Nintendo Wii: Kikizo's Definitive Review
Two months on, Kikizo brings together Nintendo's number one fans to deliver this comprehensive, unbiased review of Wii - and we're not shy about saying what we mean.
By Adam Doree
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Kikizo's Carl Johnson in Los Angeles is, perhaps officially, the biggest Nintendo fan alive, having been credited on a landmark BBC Nintendo documentary as "Miyamoto's Number One Fan" in 2004. In London, meanwhile, Marwan Elgamal is Carl's equivalent - the closest you get to being officially a number one fan - you may have seen Marwan in any number of hundreds of newspaper, online or TV reports as being the first gamer in the UK to buy a Wii at the official launch event after waiting in line for about seven years - he's the one with the crazy mad hair. He's not a regular contributor but we couldn't resist tracking him down to give Carl a run for his fan ego.
Marwan Elgamal, Carl Johnson, Daniella Lucas and Sharan Dev Jain
"We got together a concise panel of Nintendo observers at Kikizo who really haven't missed a single beat of the Wii story."
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Let's quickly meet our staff deciding Wii's phase-one fate, shall we? Since they'll be getting the hate mail for any (and all) views they express on behalf of the site, instead of me.
"I lined up fourteen hours in advance to snag a Wii," claims Carl "CJ" Johnson, who incidentally is NOT a made-up resident of San Andreas. "A pre-order was out of the question; everyone knows the most rewarding part of a console launch is the risky struggle to obtain something in short supply that everyone wants."
"I dare you to find someone who has literally stayed behind after a Nintendo meeting to collect Miyamoto's trash and call it his own"
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And what's Marwan's story? "My first experience with the Wii console was during the first Wii tour at the London Good Food show - since Cake [Nintendo's UK's PR agency] wouldn't let me into the Wii House, this was my only opportunity to try out the Wii before the console launched on UK shores.
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Unlike certain previous hardware launches in London, which Kikizo knows for a fact to have had cynically 'staged' customers paid by the manufacturer to be first in line, our own ties with Marwan that allowed us to stalk him down for this feature also confirm that he was most certainly a genuine fan. Just to clear that up.
"I had to be the first to get my hands on one, and ended up camping outside London's HMV store for the official Nintendo launch party"
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"After seeing the controller unveiled at TGS 2005, everyone wanted to know more", says Sharan. "Determined to see for myself, I checked it out for Kikizo on the post-E3 Europe press tour, seeing as I skipped E3 itself. I'm more of a games fan in general, but I loved the GameCube for its variety of quirky titles."
I (Adam) will also include a few comments here and there, just because I can.
