Nintendo Wii Fanboy

If you guessed "those vile, reprehensible videogames," then you're absolutely correct. The Daily Mail has published a report on Jake Roberts, a 13-year-old British youth who took his own life in February following an argument over a confiscated Wii game. A tragic tale, to be sure, but there's no doubt that the Mail's angle on the story leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth.

In truth, this is hardly surprising. The Daily Mail has always stooped low to make its point, and the newspaper can barely wait to get into the shameful, dirty business of pointing fingers and furthering its own anti-gaming agenda through the story of a teen ending his own life. Tasteful, right? Right from the first line and throughout most of the article, the Mail insists on linking Jake's death with the dispute over his Wii, wilfully ignoring the possibility that other factors may have influenced Jake's sad decision over a longer period of time.

Or, to put it another way, it's another proud day for the mainstream press.

[Via Destructoid]

We know, you were disappointed. Last night, as you happily refreshed Wii Fanboy every nine seconds or so looking for this week's Japanese hardware sales, the vim slowly faded from your eyes as the hours ticked into oblivion. We would never willingly deprive our readers so; we were unavoidably delayed! You see ....

Thousands of years ago, before the dawn of man as we knew him ... there were the moon men, reigning over the Earth. But this was not the Earth you knew! It was covered in jelly and high-density motor oil, making the planet very slippery. The moon men blamed the corporations, and there was a war and many were killed. The battle raged for millennia until 8000 A.D., when the moon men realized they were not actually from the moon, but from rural Pennsylvania. They then built a monument to the moon but then the Quakers stole it and filled it with oatmeal, and no one knew what flavor. Californians were highly displeased and turned all the Quakers invisible, which is why you never see them anymore. And that ... is where babies come from.

- DS Lite: 123,140 4,321 (3.39%)
- Wii: 69,748 11,104 (18.93%)
- PSP: 26,358 261 (1.00%)
- PS2: 11,814 503 (4.45%)
- PS3: 8,998 629 (6.53%)
- Xbox 360: 2,219 175 (8.56%)
- Game Boy Micro: 310 97 (23.83%)
- GBA SP: 247 41 (14.24%)
- Gamecube: 226 30 (11.72%)
- DS Phat: 71 10 (12.35%)
- GBA: 16 1 (5.88%)

[Source: Media Create]

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.