EDIT: It’s now Friday the 15th and Nintendo have made their European announcement. Although I was a little off with some predictions, the rest are unfortunately spot-on. A really late release of December 8th has me worried, but we’ll have to wait and see. Roll on the midnight launches!

With all the commotion this week about Nintendo’s Wii launch announcements, I’ve been pretty excited, not least about one very special game. Soon speculation will be over and we’ll know when we can get our hands on it, and what it’ll cost. And there’s the problem.

The Japanese will have to pay the equivalent of £113, a tremendously low price for a home console. The American equivalent is rumoured to be around £133, another extremely cheap option considering XBox 360 launched here for around £209 for the “base” system. I won’t even go into PlayStation 3′s predicted £300+ price.

Wait a second. I said this would be a problem, didn’t I? Yep, and it will be, because there’s no way we’ll get the console at these prices. If it came in much under £180 I’d be surprised.

On top of that, you’ll be wanting at least another controller so you can have as much fun as these crazy ladies. They’re retailing at $40 in America, which is just over £20. That’ll be another £40 please, man on the street.

I suppose you’d also like a game to play on it. Despite the fact Wii games are said to be much cheaper to develop than on rival consoles, Nintendo presumably want to cover the losses they’ll make on the hardware by selling software at £40-£50 a time. If Microsoft can do it, why not Nintendo? It’s only fair.

Watching today’s Wii footage, I honestly believed – and still do – that Wii will change the way we play games. One of its assets is that “pick up and play” ethos that drove the DS to great heights. The thing is, and this is me being a bit cynical and trepidacious about the whole thing, will it change games for the better? Fair enough, I couldn’t swing a golf club on the Dreamcast, but I can’t play Shenmue on the Wii. I do worry that longer, deeper games simply won’t have a home there, especially with the work required for third party developers to transfer high-profile projects.

The main problem with the price point is that it has to be balanced. There are those that will see the concept and want in – families and the elderly, if Nintendo are to be believed – but there will also be those that want to take their experience deeper rather than wider.

I would love nothing more than to play four-player Wario Ware: Smooth Moves with my best friends, or even my parents, but do I fancy shelling out the £100+ to buy the controllers? Not particularly, no.

That’s enough cynicism, though. I should take joy in the little things, like creating a cartoon avatar – called a “Mii”, which I love – that levels up the better you get at games. I hereby copyright the phrase “It’s a Mii!”
I love the fact it has a built-in weather channel.

I’m excited that I’ll be able to play Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing in new ways.

It can send photos and text messages to mobile phones, as well as communicate with other Wii owners, both within the home and outside it via WiiConnect24. Sounds like a personal, proper message board.

Yet the thing I’m most excited about is buried somewhere in the Wii launch footage Nintendo previewed today. A glimpse of the most wonderful WarioWare minigame imaginable; a true classic gaming moment updated using Wii technology.

Using the remote to push fingers into a 3D nose gets me quivering with excitement.

I am listening to Innervisions by Stevie Wonder

Live in a town filled with talking animals. Pick fruit and sell it to a raccoon. Fish, catch bugs, plant and water flowers. Buy furniture. Send letters. Visit other players’ towns. Watch fireworks. Go shopping. Design clothes. Listen to a guitar-playing dog. Watch colours change as the seasons go by.

Animal Crossing is a game that survives on length rather than depth. You play it over a period of time, rather like a game of skill, although there’s next-to no skill involved. You improve by mastering emotions – sadness! Surprise! – and paying off your mortgage. I think it’s fair to say Animal Crossing perhaps isn’t the most exciting game in the world.

Playing it with friends is even better, and what really lifts this above the Gamecube version. Although the trading sadly doesn’t extend to animals, you can swap patterns, villagers, phrases, constellations, furniture… quite a lot, really.

Animal Crossing is almost impossible to review because it either appeals to you or it doesn’t. I’ve tried at great length to talk two of my best friends into appreciating it, but it’s not a game that can be taught; only learnt.

In short: A parallel, beautiful world of wonder and charm.

Phrases and arguments like this really irritate me:

It has been well established that playing violent video games aggression in players.

(Nicholas L. Carnagey, “In Video Games, Not All Mayhem Is Created Equal“)

I’m sure you know the argument by now; playing violent games increases aggression in players, and there’s a theory that increased exposure to these games can permanently program someone to behave more aggressively. That’s certainly what this “well-established” – though typically anonymous – data proves, isn’t it? Well, no, not really.

Having played – and lost! – more than my fair share of games, I’ll testify that I experience a rise in aggression when playing certain kinds of games; mostly Pro Evolution actually, when my LAZY DONKEY PLAYERS won’t do what they’re told. Aggression probably does rise whilst playing games, but then it goes away.

The study itself spectacularly fails to take into account the way game players’ brains are already programmed. The study gave three different versions of a racing game – one where all violence was punished, one where it was rewarded, and a non-violent one. To nobody’s surprise, the version that rewarded punishment led to “increased hostile emotion, aggressive thinking and aggressive behaviour” in the players. No details of what this “aggressive behaviour” entailed are given, other than gamers following the words “K I” with “L L” or “S S  O F F, P U N K”.*

The study

All this study has proven is that gamers respond to rewards, which isn’t any surprise to anyone. If we get more points for driving around a track backwards, we’ll drive around a track backwards. If it’s hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat, we’ll do that. Hardly a breakthrough, even Pavlov got that far.

The worst part about all this is that I haven’t been this angry in a very long time, and I’m not even playing a game! I’d like to think this could be the final word on the topic, but I live on Planet Earth, so it’s not going to be. However, here goes anyway:

People who have trouble controlling anger in any situation will have trouble controlling anger arising from playing games. Those of us who are well-adjusted, with clearly-set moral boundaries and ethical guides from our parents and friends will be just fine.

* – super-points for anyone who can tell me what game this is from!

Absolutely one of the best-written games EVER. It’s a cross between a courtroom drama and a police investigation game, with you piecing together evidence and then cross-examining witnesses until you find out what really happened. It starts out easy but gets hard very quickly, but the feeling of intelligence when you get something right is hard to beat.

Only the fifth and final chapter truly uses the DS’s capabilities, as the first four are actually from an existing GameBoy Advance game, but they’re all so intricate and involving it’s hard to care if you just use the stylus to tap on questions or evidence.

It’s such a hard game to sell because there’s not much else like it. Someone sold it to me as like being able to be a character in a really great book, which is a good way of looking at it because the characters and dialogue are amazing.

In short: Clever cases, funny dialogue, great experience.