For brevity, Part I and Part II of this guide.
Hm, I’m about a week late on my self-imposed schedule. It’s been feeling a lot like Christmas; I’ve been receiving the packaged spoils of my Black Friday extravaganza, propelled by the 3+ months of shopping abstinence imposed when I was anticipating the new condo. With that out of the way, really good prices hawked by sagging retailers, and a need to furnish the little things by my lonesome, well, it’s been a pretty happy and busy week.
But the speaker wires are strung, the remote is mostly set up, and the netbook is unboxed and running; time to get back to writin’. Onto the Wii!
Nintendo Wii
The Wii is the cute little white box encouraging grannies and babies alike to frail their arms against the TV, and if commercials are to be believed, creepily smiling. Being constantly sold out, these points don’t may not matter so much as availability:
- The Wii is weaker machine than the PS3 and XBox 360, and it does not output in HD (480p max, with a separate component cable).
- The killer feature is of course its motion-sensitive Wiimote. Games have been using the controller to emulate various real-life activities, accounting for the above frailing. The additional nunchunk adds a directional analog stick and another motion-sensitive part.
- Wii’s library is sizable, but most of it consist of cheap games looking to sell to an unfamiliar, non-gaming audience. The best selling and best playing games have consistently been Nintendo-made games.
- Conversely, the good games appeal to the family and make for great party activity, with an abundance of mini-game collections, multiplayer puzzles and virtual board games.
- Beyond disc-based games, the Virtual Console service offers old NES, SNES, Genesis, and other retro games for download, while the WiiWare channel has simpler, low-budget games similar to what XBox Live Arcade and PSN provide. The price points are consistent at $5-$20 per game.
- Mii‘s – simple, cartoony avatars – were invented by Nintendo and have been a fun diversion on the system, but not many titles support them in-game.
- The Wii has a built-in wifi adapter, but online play has been spotty and laggy, with only a few games supporting online play anyway. Worse, Nintendo’s system of long numerical “Friend Codes” to connect to other players makes gaming online a chore.
- A few Wii games also use additional accessories, some required (Wii Fit with the accompanying balance board) or optional (Mario Kart Wii with its snap-on wheel). So far the perpherials work with only one or two games.
- The Wii is completely backwards compatible with the Gamecube, and even has four GC controller ports.
- The Wii has 512MB’s of internal memory and a SD expansion card slot.
- Next year, Nintendo will release a motion-sensing adapter next year for more precise tracking.
- The Wii has retailed for $250 since launch, and its scarcity makes its price closer to $300 on eBay. It comes with a wireless Wiimote and nunchuck (running on AA batteries), but another set runs $50-$60.
The Wii’s pretty much a party machine, with a good library to entice new players who otherwise wouldn’t play video games. It’s the combination of motion control and simple, fun games that keeps its demand high, despite its older technology and pricey accessories.
Get the Wii if:
- You’re looking for something to do when people come over
- You enjoy innovative ways to control your games
- You don’t care for online or media integration