It was a few weeks ago, around the start of the school holidays. Unaware of the next-gen craziness that was happening, one of my sisters suddenly asked me to set up my old Wii console in the house. My family never really played much of it and they're not really big on video games, so it came to me as a bit of a surprise. We only played Wii Sports and such, and I played a few more games on it (the Trauma Center games are so good, by the way) before losing any desire to turn it on ever again. I didn't really want to set it up, because it needed some work. The A/V cable was missing, the power adapter had the wrong plug, the remote batteries were leaking, et cetera. It ended up taking almost a fortnight before I got everything set up correctly in my spare time, right on time for a family friend's visit... and it was surprisingly worth the effort.

The first game we played was Just Dance 2 It's quite an old game that many people (i.e. people who go on video game forums like us) may dismiss it easily, but this game is super fun. It's incredibly shallow and our Wii only outputs in freaking 480i(the first thing my sister said when we booted it up was "have Wii games always looked this blurry?"), but none of that mattered. The game just goes straight to dancing, and the dancing is fun. The song selection is really old at this point, but it's varied and crazy enough to almost be timeless. Dancing any Bollywood duet to anysong would've been fun, but the song, silly choreography and colorful direction the game gives are perfectly stupid. Even though the game is barely interactive, playing it was the most active I've been, and the most fun I've had in a long time. We only stopped when we were tired as all hell, after more than 3 hours of playing.

Later on that week, we all played my old Wii library little-by-little. My sister seemed to enjoy House of the Dead: Overkill a lot (this really surprised me), and we played a few episodes of You Don't Know Jack, which is still great fun. And then we played Super Mario Galaxy. I didn't really "get" the game when I played it before (as I usually do with Mario games, unfortunately), but boy am I glad to give it another chance. I've thought that the multiplayer concept (the so-called "Co-Star Mode") is terrible, but it actually gives a good excuse to have one spectator "playing" the game with the main player, interacting and giving suggestions more actively. I'm a terrible Mario player, so it actually helped me too. This game just looks and sounds and plays fantastic, and even with so many "game of the generation" recommendations it still exceeded my expectations.. We only played a couple of levels, but I'm definitely going back into it when I have the time.

Playing the Wii again -- after years since the last time I even touched it -- feels refreshing. It showed me again how awesome video games can be, even when they might not be at their best. As the industry is moving into a new generation, everyone wants the future to be perfect. It's nice to be reminded that, although that is ideal, it doesn't need to be. Video games are still around, and they're still fun. And they still will be too!

Thanks for reading this nonsense I wanted to share. I hope you all enjoy your holidays too.

The Wii is a fantastic console with a fantastic library of diverse games. There a still a number of games I want to pick up for it, and I still have it set up in the bedroom.

Isn't the music in Galaxy fantastic? IMO the best music in a Mario game. I absolutely love that game with all my heart.

Are you into RPGs at all? If so I suggest picking up copies of The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles. Both are outstanding masterpieces. Pandora's Tower is also good but it's a little more divisive. It requires a lot of backtracking to the hub area and repetition but it's such a moody and addicting game.

Also, Metroid Prime 3! Or even the Trilogy if you can find it.

@xyzygy: I do have Xenoblade Chronicles, but sadly I haven't had the time to actually play it. I might check it out after I'm done with Galaxy. I did play Metroid Prime 3 on this Wii, but I can't find my copy of it... I tried to look for it on Google, but it seems like only the novelization is being sold around here. Weird.

Looking back at the Wii library, there's actually a lot of pretty good exclusives I want to play. I regret having abandoned it all this time =\

@audiobusting: You're able to look back at the Wii library and say, "Wow! The Wii had some pretty cool exclusives!" But back in the day, owners didn't have that luxury. If you were a "hardcore gamer," months could go by without a quality title and the poor thing would be gathering dust during that timespan. Iirc, my Wii experience was:

Wii Sports -> Twilight Princess (The game that ruined the series for me) -> SSBBrawl

After a couple months of that, I tapped out and gave away my Wii to someone with a lot more patience than me. Anyway, I'm glad that the Wii set up a nice bonding experience with you and your fam. At least something good came out of it, right?

I just bought a Wii again somewhat recently which was (rightfully so) baffling to several Gamestop employees. I got rid of my first Wii back in '09 and I knew I wouldn't miss it at all... until a new Zelda came out. So I basically bought another just to play Skyward Sword. Now that I've finished that I doubt I'll ever mess with it again.

@equal_opportunity_destroyer497: I actually unearthed my Wii once when Skyward Sword came out. I didn't like it, so I didn't finish the game and buried the Wii again. Kind of a bummer that I don't like any of the Wii Zelda's, even though Wind Waker is one of my most favorite games ever.