As someone whose idea of “gaming” remains stuck in 1987 — I thumb quarters into Ms. Pac-Man and Paperboy at dive bars; that’s about it — it was with reluctance that I attempted a game of Wii Tennis at my friend’s place a couple months ago. I had already crashed and burned (literally *pffftttt*) at some Pole Position-esque program where I couldn’t keep my car on the track. But Wii Tennis turned out to be different.
Hidden in my back pocket, I now know, is a fake tennis serve so sizzling you could make fajitas on top of it. Which is skillz enough for me. I’ve long thought about taking up tennis, but now it’s like, why spend money on rackets and time on lessons when it feels just as good — for both the ego and the physique — to beat someone at video-game tennis?
Bringing me to DJ Hero. While a couple of techy blogs have already dissed the game (like they have its Activision-product predecessor, Guitar Hero) for not teaching you how to fer-rills spin, isn’t that the point? I’m not mad at Donkey Kong for merely showing me how to pretend barrel-jump. Nor do any of us expect Sim City to ably prepare humans for nation-building.
I’m actually a bit jels that DJ Hero makes dropping a sample as easy as hitting a red button; to do so in my real-life, actual turntabling, it’s tricky tricky tricky, and so I usually don’t. (Also, I tend to spin at more chillaxed bars and lounges, not really uncha-uncha clubs.) My itch for the ones and twos is further scratched by the DJ Hero console’s effects dial; its description on Gizmodo as offering “a fairly zoomy spin”; and mostly, the dude in that Gizmodo demonstration video saying that “if you’ve earned enough points, you can go to euphoria.”
