::A Geek in Korea::

My first WiiWare purchase was a bit of a surprise. I ended up picking up Dr. Mario Rx last night. My wife and I had been sitting around trying to think of something to do. She said she’s willing to watch me play Wii Sports, but she didn’t want to play a “sports game”. She’s like the most fun hating person EVER, because I don’t watch sports yet am greatly amused by Wii Sports.

Anyway, the ONE game she does like if she’d HAVE to pick something is Puzzle Bobble. Seeing as that has yet to drop on WiiWare (It’ll happen eventually), I decided to look into whatever was friendly enough to play cooperatively or competitively with handicapping to even out our different ability levels. It also had to be simple so that I didn’t have to spend any time explaining rules.

The first mode we played was “Virus Buster”, which is a Wii specific mode where you grab the falling pills by pointing the Wii remote. The pills can be dragged, flipped, and positioned with the remote, but once they fall, they can’t be raised. This means that someone can grab the pill, move it, and if they make a mistake, good luck fixing it. It’s probably a good idea we stopped playing this mode. I could see friendships lost and marriages irrepairably damaged because of this mode.

“Why! NO! NOT THERE! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT!” The best part of this mode is that four people can control the pills, and they drop multiple pills at the same time. Four people whipping around multiple pills would be chaotic fun.

If you want a puzzle game with handicapping features that can balance out a match, Dr. Mario Rx is PERFECT. The difficulty of the game is determined by pill speed and virus concentration. By manipulating both of those, we found a level where we were both very close to victory at any time. I will admit to being a very bad at Dr. Mario, but it was fun to play.

I won’t go near the online battle mode for fear of being crushed my Japanese housewives, but finding a game my wife and I can both play is very rare. I’m going to casually encourage her and hope to build on my success. If my wife likes, there has to be something really fun about it. Lucky for her, we have a spare Game Boy SP that has a Dr. Mario and Tetris Attack GBA cart for her to practice with on the subway if she gets bored.

Having the chance to download new games at any time with a Wifi connection when the mood strikes us is really nice. I don’t care if the game is casual or hardcore as long as it’s fun. The game I am most looking forward to, “World of Goo” has yet to be released though. Maybe that game will spur more interfamily gaming.