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Looking for something different to do with friends? Something cheap and fun? Or simply got some time to kill? Then the new Wii game room in downtown may be your answer! If it isn’t, then I guess that boring, old, coffee shop you usually go to will have to do.

By  Chris Lashwood

Looking for something different to do with friends? Something cheap and fun? Or simply got some time to kill? Then the new Wii game room in downtown may be your answer! If it isn’t, then I guess that boring, old, coffee shop you usually go to will have to do.

What am I talking about? Good question avid reader. Last month a new Wii game room opened in the center of downtown, on the third floor above Burger King. It’s a kind of coffee shop but with Wii rooms. The Nintendo Wii is the world’s leading video game console at the moment and most of its popularity is based on its wireless controllers that detect movement in 3D. Basically it’s like playing a video game in 3D; you play standing up and when you move your controller in your hand your character on screen moves his hand in the same direction with the same force. Cool stuff.

To picture the Wii rooms, think singing room, but more modern, cleaner, and brighter, and with a console in each room. I had a chance to speak to the owner Yang Su-min about what she thought of her new game rooms. “We want to be quite different from a PC room. PC rooms are usually dirty, dark places that smell of smoke. I’m aiming to give customers the chance to play the Wii in a nice, bright environment together with a selection of drinks, just like a coffee shop,” she explained.

I’d personally never played the Wii before and thought the idea of playing video games in 3D sounded like fun. I therefore needed someone to play against. I decided my victim, I mean opponent, would be my lovely wife. She doesn’t play video games at all, so I thought I was safe in the knowledge I’d always win no matter how bad I was. I could even tell her we were going to a coffee shop of sorts.

The Wii game room offers an hour’s session on one of the consoles for the price of your drink. So playing on the Wii is in fact free. Actually that’s not quite true: every player has to buy a drink to get the free hour. If you want to play longer then an extra 30 minutes is 3,000 won and an extra hour is 5,000 won. There are nine rooms that can hold up to four players each and two larger rooms that can hold about seven players, although only up to four players can play at any one time. The drinks menu offers coffees, teas and soft drinks and prices range from 3,500 won to 4,500 won. Refills are just 1,500 won more.

So one snowy Wednesday evening I decided to have a Wii session with my video game less-abled wife. After arriving at the Wii room the first choice we needed to make was what game to play. There was quite a large selection and I was told they have all Wii games that Nintendo has currently converted into Korean. This then started to make me sweat a little: I’m English and so my Korean wife would therefore have the language advantage of understanding how to actually play the game. However we were quickly back to even-stevens when Yang Su-min told us Mario Kart, Wii Sports, and Mario and Sonic at the Beijing/Vancouver Olympics all had an easy-to-understand visual guide of how to play on the screen before the game actually begins. She added that if we needed any help playing any of the games then the staff could easily show us.

We decided to try Wii Sports because we could then play a number of sports, including tennis which I secretly thought I’d be good at due to my height advantage. For drinks, my wife ordered an Americano or something like that, whilst I strategically chose cherryade because, as you’ve probably already figured out, it’s much better for quenching thirst than a silly Americano. Advantage me when we’re in the heat of battle later.

So we played Wii tennis. It was easy to get the hang of, and everything was fine. I was happily winning, but then my wife suggested we change to play baseball. Now I like baseball – I’ve been to watch KIA Tigers a few times and I even know most of the rules. But it isn’t cricket, and nobody plays it in England. My wife hammered me in baseball terms. She must have played it before or something because every ball she hit she got a homerun (hit for six) and every ball pitched (bowled) to me was a strike out (out). It was a disaster! I sought refuge in my useless cherryade, until we quickly changed to play some Mario Kart so I could get some respite from the humiliation.

The hour we planned to spend there was quickly over and we used an additional 30 minutes, paying the extra 3,000 won when we’d finished. I found that if you’re losing then an hour isn’t enough. On the other hand if you’re winning then an hour is just the right amount of time. Not that I’m competitive or anything.

Owner Yang Su-min told me she’d opened the rooms because she found herself downtown with time on her hands but with not much to do. “Many people come downtown and there are places to eat, drink or see a movie. But that’s it. The Wii game room gives you something else to do, another choice when you’re waiting for a movie to begin or just out to spend some time with friends.” When she opened she thought it would attract mostly guys or couples on dates, but it’s actually been a huge success with groups of girls and women too. “One game that has been very popular with female customers is Biohazard, a kind of zombie game. Men on the other hand have been choosing more of the sporty games to play.”

After we left we both agreed it was pretty easy to work out how to play the games quickly, more fun than sitting in a regular run-of-the-mill coffee shop and also a good way to relieve stress (or possibly get more stress if you’re not very good at it). So if you’re looking for something different to do downtown then why not give the Wii game room a go. It’s simply a Wii bit of heaven.

By Chris Lashwood

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