Nintendo Wii

...disk. When I bought my Nintendo Wii I got the console and a full free game. What sounds like the better deal to you? Not since the Sega Master System II have I seen a better console/free included game combination that wasn\'t some special offer or launch deal. (By that I mean no matter when you buy the product you\'ll get this game/console combo)

I\'ve been keeping a watchful eye on these next generation consoles for a long time now; ...
...reasons:

* Nintendo doesn\'t charge to use it\'s internet services, (unlike XBOX Live for instance)
* The Wii went against the going trend and uses a \'Wii-mote\' and Nunchuk control system, rather than a standard controller. (I\'ll go through this in more detail below)
* The Wii plays host to some very imaginative games and even when some games exist on other systems, the use of the innovative control system adds a whole ... more

When I bought my original PlayStation I got the console and a demo disk. When I bought my Nintendo Wii I got the console and a full free game. What sounds like the better deal to you? Not since the Sega Master System II have I seen a better console/free included game combination that wasn\'t some special offer or launch deal. (By that I mean no matter when you buy the product you\'ll get this game/console combo)

I\'ve been keeping a watchful eye on these next generation consoles for a long time now; first out the stable gate was the XBOX 360 from Microsoft and then came along the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. I won\'t lie when I say that the XBOX 360 has an awful lot going for it but I was drawn to the Wii for a number of reasons:

• Nintendo doesn\'t charge to use it\'s internet services, (unlike XBOX Live for instance)
• The Wii went against the going trend and uses a \'Wii-mote\' and Nunchuk control system, rather than a standard controller. (I\'ll go through this in more detail below)
• The Wii plays host to some very imaginative games and even when some games exist on other systems, the use of the innovative control system adds a whole new realm of interaction.
• Virtual Console

Let\'s go into the details a little farther now shall we?

First Impressions
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Quite honestly I was gob smacked when I opened my boxed Wii for the first time, (I say first time.. no I wasnt silly enough to re-box it and open it again for kicks but it was something I considered...). Nintendo definitely put a nod in Apple\'s direction in terms of the unboxing of the console - You have two trays which hold different parts and each item is seperately wrapped which allows you to truely focus upon each component in absolute awe. When I unwrapped the Wii console itself I was amazed at the sheer style and size of the unit. I had always known the Wii was small and compact but seeing it was truely believing it. Three DVD\'s stacked together produced more thickness than the console and because of this, it fits snugly down the side of my widescreen television.

Setting up the Nintendo Wii
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Setting up new hardware is something I thoroughly enjoy being a self confessed geek and IT Administrator by profession. Although with someone of my experience with computers would put some bias on the ease of setup, I had my fiancee with me and she understood everything without one hitch right away. I was hooking up my Wii to a SCART socket and did so as the first step. I then took the Sensor Bar (which is what picks up on the movement of your controllers) and placed that on top of my TV. (According to the manual you can place this bar beneath your TV should it be more suitable there; you just need to make sure you calibrate the Wii to recognise the rough positioning of the bar. This ensures maximum accurate sensitivity.)

Thirdly, I inserted the 2xAA batteries which came in the box to my Wii-mote (the remote controlled shaped controller) and was ready to roll. I switched my TV on, pressed the power button on the front of my Wii and waited. After a very short pause a safety warning from my Wii appeared and I was asked to press the A button to continue. It was at this point I noticed I had to synchronize my controller before it would work. (I didn\'t read every guide supplied from start to finish! hehe) You carry this out by doing two things simultaneously. First, you remove the battery cover of the Wii-mote and press the recessed sync button hidden inside. With only a short delay, you need to press the same shaped button located behind the SD Card slot cover on the front of your Wii. Seconds later everything ready to rock and roll.

Here you can name your Wii, calibrate the location of the sensor bar and then you enter the Channel Menu! This is the main Wii menu.

The Wii Channels
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Whenever you switch your Nintendo Wii on from now on, you\'ll come to the Wii Channel Menu. Everything you do from launching a game, to browsing the web and checking your \"Wii-mail\" (as I dub it) is carried out from here. Luckily, the Wii Channel Menu is an absolute doddle to use. You use your wireless Wii-mote to point an arrow around your screen and use the large A button to confirm selections. Imagine left clicking a button with your mouse on your computer - it\'s the same sort of thing.

Each Wii comes with a set of default Channels which you cannot remove; although why you\'d want to is anyones guess. These are as follows:

Game Channel - This is where you launch your games from. The Wii can accept both Wii and GameCube disks.

Mii Channel - It is from within the Mii Channel that you can create small animated characters of yourself or all the potential Wii players in the home. Or, by using the simple to handle design interface, you can create animated Mii-versions of celebrities or well known characters. Once you add friends to your Wii\' s address book (and as long as sharing settings are setup) your friends Mii\'s will slowly begin to appear on your Mii Channel. These will turn up whilst you play many games which adds a hint of personalisation to the whole experience.

Wii Shop Channel - The Wii Shop lets you download brand new Wii Channels (as they become available) and old classic games from the Virtual Console. I shall save the Virtual Console for below but I will say that all purchasing for the Wii Shop is done by using a currency called Wii Points. Wii Points are bought using either a credit card over your Wii or by purchasing cards in many retailers and electronic stores.

Internet Channel - The Internet Channel does NOT come as standard on Wii consoles, but can be downloaded through the Wii Shop Channel. Unfortunately since the 1st July 2007 all those who have not yet got this channel must now buy it. (It was free up until the date above.) The Internet Channel is a fully featured web browser designed for the Wii by Opera, (who also make a good desktop browser for Windows on your PC.) You can navigate using your Wii-mote and I frequently use the integrated flash player to watch YouTube right on my widescreen TV.

Weather Channel - Does exactly what it says on the tin but with a cool feature in the guise of a 3D spinning globe which you can control and manipulate. Spin the globe, zoom in and out and view the weater all over the world.

News Channel - Arguably one of the more useful channels on the Wii, the News Channel displays news articles from both your home country and from all over the world. You get the same Globe feature which is present in the Weather Channel for looking around for news but an extra feature is what I cal the Headline view. With this enabled, your TV will fill up with a globe rotating on its own and headlines of news coming up on your screen in large text. It only takes a click on the Wii-mote to pause the Headline view and to view the article in full text.

Everyone Votes Channel - This is another channel which doesn\'t come on the Wii as standard but (as of writing) is a free down loadable channel from the Wii Shop Channel. The Everyone Votes channel is very much a one trick pony but fun to poke around in every now and then. You pick some active polls and move your Mii\'s around to select your choices. You can also try and predict what you reckon the final outcome will be and if you like you can come back later and see if you were right.

Photo Channel - This is another fairly useful channel but with a couple of annoying limitations which may end up frustrating you. Using the SD Card slot in your Wii you can insert camera cards from your Digital Camera and view the images on your TV. Use the supplied (basic) editor to add effects, draw on lines and images and then you can export your edited creations to your Wii Message Board. Sadly, although you CAN email another friends Wii with your edited picture, you CANNOT email the picture to an email address or to your own computer.

Wii Message Board
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The Wii comes with a clever message system called the Wii Message Board and how this works is very easy and straightforward. By clicking the small icon in the lower bottom right of the Wii Channel Menu, the Channels vanish from sight and in their place appear three fairly chunky icons; Memo, Email and Address Book

Memo - Quite simply a way to store short memos on the board for you to read later or so members of your family can know about something or be reminded of a date/time

Email - Send yourself email, another Wii some \"Wii-mail\" or send some friends a message or three. To to this however you must have their credentials in your Address Book (See below).

Address Book - To send anything to anyone, (including your own computer or another Wii in your home,) you\'ll need to add that person\'s Wii or email address to your Address Book. Once this is done (and it\'s a very simple process to add people) you can message away until your hearts content.

The Blue Glow
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A quick point to mention and that\'s the blue glowing light around the disk slot loading drive. You can use this to signify a number of events but mostly its used to alert you to new content on your Message Board or perhaps a System Update. You can configure the initial brightness of the glow... or even turn it off should you desire.

WiiConnect24 / Internet / Wireless Connectivity
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Becuase of how this section\'s been written, I\'ve combined all three sub-titles into one section, (quite simply as I\'ll cover all these areas right here.)

WiiConnect24 is the official name given to the set of technologies which allow online gaming and some various services provided by Nintendo (and third parties) to communicate and function. A great benefit of WiiConnect24 is that it\'s free and there are no subscription fees to pay for. Your Wii simply connects to your existing Wireless Network using its integrated Wireless card and utilizes the current internet connection in your home. Should you NOT have a Wireless network then don\'t panic. You can purchase additional kit from Nintendo to have it share the internet connection of your desktop or laptop or if you have a Ethernet (cabled) network, then there is an adapter you can buy to get it all hooked up.

Setting up a wireless connection is an absolute cinch on the Wii should your network be discoverable but mine is not. I\'m an absolute nut on security and as a result I hide my wireless network from being discovered through simple scanning. I heard from a friend prior to buying a Wii that you MUST make your network discoverable in order to get it connected but this simply isn\'t true. As long as you have a little technical knowledge, you can skip the automatic scan and manually enter ALL your network information. This is what I did and it worked a treat.

My Wii asked to check for a System Update when I first connected and it promptly did so and downloaded an update. The update process was seem less and very easy to do. So easy in fact you needn\'t do anything.

Wii-Mote / Nunchuk / Control System
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This was pretty much THE puling factor for me when deciding to purchase a Nintendo Wii. Nearly every games console to date has used the conventional two hands controller style interface which has worked well across most genres - however one genre I always thought didn\'t work so well was with games like Call of Duty, Halo etc. You know the ones I mean - the ones with guns that require pin point accuracy in a split second. I could never quite get to grips with moving a crosshair with a PS2 or XBOX Analogue stick. Hence I always bought my first person shooter games for the PC (where I could use the mouse)

The Wii-mote has changed all of that for me as you quite simply use IT as the gun. It comes almost instantly natural to you and before you know it you\'ll be holding the Wii-mote up in front of you shooting opponents and swiping to reload or use alternate weapons. (Of course it will vary on game to game but Resident Evil 4 works in this way). You move your character using the Nunchuk and the Wii-mote as your controller. What an excellent way to move around in-game!

The Wii-mote also works in variously different ways. In Wii Sports Bowling for example, you swing the Wii-mote back and forward just like you were bowling for real. In Wii Sports Golf you hold the Wii-mote like golf club and swing, as I said, just like you would in real life. One of the most fun games in Wii Sports must be Boxing. This is where you use the Nunchuk in one hand your Wii-mote in the other to \'box\' your opponent. You can physically move around, duck and dive and your on screen Mii will move with you, ducking punches and slamming right hooks that you delivery with your dual controller setup. It\'s fantastic, amazing and very engrossing fun that everyone should enjoy.

GameCube / Backwards Compatibility
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Prior to the Nintendo Wii, I had a GameCube with three GameCube controllers. Unfortunately as of late my GameCube ended up in my office and not hooked up to the TV and although I longed to play some of my old library now and again, it didn\'t feel like it warranted the trouble of finding all the cables and hooking it back up again. Becuase the Wii can play GameCube games, my love was restored and playing GameCube games on my next gen console is a great move. You can plug your existing GameCube controllers in to the top of the Wii and theres even two memory card slots too.

Virtual Console
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Another pulling factor for me was quite simply this. For a few measly pound coins, I could be downloading some rather excellent classics and have pretty much instant access to them immediately. The library consists of well known games across the NES, SNES, Mega Drive and couple of other systems too. Not every game is there at the moment but the collection is expanding nearly every day. Prices vary according to system, (for example a NES game can cost around £4 where an N64 game can be £7). I\'ve downloaded two Virtual Console games - Streets of Rage 2 from the Mega Drive and Super Mario 64 from the N64 and both play brilliantly well on the Wii.

Every Virtual Console title you download gets its own Channel on the Wii Channel Menu which makes access all the easier. One important thing to note however is how to play these games. While some of them allow you to use the Wii-mote on its side as a conventional style \"classic controller\", most require you to purchase the Wii Classic Controller. Thing is though, should you own a GameCube controller then plug this in as the Virtual Console supports these too. Playing Super Mario 64 on the extremely comfortable GameCube controller is an absolute joy!

Backing Up / Saving / Transferring Content
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You\'ll be pleased and sad to hear this first bit regarding downloaded games and content from the Shop. EVERYTHING you buy is tied down to the Wii, NOT the user or account holder. Should you wish to trade in your Wii or get rid of it, you\'ll need to wipe the content too as it\'s still yours. The good news though is should you reset your Wii\'s memory (therefore wiping all saved and downloaded content) you can get it recovered.

The Virtual Console games for example can be copied to SD Cards for safe keeping. Should your consoles memory be wiped for whatever reason, then it only takes a quick insert of the SD Card to copy back everything you put on in the first place.

Saved data from games is also done in this way; although your Wii-Mote can save upto ten Mii characters for taking to your friends houses to play head to head with them. Do you remember the old ways of transporting your memory card to your mates\' just to play as you? Well download your Mii character(s) to your Wii-mote and simply take the Wii-mote with you. Games that support the Mii\'s will give you the option to load in a Mii from your Wii-mote.

The Bad, Negative Side to the Wii
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As with everything, you come across negatives and I\'ll be listing a few of the ones I\'ve either come across, experienced first hand or know exist. This list comes in no particular order, except on how I remember them:

The Wii-mote EATS batteries
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You can get about 12 hours of continuous gaming from 2xAA batteries. Sadly if you\'re a hard core gamer this won\'t last long. As I write this though you can buy third party accessories that allow you to put rechargable batteries in the Wii-motes - some even come with a docking station to charge when not in use.

Graphics are not everything, but they do help
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With the Wii being a next gen console, you\'d expect the graphics to be a little more up to date then they already are. Both the XBOX 360 and the PlayStation 3 have jaw dropping visuals whereas the Wii is more of an improvement over the old GameCube and PlayStation 2 graphics. Of course the visuals are not always everything but still... it does add to the game.

The Wii cannot play DVD\'s
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This is a VERY minor gripe as you did buy the Wii to play GAMES on - Still, the fact it can handle DVD size disks means it would have been a lovely feature should it have been able to play DVD\'s. Never mind eh :)

You cannot connect your WIi to a laptop or computer to stream media
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Yes I know it\'s NOT a Media Center but with all that great networking connectivity and the ability to handle photos and music (yes it will play MP3\'s if they are present on your SD Card when placed inside the console), you\'d think a little connection with your hardware would have been nice to see. (Of course this WOULD increase the product price I suppose)

Sensor Bar cable is VERY flimsy
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Be careful with the cable which connects the Sensor Bar to your Wii. Although in the majority of cases it will be out of sight (and most likely reach), to me one moderate yank would snap this cable and leave your Wii unplayable.

ADDICTIVE
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The Wii is very addictive for hard core, casual and new gamers alike. My fiancee reckoned she\'d never play the Wii...ever! I catch her on it most nights, playing some bowling or Tennis, surfing the web through the Internet Channel and just this night she had bought an old classic GameCube game for a few quid to play.

MY FINAL THOUGHTS
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The Nintendo Wii is quite simply out of this world. The control system works so well that it really must be tried to be believed. Words don\'t cut how good it is. The systems interface - the channels, the wireless control with the Wii-mote etc - is slick and easy to use. The selection of Wii games is fairly healthy at the moment but it\'s still very much early days and more titles are scheduled for release extremey soon. There\'s pretty much something for everyone with this machine. I used to be a hard core gamer but now thanks to a new job, new responsibilities and the running of an indie software development group, I now call myself a fairly casual gamer. Because of this I held off machines like the XBOX 360 but the Wii had so many things about it which appealed to me. Not just me though, but hard core gamers, new gamers, young and old.

Sure the Wii-motes eat batteries and there are a few other niggles worth keeping in mind, it\'s not enough (in my view) to mar your enjoyment. If you enjoy playing games, fancy something new or fancy experimening with this, I strongly recommend that you buy a Nintendo Wii. This is one of those rare times in which I don\'t believe I could say \"This isn\'t for you\"

Go get it now! I\'m of to play some Resident Evil 4 now. Have fun :)

(If you enjoyed my review, why not check out others by me and even add me as one of your Trusted Reviewers? I much appreciate everyones comments. additions and feedback. Thanks!) 

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