Tag Archive for 'wii'

Nintendo Wii: first impressions

NOTE: the following is translated and adapted from a post of mine on the Nintendo DS - Portugal forum.

I have it at home, since yesterday.

I’ve been playing with it for several hours, now. Unfortunately, my brother (who is the one who bought it for me; I wasn’t in the country on release day) was only able to buy the basic package: the console itself, Wii Sports, one wiimote and one nunchuk.

I haven’t been able to explore Wii Sports thoroughly, as my TV is in my bedroom, and the bed is in the way. :| I’m going to move the TV to the living room today or tomorrow, hopefully. I’ve won a couple of tennis games (which is much more fun than you’d imagine), but the “real thing” will be when I can play with more room, and with more people (which will require more wiimotes, and they’re completely sold out right now).

Besides disk-based games, the Wii supports several channels, and can go online. Connecting it to the Internet was extremely easy; there were no compatibility problems with my Linksys WRK54G router, which I already use for the Nintendo DS. The wireless range seems to be better than that of the DS, and it now supports WPA encryption (which I’m not using, though, because of the DS - only WEP there). As soon as you go online, the console updates its firmware, which takes a little while, but no effort at all.

News and weather channels are available on the channel selection screen, but they’re not working yet; according to Wikipedia, they’ll be up and running either this month, or in January. Same thing about the Opera browser, whose release date is apparently December 23.

One of the most interesting channels is, of course, the Virtual Console. Apparently, new games will be released every friday. I’ve already bought a few: Donkey Kong (NES) due to nostalgia (even though it’s a relatively poor version, quite inferior to the original arcade), F-Zero (SNES), Super Mario 64 (N64), Donkey Kong Country (SNES), Sonic the Hedgehog (Mega Drive), Super Star Soldier (PC Engine) and Dungeon Explorer (PC Engine). A special note about Mario 64: I never had an N64, and, though I had already played the game using emulators, and later on the DS, I had never played it using an analog controller (in this case, a GameCube one) until yesterday. And the game really needs one; it’s like I was playing a different game! Moves and tricks that I had to struggle with on the DS come up absolutely naturally here. The N64 version doesn’t include the DS extras (3 new characters, more stars, better graphics), but this game really requires an analog stick…

A couple of PC Engine games support 5 players at a time. Dungeon Explorer is a more complex Gauntlet clone, and Bomberman 93 probably needs no introduction. Since the Wii can only support 4 wiimotes or classic controllers at a time, and up to 4 GameCube controllers, you need to use a combination of both. I have 4 GC controllers, so I will, hopefully, be able to play 5-player Dungeon Explorer after the next lunch here. :)

One warning: some (not all) NES, SNES and Mega Drive games (not PC Engine, oddly enough) weren’t, originally, properly converted from NTSC (60 Hz) to PAL (50 Hz); they had black borders on the screen, and were about 13% slower than the original versions. Since they’re perfectly emulated here, and the European Wii uses emulated PAL versions, the problem persists. If you’ve played the original versions and were OK with them, you won’t see a difference here, but it’s a pity that Nintendo didn’t do the extra work of fixing this problem… after all, the Wii supports 60 Hz PAL, unlike the original consoles.

And that’s it for now. When they’re available again, I hope to buy Wii Play (which includes an extra wiimote), a second nunchuk, and a couple of classic controllers. As for games, I want Zelda, Red Steel, DBZ: Tenkaichi 2 and Call of Duty 3. It’s likely that I’ll only be able to get most of those next year, though…

The Nintendo Wii

Unlike Ricardo, I am — hopefully — getting a Wii this Christmas. In a few hours, in fact. :)

I don’t have a pre-reservation, and I won’t be here this weekend; I’m going to Barcelona tomorrow morning — and, by “morning”, I mean before sunrise. I could get one there, of course, but the Spaniards have a nasty habit of translating absolutely everything, so I prefer to get it here. Therefore, my brother will try to buy one at midnight, or tomorrow morning. Which means that, if he succeeds, I won’t get to play it until Sunday or Monday…

Why do I want to get one? Well, I’d get it for Wii Sports alone. Zelda is a bonus. :) I’m also interested in the Virtual Console; even though emulators and roms are easy to get, having perfect versions (some even slightly enhanced, like the N64 games), playable with gamepads on a TV, is something that you simply can’t get — easily, at least — using emulators on a PC.

Unlike Ricardo, I have exactly zero interest in the PS3; if I was going to buy something like that, I’d go for the Xbox360, which has Dead Rising, the Jeff Minter lightsynth, and which Minter is developing small games for. Besides, Sony is one of the few companies in the world that make Microsoft look ethical

As for Wii games, there are many more interesting ones than it seems. As I said, Wii Sports is a game I still expect to play 2 years from now. Zelda is Zelda. Then there’s Super Monkey Ball, Call of Duty 3, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Trauma Center, Dragon Ball Z: Tenkaichi 2, and, coming sometime in the future, Wario Ware, Super Mario Galaxy, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (zombies!), Metroid Prime 3, Sadness, the inevitable Mario Kart, and many more. There will be new games released for the Virtual Console, too; it won’t just be used for past games. It’s a great time to be a gamer. :)




Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal