In the face of many cases of people being injured and breaking things with the Wiimote, Nintendo has decided to recall the straps that secure it to your hands. If you own a Wii, you can go to Nintendo’s website and fill out a simple form to get your new strap. You will receive the new strap in the mail sometime after Dec. 21st. The new straps will have a 0.04 inch diameter, as opposed to the old 0.024 inch diameters. Nintendo estimates that they will be replacing more than 3.2 million straps total.

Although this blog is primarily for politically based articles, I feel the need to share this experience.

This passed weekend the Nintendo Fusion Tour stopped by the University of Pittsburgh. Via word of mouth I discovered that they had a few Wii’s available for people to play. The first thought that crossed my mind was, “How can I get away with stealing one of these things.” That thought quickly passed however, after I realized they had large bouncer esque bald men sitting at the entrance to the booth. Nintendo was prepared for me.

On a more serious note, I waited in line to play Excite Truck for about a half hour. The game was amazing and the ‘Wiimote‘ was implemented very well. For those of you who are not video game nerds the ‘Wiimote’ is the controller for Nintendo’s new video game console Wii. It is a motion-sensor controller and is held similar to a television remote control. It is also a lot smaller and more comfortable than I expected it to be. For the game Excite Truck, you hold the controller sideways (horizontally), in both hands and you turn it like a steering wheel to control the vehicle. The ‘2′ button on the controller is the acceleration and the up direction on the D-pad provides your truck with a boost. These simple controls provide for an extremely fun game at least from what I could tell with the one race I was allowed play. The controls were so intuitive that I was able to secure second place by the end of the game.

Here are a couple of pics of me playing with the Wii:

From what I could tell from the game I played, the Wii is going to be a HUGE success. If the ‘Wiimote’ is implemented this well in other games for the system, Nintendo may just have a winner on their hands. Let the console wars begin Nov. 19th.