Mii love Wii bowling

Wii bowling is a lot cheaper (and a lot more fun) than regular bowling. You don’t need to drive out anywhere and put down money for a lane and smelly bowling shoes. There are no grimy balls that hundreds of people before you have laid their sweaty hands on. All you have are a couple of controllers (which only a couple dozen people have handled) and a bit of open space.

Drew taught me how to Wii bowl several months ago when he was in need of someone to play against. That was back in the day when he actually had periods of dead time. What’s interesting is that while it’s very much a video game, Wii bowling is similar enough to the real thing that my form is practically the same as in real bowling.

With actual bowling, because the ball was heavy, I would lean down and release low. Despite the awkwardness of that move, more often than not I’d knock down a decent number of pins. I rarely got strikes but even so, I could consistently break 100. In Wii bowling, I adopt the same style though the controller is ridiculously light. The difference is that I get strikes more often. Whatever works, right?

Last week, it was fun to pick up the controller again after months of Wii-less activity. TKW saw me hovering around the Wii (which was strangely abandoned that night) so he sighed and told me he might as well play as he had nothing better to do that eve. I immediately brightened (that Harry Potter Wii game I was eying looked too complicated) and set him up with his own Mii so we could play properly. By the time he finished customizing his avatar, JJT had showed up out of no where with a bottle of booze in his hand. When we decided to bowl, JJT joined in too, which was just as well because I’d forgotten how to use the controller.

After learning the basics, TKW and I initially sucked. TKW kept changing his position and hook, while I sloooowly learned my style again. Towards the end, I’d remembered enough to throw some strikes and win the game. Being competitive, JJT demanded a rematch that I won again (mwahaha!) Into our 3rd round, CD (one of the pro-bowlers) showed up, talked smack to JJT, and entered the 4th round in result. CD won that one, as expected, but surprisingly his game went way down in succeeding rounds as he focused on coaching TKW from bowling an 87 to a high of a 200+ game.

The rest of the evening was entertaining. JJT showed me some yoga moves and gawked over the way my arm bent slightly outwards. Two of the ladies watched the action as they sipped some red beverages and later one of them joined in when TKW left. An engineer who was working late took a break to bike around the office but was stopped by a phone call midway through his ride. JJT made three attempts to attack CD from behind (twice CD had a glass in his hand) and was either out-wrestled or let go on a stalemate each time.

Much to my regret, I had no video capturing device with which to YouTube the last two incidents. Nothing like stark digital footage to blackmail– err, share with the participants.