint town, actually has a super complicated computer underneath it that can make Heartless? Yeah, ok…

I enjoyed it though. Otherwise, why would I have played it so much? Now, I have to play Final Fantasy VII. Cloud has such a great outfit! Does anyone have a copy for PlayStation I can borrow?

Brain of: An architect.

Yesterday I finally managed to get an “A” in this game, which is really amazing.  The game is hard, but if you play it long enough, you can see improvement in your score.  Whether or not that improvement comes from the fact you’re actually training your brain or if you’re just getting used to the various mini-games has yet to be determined.

Unlike Brain Age, this game calculates your brain’s weight and then assigns you an occupation based on how you performed in five categories: Calculate, Identify, Memorize, Think, and Analyze.  There are a lot more minigames, but disappointingly, nothing to unlock.  You can choose to Practice in the different areas or take the test, which chooses one minigame from each of the beforementioned categories.  If you get really lucky, you won’t get a really annoying game.  Like, the coin-parison game.  That one is lame.

I recommend getting this game in conjunction with Brain Age, because they are both different and both fun.  Don’t favor getting one over the other.

Sadly for me, multiplayer is very frustrating because I am too competitive.  A nice touch is that they made the mutiplayer mode downloadable, so to play with others you do not need more than one game.  Finally, Nintendo has moved away from the “everyone must own a game and link cable” mentality.  Let us keep some of our money, please.

Well, it looks like the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be the launch title for the Nintendo Wii, at least according to the E3 Insider.

Wii will be released worldwide in Q4 2006 with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as the key launch title, but Nintendo is keeping precise dates and price under wraps. “Risk allows progress. We run toward risk. Change is good.” That was the bullish take-home from Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing, as the company unveiled more of its plans for the groundbreaking Wii console.

::sigh:: Thanks a lot, Nintendo. You should have never said you were going to release that game for the GameCube, you big tease.

Anyway, I guess that cements my decision to get a Wii, although I already knew in my heart I would get it anyways. However, Zelda has always been the motivating factor of past Nintendo console purchases. In 2001 I bought a N64 just to play Majora’s Mask and when the GameCube was released I bought it just for Wind Waker (although, Smash Brothers and Pikmin were really nifty). So, I guess the Wii is no exception. What it really comes down to is I heart Link. :)

I am amused by this Final Fantasy for one reason. You can ride a chocobo and it plays a really jazzed up version of the chocobo music from the SNES Final Fantasy while you are doing so. Yay. Those chocobos are so cute. I wish they had more of them than moogles. Those are not as cute.

Other than the Chocobos, I really hate blitzball and wish it wasn’t there to mock me with my lack of skillz. I think it’s lame that the first game they throw you into is almost impossible to win. What a downer. Also, the first part of the game is so incredibly slow. It’s like watching one long movie, with minimal killing. I thought I played these turn based RPGs for the killing. Oh, and to watch the cool animations when the aeons come out. But for a while there in the beginning, I wasn’t able to do anything.

Right now I just killed Seymour, the evil maester. Whoopie. I heard from Sean there is some Colosseum or something where you can level your characters up. Good, I can’t wait. I love to level up.