Standing outside of Best Buy for eight hours, waiting for the new Nintendo Wii in the cold was probably the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

The temperature at night sunk to about 30 degrees, and at five in the morning, with three hours left to go, it was almost unbearable. The only thought that kept the 24 of us standing in line was having a Wii in our hands by 9 a.m.

Everyone in the line but two people were keeping their systems, unlike those who waited for the Playstation 3; there were rumors floating around that only two people kept theirs, and judging by how many were for sale on eBay, that was probably right.

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The Wii isn’t hard to set up, and after a few setting changes, you’re ready to go. There had been speculation that the Wii was not compatible with high-definition televisions, but it is. It also works just fine on small tubes, too.

The system comes standard with a Wii Sports game, which is basically just to make you laugh while you realize how ridiculous you look swinging a controller around playing tennis or golf. A sensor bar that sits above or below your TV measures the controller’s motions. When you move the controller in any direction, the sensor picks it up.

The Wii Sports game demonstrates the mediocre graphics of the Wii. The PS3 does have the Wii beat when it comes to graphics, but it makes up for it with faster load times and, well, Zelda. For some people, the graphics are the key. The Wii’s graphics, after all, are better than the GameCube’s graphics. But for those who don’t really care one way or the other, the Wii will do just fine.

Games like Red Steel allow you to tilt your gun from side to side and shoot like a gangster, or the motion of your hand registers how you swing your bat in Wii Sports. The controllers are pretty hard to get used to for a generation of gamers who are used to pushing buttons and only moving the controller when either really, really getting into the game, or just angry at the thing. But it is pretty cool to be racing and moving the remote like it’s a steering wheel. That, and it is pretty humorous and just plain fun. I don’t care what you Playstation guys say. It’s different, and that’s what makes it better.

But the reason I bought the Wii, and most of the other people in line with me, was for the new “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” because let’s face it, Nintendo didn’t do such a good job with a game lineup. Battle on horseback? Of course. Walk on walls with magnetic boots? You can do that, too. Turn into a wolf and howl at the moon? There’s not much you don’t do in this new Zelda. It’s rumored that it takes 45 minutes to ride your horse from one end of Hyrule to the other, which is either cool or annoying, depending on what kind of gaming experience you like.

If you like the interactive features of the Wii, that probably sounds amazing to you. Marketing Zelda for the Wii was probably the best bet Nintendo had at competing with Sony, and, well, it worked. Plus, for a console only costing $250 – the Playstation 3 costs more than twice that – it’s really not a huge investment.

Super Mario Galaxy doesn’t come out until April, and “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption” comes out in June. Maybe they’re waiting for everyone to get their hands on a Wii and then buy the games. Either way, those two titles look like they’re going to be pretty cool. The “Metal Slug Anthology,” coming out in early December of this year, is something to get your hands on, as well, though it doesn’t use the Wii’s features in all their awesomeness.

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Other features for the Wii include the ability to connect to the Internet, a photo channel, a news channel, a shopping channel and the ability to make your own Mii. A Mii is a little character you can use to play in games like Wii Sports. If you’re Internet enabled, you and your friends’ Miis can parade and do weird things. It’s a little childish, but just remember, you were 8 years old once, probably playing some pretty lame games on whatever system you had.

And if you ever feel the need to play them again, the Wii comes with the ability to download some of those past Nintendo games (Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and the TurboGrafx-16) for a cost of either game points (you buy a card) or money (download them on your computer and transfer them via USB). Classic Nintendo games are about $5, or 500 points. You can buy 2,000 points cards for $20. Some titles include “Toejam and Earl” for Sega and “The Legend of Zelda” for NES. Hopefully, they get more titles soon.

The Wii is smaller than the PS3 but doesn’t come with the features to play DVDs and all that jazz. I’m guessing, though, that most of us already have a DVD player, and it’s really not missing out on much. You can also play Nintendo GameCube games with the Wii console, and you can hook up the GameCube controllers in the back (which you can use to play most of the old games you download.)

To all the new, proud Wii owners out there: You made a good choice.