In the meantime, here’s a (future) highlight video from EA’s NCAA Football 2010:

Wii Music is one of those games that people are either going to love or hate.  I’ve only played it just a little bit today since I’ve managed to mangle up my shoulder, but I think I will really enjoy it once I am healed up.

The game is a great introduction to music for children because it focuses on keeping rhythm and musical experimentation.  And I think when I get some friends over it will be a fun party game.

When starting out you have a very limited selection of songs (think “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”) but after watching my kids play through, now I understand why they start you out so simply.

The basic controls of the game are simple.  You just mimic playing the musical instrument your Mii is holding.  Watch this sample video:

I’m looking forward to playing a little bit by myself to try to improve (practice, man, practice!) but the real fun of the game comes when everyone performs together as a group.  After your performance, you have the opportunity to save your collaboration as a video which can be watched and even overdubbed at a later time.  Apparently, creating new videos will open up more songs and more video locations, but I haven’t played enough to see that happen.

Anyway, I think this will be a fun game overall.  But what I’m really looking forward to is having a few friends over, and having us all work on a grand performance.

So I’ve contacted Microsoft support and they (hopefully) will repair it.  I can’t make it "red light on demand" yet.  But pretty much, if I play for just a few minutes it stops working.

This seems to be happing pretty frequently lately, as I’ve gotten a few messages from friends saying "Sorry, I’ll be missing for a few weeks while my system is repaired."  So it looks like all the original systems must have been affected, it’s just taking its good old time on some boxes.

The boy cracks me up, because he just doesn’t know what he can’t do.  He’s only six.  He can’t beat Starfox 64.  Not at six.

Shoot, it took me and Tina weeks to beat the original Starfox on the SNES back in the early 90′s.

What I find so funny is that he does this with all his games, and it started back in the fall of 2005 with “War of the Monsters” (WotM) for the PS2.  We were in the midst of moving and staying with my mom for a few weeks back in ’05 and we kept the Playstation hooked up to a small TV in the bedroom for entertainment.  A lot of the toys were packed away, so the kids spent an unusual amount of time in front of the TV.

Anyway, at the time, Ryan was 3 years old, getting ready to turn 4.  We dug out an older PS2 demo disc with WotM on it, and that quickly became his favorite game.  He had beaten that demo (even at age 3) in just a week.  So, for his fourth birthday we bought him the full game.

Within two weeks, he had beaten the full game.

So, as I say, he just doesn’t know what he can’t do.

Here is a couple of Starfox videos I found on YouTube that show the endings of the two games… The original Starfox, followed by Starfox 64.

And, yes, I am proud.

He made out pretty well for his birthday. His best present was a Nintendo Wii. That’s been a big hit. We got Wii Sports, Wii Play, Carnival Games, and MySims.

So far, the most fun game is the one bundled with the console, Wii Sports. The tennis and bowling have been especially fun, and so far we’ve been pretty faithful about doing our Wii Fitness every day. (I just got a 23 today, thank you very much!) The boxing is still a little difficult, but I’m getting the hang of the golf. I’ve done reasonably well with the baseball, but not perfect.

I played just about every game in Carnival Games the other night, and it was fairly fun. There’s not a ton of replay value in playing the actual carnival games over and over again but they are pretty fun the first time through. Wii Play is a little difficult for younger kids since you have to be pretty exact with the controller. MySims resembles the popular Sims games but plays at a level appropriate for kids. I played it a little earlier today and enjoyed how simple it is to build things. I like the Sims games in general and wanted to give this one a chance. I’ll report more later.

Ryan had a “Superman” themed birthday party complete with SuperCake. He had plenty of friends and family attend his party.

The Mountaineers finally got back on the winning track on Saturday by beating Syracuse 55-14. Sometimes it just depends on which team shows up, I guess.

It’s been back to work and back to school now that the holidays are over.  I always wish I had taken more time off during the holidays and spent more time playing games and playing with the kids’ new toys.  This year Santa Claus brought the kids a multi-game table:

That’s been the most popular toy this season.  And there was also Thrillville and Nicktoons Unite for the PS2.  They’ve been fun to play.  In fact, I bought a PS2 memory card so that I can save my own games to it, and not have the kids erase it, or overwrite it or something.

The kids have been upstairs playing Playstation 2, mainly the Nicktoons UNITE! game.