Nintendo Wii Fanboy

We mentioned this yesterday, and now look! There's a helpful scan to illustrate our point. While some female-oriented publications are all about Nintendo's new console, it looks like the good folks at Cosmopolitan aren't quite convinced.

Cosmo's take on the Wii craze? Guys assume girls might want one, because the guy really loves the Wii. That's some deep psychologizin' they've got going on there. And in referring to the Wii as the "wrong gift," Cosmo is insinuating that the modern woman just isn't interested. Are they wrong? With all the stories and videos of nongamers embracing the hands-on experience that Wii provides, we're not sure that Cosmo's on the right side of the fence with this one. Can't the modern woman want to decode weird male behavior, agonize over not-so-harmless habits,* and then play a game of tennis after work?

The Wii is perfectly poised to help gamers break down some of these walls that we've created to keep the interests of men and women separate. The DS broke some of that ground, but the Wii brings the fun and ease of gaming into the open, making it a social experience that anyone can get into, even if you have to kick off your stylish shoes first.

*Actual stories in the same issue.

While these aren't the best quality we've ever seen for scanned pages, it's still exciting to see the Wii getting mainstream press coverage, particularly in a nontraditional market. Magazines targeted at women and teen girls are often down on video games. Even the Wii gets this treatment, alas, in the March issue of Cosmopolitan, wherein it is referred to as an example of a poorly-chosen gift. Of course, we tend to think that anyone who can find a Wii must be a gift-giving superhero, but we are admittedly biased. No matter. We just find it refreshing that Teen Vogue is taking a pro-Wii stance and indicating that it's the bee's knees for girls.

And we definitely wanted to point out the shirt the girl on the left is wearing. It reads "Oui Wii" and we here at the 'Fanboy feel a burning need to get our hands on one of those right now. We're probably not going to read Teen Vogue to get one, though. We'll do a lot of things for Wii gear, but that's a line we're so not crossing.

Go Nintendo has larger (blurry) scans if you'd like to see the rest.

Here's one we haven't discussed yet -- how often do you play? Are you truly hardcore, using gaming as a catch-all for all your hobbies and spare time, or do you work to fit it in amidst a busy schedule? How much time a person has to dedicate to gaming often influences the types of games they play. Do you find yourself playing minigames more than anything else, or do you have the time to dedicate to mastering every challenge you can find in Twilight Princess? Tell us all about it.

[We just love the clock.]

Supposedly, this N Gamer magazine had much more info than we previously reported on. A large supply of information from the magazine apart from what we've reported has apparently been confirmed to be true over at Go Nintendo. This information deals with the Wiimote, sensor bar, and Will Wright's Spore respectively.

The Wiimote is to take 2 AA batteries and turn them into 60 hours of gameplay. Should the player be using the sensor bar, however, then the time is cut in half to 30 hours. Either way, that's incredible. Also, the 6kb of internal memory confirmed to be included in the Wiimote is going to be used to "personalize your remote," which we assume is code for "store profile settings."

As for the sensor bar, the magazine states that the previous version that was seen at E3 has been made smaller. The magazine compares the size to that of a "couple of pencils glued together."

The magazine also confirms that Will Wright's foray into playing God through his game Spore is going to be possible on the Wii. Apparently, the Wii version will interact with the DS version by allowing the player to transmit data from one to the other seamlessly. This will allow players to "deform species on the fly."

They also speak some on the use of SD cards, reiterating that they will be used to house Virtual Console titles. The problem is that you may not play them on another Wii. They refer to this as "Digital Rights Management."