Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Nintendo's latest console has a short, monosyllabic, easy-to-pronounce name. Perhaps you've heard it: Wii. It was designed to be universal, cute, and easy to remember, and it fulfills all those requirements nicely. However, its very brevity curses the Wii name to an eternity of use in puns. It is infinitely easier to find a single syllable in a word with which "Wii" can be substituted than to find a word that sounds even kind of like "Playstation 3" "Atari 2600" or "FM Towns Marty."

Naturally, the Internet went crazy for Wii puns; it's quite easy to make a pun when you don't have to look anyone in the eye. We've collected some of our favorite Wii puns from across the Internet, categorized loosely by source. Well, maybe "favorite" isn't the right word. This list is by no means comprehensive, mostly because there are about a million instances of "Wii" used for "we", and also because it's really hard to search for these things when all you have to go on is that they involve "Wii" somewhere. With one exception, we've omitted the "Wii/we" puns, because, well, you get it. It sounds like "Wii." Okay, make that two exceptions: we can't let "Wii have caught you cheating on your husband" go by unnoticed.

If you're one of the punsters responsible for a highlighted pun, pat yourself on the back! We aren't here to mock your wordplay, but rather to celebrate one of the most visible phenomena associated with the blossoming Wii fandom. So Wiilax!

Fan Cwiiations
The fan community has taken to celebrating the Wii in ways other than inventing puns about it, although those methods often involve creating Wii puns as an ancillary bonus. Wiiminder is a web-based tabbed browsing utility for the Internet Channel. Several people hit on the catchy "WiiJ" pun for any kind of music manipulation done with a Wiimote. The Short Cuts film contest winner named his Wii-themed entry Good vs. Wiivil, which sounds less like a Wii pun and more like something that we spray cotton crops for. For Andrew Lin, however, the name inspired him to purchase a domain name and set up a blog. We feel like we should also mention the Amy Winehouse parody "Wiihab", which seems unnecessary because Amy Winehouse is pretty much a parody of herself these days.

WiioGAF
The NeoGAF message board is a treasure trove of Wii wordplay, with some of the most creative, offensive uses of the Wii pun found anywhere. For example, how would you title a thread about your desire for a Wii Tetris? Well, "viralmarketeer" settled on "Why no Tet[Wii]s?" Seriously. He did admit, in the thread, that "the title was a bit of a stretch." Other notable puns: "Buyer's Wiimorse", "Wiigions", and "Wii-vailable". All of these puns were met with open derision. But it's NeoGAF, so, really, all posts are met with open derision.

"Houston, Wii Have a Problem"
One of the most common Wii puns, using the "Wii/we" substitution, plays on the famous quote from the Apollo 13 mission, as made famous by the movie Beat Street Apollo 13. Most stories bearing this title will relate to the danger of flying Wiimotes (about which a website was created, called ... "Wii Have a Problem"), but people find all kinds of reasons to use it.

In a Mii-ror, darkly
Not even Wii Fanboy itself is immune to Wii punnery. We've gone to the well a few times to deliver some emergency lulz. Mike Sylvester presented a special installment of his excellent Revolutionary column under the title "Progress Wiiport." We suggested "a Wii bit of a stretch" before strenuous gaming sessions. You can see the conflict at work in the title of "Wii-chargable batt....no. No, never mind." I have personally been responsible for "He's a Demon on Wii" (about Speed Racer) and "Don't You Forget About Wii". And not to be left out, our parent blog Joystiq recently posted about Okam-Wii.

The Wiinner
The best Wii pun we've seen in the year of the Wii's life, and the one we'll use to cap off this survey, is used as the title of a video about the eventual calming of the frantic movement associated with early Wii Sports gaming: Rich and Mark's Ennuii. We find that terribly clever, although maybe that's because it isn't beaten into the ground. In the coming year, may all your Wii puns be this inventive! Or nonexistent!