They Know Mii
11.30.06 / 01:00AM / Joe
 In the spirit of cool random game giveaways (like the Bully dodge ball), if you buy Elebits through EB/GameStop, you get an awesome Elebits stuffed animal. There's not even any hesitation that I'm going after that. I must come up regularly in EB's promotion meetings. "What can we do to get Joe super-excited about a game he already intends to buy?"
Just to make it a little less awesome, the free plushie is randomly boxed out of two (and maybe THREE) choices. So odds are I will get the ugly blue one.
Elebits also seems to be the first Wii game to use online play in some fashion... although it's just to exchange custom levels and in-game photos. No Elebits deathmatch for you.
My cousin - who, as you'll find out, is named Colin - did get his Wii. So we have been sending off quick Wii-mails to each other and zipping Miis back and forth. We're almost on a Mii-a-Day program.
He also sent me this photo via Wii:
In case you didn't know, the Wii's Photo Channel comes with a reasonable approximation of a Windows Paint program, so you can scribble on photos in your best Hot Or Not style.
What I like about this is, not only is the Wii his first video game console, but also his first dopey Waiting In Line For The Video Game Everybody Wants experience! I waited in line both to not get a Wii and then again to get one, two weeks later, so I'm excited that Colin got to be right there in the thick of it. His family managed to make the second shipment at Best Buy. Colin was #21 out of 52. (As the line grew and confused passers-buy asked what was going on, wags in the queue started announcing it was an American Idol audition.) This is something Colin will remember forever, just as I'll always remember coming home one night to find Dad had bought a Magnavox Odyssey 2. He was playing Cosmic Conflict, I believe.
I'll end on this photo I snapped during our Thanksgiving drive home, using the ol' point the camera blindly towards the backseat trick. I call it "Pictochat at 70mph."
Has anybody ever set up a Pictochat network between two or more moving vehicles? You got yourself an instant YouTube hit if you caught that on video. | 
