I was predisposed to like the Wii. I don't mean I was standing in line on release day. I was predisposed to like the Wii because it was the third activity my brother and I got into when I came back to America, after being separated for a year. The first was waiting in line in the lost-luggage office at the airport, filling out Baggage Irregularity Reports for my missing possessions. The second was getting violently ill from my long-awaited American food. Actually, I was one who got violently ill, he just picked up the check.

So, anyway, I was predisposed to like the Wii.

I think I would have liked anything in English at this point, but a few rounds of Wii bowling later and a few near-misses with lamps, the WiiMote and over-enthusiastic gamers, I was ignoring my jetlag to play just one more round. "Just one more turn" is a siren song of sleeplessness to me. Anything turn-based, like Civ, is fatal to me. I'll play just one more turn until it's morning. Or until I conquer the world!

I don't want you to think that the Wii replaced all family bonding. Thanks to GoogleTalk, Skype and blogging, we didn't have a year's worth to catch up on. I did ask my brother about his impending wedding (we had time to chat while my boyfriend was choosing features for his Mii) and he showed me pictures (on the Wii's photo editor, of course) of the lovely periwinkle dress I'd be wearing. And my brother did ask me about my year in China - that would be all those stories that began "So I got into this taxi in Beijing, and the driver... Strike! Oh yeah! Who's the best at virtual bowling?"

It's not quite how I imagined coming home, but, of course in my imagination the airline didn't lose everything I own, either.

WiiSports lives up to its claims, and lures in non-gamers (and non-sports fans) faster than you can say "Hey, what're those nerds doing?" My little sister, a hippie and deadhead who actually has patchouli-scented shampoo (trust me, I used it while mine was off in lost-luggage land), came in to see what the fuss was about and stayed to get pwned. With deceptively simple multiplayer games, like Monkeyball's Simon Says or Jumprope, the Wii begs to become a high-tech drinking game. Which sounds like another great night at my brother's house...

Meg needs to find an American job before Blizzard releases Burning Crusade.

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