With the likes of Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis at Giant Bomb decrying Mega Man 9 as way hard, I wondered if maybe I had made a bad decision in buying fully three copies of this downloadable gem.^[1]

However, a Gamasutra article about the game gave me hope that I could get along with the challenge.  Now, at my in-laws’ house, I have determined experimentally that I am, in fact, still a hard enough dude to enjoy some Mega Man, by knocking out Galaxy Man, Jewel Man, and Plug Man already, and itching for more (once Dad’s done watching the Rose Bowl).

(However, I’m not too hard a dude to appreciate this little guide.)

1. One on XBLA, one on my Wii, and one along with a copy of Mega Man 2 on my youngest brother’s Wii.  This last one was so that I could play in our PA hotel room, but also so that he’ll have a chance to hone his skills.

If you have a Wii (and a wife?) you might consider giving this a try.

Meanwhile, I’m reading the manual for Monster Hunter Freedom 2 on the PSP, and wondering where a handheld game gets off being so complicated.

Now all I need is PilotWings 64, and I’m set.

The Wii has an application (okay, okay, a “Channel”) that lets you join an online poll that covers your region or even the globe. Basically, it’s a two-response poll like you might see on a blog or forum post. EXCITING, I’M SURE. Okay, actually it is pretty neat. After the cut: a little bit about why it’s cool, a video about it by some dude on YouTube, and the math to figure out what percentage of Wii users are female.

How is this cool? K and I like it, because we can each vote with our Mii and it tracks our stats in animated ways. So, after the poll closes, we go back and see how the whole country/world voted. EVEN BETTER: it lets you vote one way, but predict what the majority of people will choose, even if you think you’re in the minority. This is tracked, as well. Honestly, for K and I, this is even cooler than answering the questions, as it’s kind of a game. It also, I imagine, makes people vote more honestly.

What does this look like? I will just ask YouTube to show you, and hope there’s nothing offensive or stupid in this video that I haven’t even bothered to preview the whole way:

What’s the gender breakdown? Well, Nintendo does not tell us directly, but I was curious. After all, the Wii is supposed to be the console that breaks into non-traditional gaming environments^[1]. If Moms and Dads who have never played a game can get into the Wii and play games, then it’s overcoming the supposed gamer age-skew. If the Wii can get older players interested, can it also get female players interested? (Answer: probably.)At any rate, Everybody Votes doesn’t give you age information, but it does show you the overall results and the results by gender for each question. That gives us three equations, and three variables.

{Total % “A”} * {Total # Miis} = {Male % “A”} * {Male # Miis} + {Female % “A”} * {Female # Miis}
{Total % “B”} * {Total # Miis} = {Male % “B”} * {Male # Miis} + {Female % “B”} * {Female # Miis}
{Total # Miis} = {Male # Miis} + {Female # Miis}

This article stub is so old that I don’t even remember the question that prompted it. This is a pretty early questionl. All I had is this Maple-formatted formula (in which I factored out the total number of Miis, because it was irrelevant):

solve( {43.1*m + 52.4*f = 45.6, 54.4 = 56.9*m + 47.6*f} , {f, m} );
{f = .2688172043, m = .7311827957}

There you have it! 73.1% of respondents were male, and 26.9% were female. This proves… absolutely nothing!

After all, the gender of the respondent is actually the gender of the Mii, so a male player can use a female Mii at the cost of nothing but the ridicule of friends and family alike. A player can use more than one Mii, as well. And, of course, a player who responds to Everybody Votes isn’t necessarily playing WarioWare: Smooth Moves as well. We could have a games-players’-moms skew in the data.

However, I still think it’s a neat observation.

1. I’m not even going to bother putting in a reference here. Find an article about the Wii, and YOU WILL SEE THIS ASSERTION. Also, it happens to be true. ;)

K has just noticed something: in the Wii Forecast Channel, the weather icons for Japanese cities are… cuter than the icons for every other city on the planet.  When it’s cloudy in Osaka, I half-expect to see Lakitu pop up.

Oh, yeah: In other news, K just got us a Wii for our anniversary a few weeks ago!