Hands down Nintendo's Wii is the best console if you have young children in your family as we do.  They have a large variety of games that are complicated and intricate enough to hold an adult's attention (to the point of addiction :) ) yet have the largest selection of child friendly games I have seen yet.  The Wii offers not only regular video gamming but also a variety of games that are stand up and get involved games.  Games like Wii Fit, Mario Kart with a steering wheel (my husband loves this one), or the family favorite the Wii Guitar Hero World Tour Kit with drums.  Don't be fooled this is not the Rock Band version, this drum set has snares as well as the foot pedal.

The Guitar Hero Series has taken the world by storm since it first came out, and even though it has been on the market for years it is still incredibly hard to find it in stock.  The World Tour bundle version is even harder to find because it has master recordings from the 1960’s to contemporary music, originals by the original artists.  We looked everywhere (Target/Wal-Mart/GameStop/EB Games) trying to find the full kit before we finally gave up and went with EBay.  Surprisingly, there we were able to get it with free delivery which means it was delivered to our door cheaper than we could buy it in the store if we had been able to find it.

As with every game out there, there are cheats, but personally we prefer to beat them ourselves.  Yes, we die a lot!  Epically when our 2 year old decides she wants to rock out like she is playing a Fender guitar, or belt out lyrics when she can’t even say please without breaking it up J  But we have fun!  The family makes a band, we actually have quite a few bands.  There is one with the Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and the nuclear family.  The wireless controls make it easy to transport so we take it with us to all family gatherings.

The single player feature allows the guys to show off their personal talents, and the multiplayer lets us strike a chord like we are a real rock band.  We split up and one takes the bass guitar, one takes the lead, while 2 others take the drums and vocals.  Somehow when you throw that strap over your shoulder you can “become” someone else…  Someone on stage.

This is the key to Wii.  You don’t just sit and play most of their games.  Yes, you can buy the games where you just use the remote and sit, but most of them are made for you to get up and interact with the screen in a way that no other console allows.  They started with the athletic games, bowling, running, trampoline, etc.  This progressed with Rock Band, and then Fit where you can do yoga and workouts.  Where World Tour addressed many of the issues we noticed with the original Rock Band.

The guitar is different in that you can just press the overdrive button, instead of having to tilt the guitar.  You can tilt the guitar if you want or you can hit the button.  Another change is that power is used in bursts not all at once like previously.  So you can “share” star power, and use it in groups instead of all at once.  The drums of course added the snares which makes the playing experience more life like.  There are 80+ downloadable songs online plus the 86 that come with the game.

While it seems that everyone is thrilled with the Wii there is one group that would disagree, Washington Internship Institute is still ticked with the fact that Wii used their initials.  And I am sure that Knight Rider isn’t too thrilled that the majority of the group who remembers Kitt from the old days would rather play a video game than just sit and watch TV anymore.