The Wii Forecast Channel has to be the coolest freakin’ weather application ever. It’s rather pointless for actually getting a weather forecast since the readings are seemingly always a few hours behind, but grabbing the world in the palm of your hand and giving it a massive spin just feels good. Laughing at anyone who doesn’t live in the constant perfect weather that is San Francisco is also pretty satisfying.
But then it just goes to a whole new dimension when you discover it supports 4 players. Simultaneously. Even Wario Ware doesn’t have that. This got the creative juices flowing for me and I thought of some (untested) ideas for theoretical multiplayer games, they’re fun-ish:
- Spin the Globe - Pick a starting point and try to spin the globe around as many times as you can with one push. Whoever gets it around the most times wins.
- High/Low - Another non-simultaneous variant. Each player has ten seconds to identify what is currently the hottest (or coldest) city in the world. Can be pretty easy if you know what to look for.
- King of the Continent - Similar to conventional King of the Hill rules, weather forecast style. One player designates a continent (if you want more challenge go for a smaller continent like Australia) and their job is to keep the continent on the screen for as long as they can while the others try to pull the screen away from it.
- World Pong - Can be played with two players or two teams of two. Both sides are designated a hemisphere. Whoever starts centers the view on their hemisphere, and then gives the globe a hard push towards the other team. Then the receiving team has to push back before it passes over their continent. Push back and forth, whoever lets it pass over their hemisphere loses. The western hemisphere is totally handicapped though because Europe + Asia is way wider than North America.
I wonder what the reasoning behind this feature was… it was probably something like “Hmmm, why not?”. Totally unnecessary but I find it to be really funny. And, as if this wasn’t enough, the final version of the web browser is out and that supports 4 player multi as well! What’s next, multiplayer email?