Slashdot Mirror
Two Weeks with the Wii
In the 80s, kids of my generation cut their teeth on Super Mario Bros.. They went through high school with Mario Kart, and bonded with college friends playing Super Smash Bros. By 1999, though, the N64 had long since proven that Nintendo's dominance in American videogaming was over. The GameCube that followed was largely a disappointment. Nintendo failed to interest third party developers, and frustrated fans with long-delayed chapters of the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid franchises. Coming into this no-longer-next generation of consoles, Nintendo announced they were aiming for a Revolution, and then confused everyone by renaming it Wii. Their actions left a lot of people wondering if the company still had what it took to compete with committed powerhouses like Microsoft and Sony. The launch lineup is kind of tepid, and the controls really do take some getting used to. We've already established that they're not aiming to compete in the graphics race. So what is the console really like? Why is it selling so quickly? What does it have to offer? I've had two weeks to find out. Read on, so that you can get a feel for the system you'll definitely be playing (if not owning) at some point in the future.
My somewhat bold claim is not based in any sort of fanboi favoritism. It's a simple reality of Nintendo's console; the Wii begs to be played by lots of people. Unlike the solitary games that are popular on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Nintendo's scrappy fighter is at its fullest potential when you've got four people armed with Wiimotes. Four players on a Wii title is like nothing you have ever experienced in gaming before. For some people the Wii's demand that you be physically proximate to your fellow gamer will be a mark against it. For many people, though, I think the need to get together in one space will cut through the confusion and misunderstanding this hobby has always suffered from.
The reason for this is that it is easy: It just works. The first time you hand a Wiimote to someone and they point it at the screen, they know what to do. There's a little hand, representing where you're pointing, and each Wiimote has a different colored hand. Navigating menus is actually ... fun, in an odd sort of way. Moving over UI elements with the little hand representing your controller causes a very slight rumble. The controller shakes just enough to give the entire experience a tactile element that, again, I've never seen in gaming before. It's the little things like this that really makes the Wii experience. Turning the Wiimote upside down inverts the hand. They didn't have to do it that way, but they did. Navigating menus is, mildly, fun. One of the first games my cousins played after they'd picked up the controllers was the "duel with their icon-hands" challenge. Odd, yes, but entirely understandable. The Wiimote, and the completely natural movements you make when using the device, require no explanation. When Nintendo went to the AARP event earlier this year, they knew what they were doing; this is the console your grandmother can use as easily as you can.
UI
Graphically, the system's UI is a clean mixture of greys and whites. The Channel selection screen is the first thing you see on booting the system, and stands out well against the system's default imagery. From left to right on the top row, you're going to find the games channel, the Mii channel, the photo channel, and Wii Store channel. Though I'm not sure why the somewhat anemic photo functionality gets to rank so highly, they've organized your primary Wii elements together on one screen. On the bottom of the screen there's an unobtrusive options button, and a button to take you to your Wii's address book functionality. As you purchase things from the Virtual console (the primary online capability of the console right now) they'll fill in additional windows on the console's launch page. This is also where the news and weather features are accessible, with promises of more services further on in the Wii's lifetime.
To start addressing the channels in order, the games channel is where you'll access your currently-loaded disc. The system has a little splash screen there on your Wii frontpage illustrating what you have loaded. Just to reiterate something you've probably already heard, GameCube titles are 100% backwards compatible with the system. The Wavebird controllers are too, and nicely slot into the ports for them on the top of the console. If you're planning on playing a lot of Virtual Console titles, I recommend that you make sure to hang onto your Wavebird; they'll play almost every game the download service can offer up, and your Cube games to boot.
Mii
The Mii channel may just be the hidden gem for this system. If Nintendo plays things right, the Mii may become as much a part of your online identity as Microsoft's gamertag. Miis, to explain, are little virtual people. Using a canned set of features (hair, eyes, mouths), you can combine facial elements to great a little 'you'. Or a mini-Lincoln. Or Jesus. If you've always wanted to school the King of Kings in tennis, the Wii is the system for you. As innocuous a feature as this sounds, it's impossible not to find yourself wrapped up in possibilities once you sit down to play with it. At the very least, you're going to have to make you. And your S.O. And your family, and all of your friends, and your favorite movie star ... it's just too bad they don't have ears and you can't make pets.
Once you've made your Mii-version of former child star Gary Coleman, you can actually compete with him or against him in Wii Sports. At the moment, the games on the pack-in disc (and those on the upcoming Wii Play disc) are the only places you can make use of your strange little people. Even with that limited scope, Nintendo is already showing their intent to make the most of this feature. Your capabilities in Wii Tennis, for example, are tracked via intuitive charts. Someday down the line, when more titles take your Mii into account, you'll hopefully be able to import more interesting stats (frags and such) into your Mii's pockets. You can already take your Mii with you; up to 8 Miis can be loaded onto a single Wiimote for easy toting to another person's house. You can send them away, too; after you exchange friend codes with someone, you can trade Miis. They'll go wandering, too, if you let them. Heading off into the great Wii beyond, they'll wander across the Mii Parades of consoles across the nation, just begging to be included in that owner's personal Mii Plaza. Reggie Fils Aime has already hinted at the eventual addition of more facial features, and it is little wonder why. With the ease of making a little 'you' so tantalizing, it's easy to see why Nintendo is taking this 'uber-cutesy' feature very seriously.
Photos
The system's photo feature/mp3 player is something of a forgettable tack-on. Photos and music can be uploaded to the system, or played directly from, SD memory cards. They slot right into the front, and featured photos are very lovingly displayed by the UI. Music can be played behind the photos; it's essentially the only way to just listen to music on the system. Uploaded tunes can be played during select Wii titles (like ExciteTruck), which is very nice, but otherwise the media capabilities of the Wii are fairly forgettable. Given Nintendo's drum-beating about the Wii being 'focused on games', I'm kind of surprised they even bothered. Just the same, the utility of these features can't be denied, and they certainly don't get in the way.
Virtual Console
The Virtual Console, then, is the final default offering you'll find on loading the system. Nintendo's answer to Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's E-Distribution model, it currently only offers downloadable retro titles. The Wii Shop will eventually be where you pick up additional services as well, but for now games are all this service has to offer. While the launch list for the U.S. market has some much appreciated classics included, overall the titles are downright disappointing compared to other regions. I'm not complaining about what we have gotten, to be sure. Bonk, the original Sonic, the SNES version of Sim City, and the original Legend of Zelda are all titles still well worth your time in 2006. It's hard not to look at the Virtual Console list from Japan and other sectors, though, and not be a little jealous. Castlevania IV and A Link to the Past? Why don't we deserve Link to the Past? Recent events has also hinted that Nintendo has no plans to offer games via the Virtual Console if they were not originally released in that market. If that turns out to be true, terrific JP-only NES and SNES games will never reach our virtual shores. A serious oversight on the company's part.
The Virtual Console itself has proven to be less enjoyable for me to use than other parts of the Wii interface. Out of the box, the only way you'll be connecting with the Internet is via a WiFi connection. Even with a solid WiFi setup, it's inevitable that your connection will flake out. The console seems intent on blaming 'firewalls' for its woes, but some days I know everything is working fine; the problem lies with a cranky Wii. Once you're online you may run into difficulties there as well. The interest level in the Virtual Console must be higher than Nintendo expected, because I've found the service absolutely hammered and essentially unusable several times since the system launched. All that said, this is exactly what you'd expect from Nintendo: a solid retro-delivery system, straight from your childhood. I spent many, many, many hours playing the SNES version of Sim City. I gave myself an allowance of three games from the launch lineup. Along with that early Will Wright title, I snagged the original Zelda (my wife had never played it) and Sonic, as we were Sega-less in my formative years. All three play as smoothly as silk. No hiccups, no quirky controls, just unadulterated blasts from the past. Of course, my three titles will soon have friends. Even with Nintendo's odd reluctance to give us the good stuff, they'll be releasing a least one new title every Monday for the foreseeable future. Emulator fans may scoff, but it's hard to look down your nose at a legal way to enjoy retro classics in relatively high definition. The Wii even does game suspension, so you don't have to play games straight through. Despite some petty annoyances, they've got a great channel here for future content (including the much vaunted indie gaming scene), and it only looks to be getting better in the future. At the end of the day, even if it can be annoying to use, at least the Wii Shop music is soothing.
So, that's what the machine itself is like. The Wii's control scheme is what has people sitting up and taking notice though, and it's hard to judge that on menus alone. As a study in comparisons, I offer you the Good, the Bad, and the Awesome: Wii Sports, Red Steel, and Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Wii Sports
In the U.S., our consoles were $40 more expensive than in Japan. This was the reason - the Wii Sports pack-in. I've been lamenting the loss of the pack-in for years now, though, so I begrudge them nothing. It would be one thing if Wii Sports was a waste, a Luigi's Mansion for the next-gen era, but thankfully this mini-game game holds its own and encourages your aging relatives to make fools of themselves. Wii Sports consists of five simple games which ... kind of ... resemble actual sports. There's tennis, golf, bowling, boxing, and baseball. Controls for each of the five pastimes are the definition of simplicity. Each only requires a very simple motion with the Wiimote, mimicking actual movements you'd make while participating in the sport. Tennis is probably the one that's been seen the most at press events, and all it requires is a quick flick of the wrist to get the ball moving to the other end of the court. It's also one of the most enjoyable of the offerings, and supports up to four players for some hi-larious doubles action. Bowling is likewise enjoyable in multiplayer mode, and requires only that you know how to make the bowling motion with your arm in order to strike. Golf and baseball are less enjoyable, as built-in sensitivities to the mini-games lend themselves to confusion and mistrust of your capabilities. In reality, it's not you, it's the game. Golf is particularly bad, as even the slightest swing will have the game registering 'too much force' on the ball. The final game, boxing, is much the same. Using the Wiimote and the nunchuck, you can deliver one-two punches to your opponent's Mii ... if you can get your flailing arms to work right. I've personally found boxing to be highly enjoyable, despite its lack of precision. Two people really into the game results in an air-slapping girly-fight scene like something out of "Revenge of the Nerds". Nintendo made an excellent choice including this as a pack-in, and Wii Sports will continue to be the social game console owners reach for until the likes of Wario Ware or Mario Party make it to store shelves. (Just make sure to use the wrist strap.)
Red Steel
On the opposite end of the hardcore scale, we have Red Steel. Along with Call of Duty 3, this is one of the more 'adult' offerings accompanying the Wii at launch. It concerns the battles of a gentleman who has come to a fancy restaurant to have dinner with his girlfriend's father. As sometimes happens, the Yakuza assault the building and an epic fight ensues. While the title does an admirable job of convincing the player that FPS controls are completely enjoyable on the Wii, the title fails to deliver in almost any other way. The reason has nothing to do with the Wii; Red Steel is just not a very good game. Unlike Yakuza , which manages to weave a tale of Japanese crime with a straight face and get away with it, here the attempts at gritty criminality come off as hokey and poorly thought-out. The hero is utterly forgettable, and the noble quest to protect friends and family from the vicious crime syndicate is one John Woo flick short of a film festival. The only thing it gets (mostly) right is the control scheme, which is just as you'd imagine it. The Wiimote directs your point of view, while the stick on the nunchuck moves you forward. This is the schema that were' going to (hopefully) see a lot of over the Wii's lifespan. It's the way we'll be playing Metroid down the line, and can also be seen one door over in Call of Duty 3. Red Steel chooses to make the protagonist's arm flex and bend in inhuman ways as you turn, fouling up the game's one solid feature. His long, seemingly jointless arm is very disconcerting, and only serves to remove you from the action. Embarrassingly, the control scheme breaks down during sword fights. Those gooshy, confusing fight sequences are not quite as disconnected from reality as Wii Boxing, but it's fairly close. Even when poor reactions began leaking out of the enthusiast press, I maintained a guarded enthusiasm for this title. Guns and swords for the win, right? In the end, though, there's just not enough 'there' there. As much as it makes me want to play Metroid Prime, it makes me want to shut off the console more. You need not suffer from the launch-day enthusiasm that carried this into my cart; you can definitely give this one a pass.
Rayman Raving Rabbids
From the inane to the insane, we move on to Rayman Raving Rabbids. I've never really liked Rayman in his previous platform title outings; he's always been something of a forgettable character. Here, though, Ubisoft has offered up a crack-addled assortment of mini-games, and hung them very loosely around Rayman's neck. He's the central character of the game only insomuch as the little guy on screen has his name. Otherwise, you'll be concerning yourself more with the Rabbids: evil, stupid, ugly, bunnies from hell. The outline of the game is fairly simple. Ray competes in various events, spread out over a period of about thirteen days. Every day, there are four events to participate in. Completing three events unlocks a 'boss' event, which when cleared allows Ray to move on to the next day. Completing all four events during each day unlocks (on alternating days) new outfits for Ray to wear, and new music for you to listen to. Multiplayer play focuses on several people competing in individual events, with an option to string some of them together to make fairly anemic storylines for your adventures.
The beauty of this game, though, is that it's a.) absolutely crack-addled b.) hilarious and c.) completely addicting. Just a few of my favorite examples from the game include:
Final Thoughts
The reality of the situation is that multiplayer Wii games make you look like an idiot. As strange as it sounds, this is just one mark of a system that has succeeded. For so many people, gaming is either a solitary pastime or one done socially via the cold detachment of a Ventrilo link. I, like many other folks, had the opportunity to introduce the Wii to my family during Thanksgiving, and it was anything but detached. It resulted in several hours of good-natured competition among my cousins, and allowed me the pleasure of watching four individuals north of 40 volley and serve via Wiimote. With the exception of my mother, I believe it may well have been the first time these people had ever played a videogame. It's not Half-Life, sure, but it isn't exactly Tetris either.
Even with a fairly humble collection of launch titles, Nintendo has managed to get gamers and non-gamers alike to drink the kool-aid. The system delivers exactly what the company promised when the 'Revolution' was announced in 2004. It's a system that offers the best of both worlds. Non-gamers have a completely intuitive control scheme that will now allow them to play with their game-loving friends. Hardcore gamers already have more innovative titles to play than they know what to do with. So what if some of them, like Red Steel come up a little short. For every Red Steel, there's a Trauma Center, a Rayman, or a Twilight Princess (whose review grew too large to fit here, and will be addressed tomorrow). Offering the best of new technology and plenty of unearthable retro memories, the Wii is a console that demands attention. I've yet to encounter anyone with a mild opinion of the little white box; you are either going to love this thing, or hate it.
Either way, Nintendo has finally broken free of its 'me too' position, held since the days of the N64. Even if the Wii stays the third-place console, it's no longer possible to think of the company as an also-ran. Sony and Microsoft are in for a hard fight this time around. The only side guaranteed not to lose is our side; whatever happens in this war, it's the gamers who win.
The reason for this is that it is easy: It just works. The first time you hand a Wiimote to someone and they point it at the screen, they know what to do. There's a little hand, representing where you're pointing, and each Wiimote has a different colored hand. Navigating menus is actually ... fun, in an odd sort of way. Moving over UI elements with the little hand representing your controller causes a very slight rumble. The controller shakes just enough to give the entire experience a tactile element that, again, I've never seen in gaming before. It's the little things like this that really makes the Wii experience. Turning the Wiimote upside down inverts the hand. They didn't have to do it that way, but they did. Navigating menus is, mildly, fun. One of the first games my cousins played after they'd picked up the controllers was the "duel with their icon-hands" challenge. Odd, yes, but entirely understandable. The Wiimote, and the completely natural movements you make when using the device, require no explanation. When Nintendo went to the AARP event earlier this year, they knew what they were doing; this is the console your grandmother can use as easily as you can.
UI
Graphically, the system's UI is a clean mixture of greys and whites. The Channel selection screen is the first thing you see on booting the system, and stands out well against the system's default imagery. From left to right on the top row, you're going to find the games channel, the Mii channel, the photo channel, and Wii Store channel. Though I'm not sure why the somewhat anemic photo functionality gets to rank so highly, they've organized your primary Wii elements together on one screen. On the bottom of the screen there's an unobtrusive options button, and a button to take you to your Wii's address book functionality. As you purchase things from the Virtual console (the primary online capability of the console right now) they'll fill in additional windows on the console's launch page. This is also where the news and weather features are accessible, with promises of more services further on in the Wii's lifetime.
To start addressing the channels in order, the games channel is where you'll access your currently-loaded disc. The system has a little splash screen there on your Wii frontpage illustrating what you have loaded. Just to reiterate something you've probably already heard, GameCube titles are 100% backwards compatible with the system. The Wavebird controllers are too, and nicely slot into the ports for them on the top of the console. If you're planning on playing a lot of Virtual Console titles, I recommend that you make sure to hang onto your Wavebird; they'll play almost every game the download service can offer up, and your Cube games to boot.
Mii
The Mii channel may just be the hidden gem for this system. If Nintendo plays things right, the Mii may become as much a part of your online identity as Microsoft's gamertag. Miis, to explain, are little virtual people. Using a canned set of features (hair, eyes, mouths), you can combine facial elements to great a little 'you'. Or a mini-Lincoln. Or Jesus. If you've always wanted to school the King of Kings in tennis, the Wii is the system for you. As innocuous a feature as this sounds, it's impossible not to find yourself wrapped up in possibilities once you sit down to play with it. At the very least, you're going to have to make you. And your S.O. And your family, and all of your friends, and your favorite movie star ... it's just too bad they don't have ears and you can't make pets.
Once you've made your Mii-version of former child star Gary Coleman, you can actually compete with him or against him in Wii Sports. At the moment, the games on the pack-in disc (and those on the upcoming Wii Play disc) are the only places you can make use of your strange little people. Even with that limited scope, Nintendo is already showing their intent to make the most of this feature. Your capabilities in Wii Tennis, for example, are tracked via intuitive charts. Someday down the line, when more titles take your Mii into account, you'll hopefully be able to import more interesting stats (frags and such) into your Mii's pockets. You can already take your Mii with you; up to 8 Miis can be loaded onto a single Wiimote for easy toting to another person's house. You can send them away, too; after you exchange friend codes with someone, you can trade Miis. They'll go wandering, too, if you let them. Heading off into the great Wii beyond, they'll wander across the Mii Parades of consoles across the nation, just begging to be included in that owner's personal Mii Plaza. Reggie Fils Aime has already hinted at the eventual addition of more facial features, and it is little wonder why. With the ease of making a little 'you' so tantalizing, it's easy to see why Nintendo is taking this 'uber-cutesy' feature very seriously.
Photos
The system's photo feature/mp3 player is something of a forgettable tack-on. Photos and music can be uploaded to the system, or played directly from, SD memory cards. They slot right into the front, and featured photos are very lovingly displayed by the UI. Music can be played behind the photos; it's essentially the only way to just listen to music on the system. Uploaded tunes can be played during select Wii titles (like ExciteTruck), which is very nice, but otherwise the media capabilities of the Wii are fairly forgettable. Given Nintendo's drum-beating about the Wii being 'focused on games', I'm kind of surprised they even bothered. Just the same, the utility of these features can't be denied, and they certainly don't get in the way.
Virtual Console
The Virtual Console, then, is the final default offering you'll find on loading the system. Nintendo's answer to Microsoft's Xbox Live and Sony's E-Distribution model, it currently only offers downloadable retro titles. The Wii Shop will eventually be where you pick up additional services as well, but for now games are all this service has to offer. While the launch list for the U.S. market has some much appreciated classics included, overall the titles are downright disappointing compared to other regions. I'm not complaining about what we have gotten, to be sure. Bonk, the original Sonic, the SNES version of Sim City, and the original Legend of Zelda are all titles still well worth your time in 2006. It's hard not to look at the Virtual Console list from Japan and other sectors, though, and not be a little jealous. Castlevania IV and A Link to the Past? Why don't we deserve Link to the Past? Recent events has also hinted that Nintendo has no plans to offer games via the Virtual Console if they were not originally released in that market. If that turns out to be true, terrific JP-only NES and SNES games will never reach our virtual shores. A serious oversight on the company's part.
The Virtual Console itself has proven to be less enjoyable for me to use than other parts of the Wii interface. Out of the box, the only way you'll be connecting with the Internet is via a WiFi connection. Even with a solid WiFi setup, it's inevitable that your connection will flake out. The console seems intent on blaming 'firewalls' for its woes, but some days I know everything is working fine; the problem lies with a cranky Wii. Once you're online you may run into difficulties there as well. The interest level in the Virtual Console must be higher than Nintendo expected, because I've found the service absolutely hammered and essentially unusable several times since the system launched. All that said, this is exactly what you'd expect from Nintendo: a solid retro-delivery system, straight from your childhood. I spent many, many, many hours playing the SNES version of Sim City. I gave myself an allowance of three games from the launch lineup. Along with that early Will Wright title, I snagged the original Zelda (my wife had never played it) and Sonic, as we were Sega-less in my formative years. All three play as smoothly as silk. No hiccups, no quirky controls, just unadulterated blasts from the past. Of course, my three titles will soon have friends. Even with Nintendo's odd reluctance to give us the good stuff, they'll be releasing a least one new title every Monday for the foreseeable future. Emulator fans may scoff, but it's hard to look down your nose at a legal way to enjoy retro classics in relatively high definition. The Wii even does game suspension, so you don't have to play games straight through. Despite some petty annoyances, they've got a great channel here for future content (including the much vaunted indie gaming scene), and it only looks to be getting better in the future. At the end of the day, even if it can be annoying to use, at least the Wii Shop music is soothing.
So, that's what the machine itself is like. The Wii's control scheme is what has people sitting up and taking notice though, and it's hard to judge that on menus alone. As a study in comparisons, I offer you the Good, the Bad, and the Awesome: Wii Sports, Red Steel, and Rayman Raving Rabbids.
Wii Sports
In the U.S., our consoles were $40 more expensive than in Japan. This was the reason - the Wii Sports pack-in. I've been lamenting the loss of the pack-in for years now, though, so I begrudge them nothing. It would be one thing if Wii Sports was a waste, a Luigi's Mansion for the next-gen era, but thankfully this mini-game game holds its own and encourages your aging relatives to make fools of themselves. Wii Sports consists of five simple games which ... kind of ... resemble actual sports. There's tennis, golf, bowling, boxing, and baseball. Controls for each of the five pastimes are the definition of simplicity. Each only requires a very simple motion with the Wiimote, mimicking actual movements you'd make while participating in the sport. Tennis is probably the one that's been seen the most at press events, and all it requires is a quick flick of the wrist to get the ball moving to the other end of the court. It's also one of the most enjoyable of the offerings, and supports up to four players for some hi-larious doubles action. Bowling is likewise enjoyable in multiplayer mode, and requires only that you know how to make the bowling motion with your arm in order to strike. Golf and baseball are less enjoyable, as built-in sensitivities to the mini-games lend themselves to confusion and mistrust of your capabilities. In reality, it's not you, it's the game. Golf is particularly bad, as even the slightest swing will have the game registering 'too much force' on the ball. The final game, boxing, is much the same. Using the Wiimote and the nunchuck, you can deliver one-two punches to your opponent's Mii ... if you can get your flailing arms to work right. I've personally found boxing to be highly enjoyable, despite its lack of precision. Two people really into the game results in an air-slapping girly-fight scene like something out of "Revenge of the Nerds". Nintendo made an excellent choice including this as a pack-in, and Wii Sports will continue to be the social game console owners reach for until the likes of Wario Ware or Mario Party make it to store shelves. (Just make sure to use the wrist strap.)
Red Steel
On the opposite end of the hardcore scale, we have Red Steel. Along with Call of Duty 3, this is one of the more 'adult' offerings accompanying the Wii at launch. It concerns the battles of a gentleman who has come to a fancy restaurant to have dinner with his girlfriend's father. As sometimes happens, the Yakuza assault the building and an epic fight ensues. While the title does an admirable job of convincing the player that FPS controls are completely enjoyable on the Wii, the title fails to deliver in almost any other way. The reason has nothing to do with the Wii; Red Steel is just not a very good game. Unlike Yakuza , which manages to weave a tale of Japanese crime with a straight face and get away with it, here the attempts at gritty criminality come off as hokey and poorly thought-out. The hero is utterly forgettable, and the noble quest to protect friends and family from the vicious crime syndicate is one John Woo flick short of a film festival. The only thing it gets (mostly) right is the control scheme, which is just as you'd imagine it. The Wiimote directs your point of view, while the stick on the nunchuck moves you forward. This is the schema that were' going to (hopefully) see a lot of over the Wii's lifespan. It's the way we'll be playing Metroid down the line, and can also be seen one door over in Call of Duty 3. Red Steel chooses to make the protagonist's arm flex and bend in inhuman ways as you turn, fouling up the game's one solid feature. His long, seemingly jointless arm is very disconcerting, and only serves to remove you from the action. Embarrassingly, the control scheme breaks down during sword fights. Those gooshy, confusing fight sequences are not quite as disconnected from reality as Wii Boxing, but it's fairly close. Even when poor reactions began leaking out of the enthusiast press, I maintained a guarded enthusiasm for this title. Guns and swords for the win, right? In the end, though, there's just not enough 'there' there. As much as it makes me want to play Metroid Prime, it makes me want to shut off the console more. You need not suffer from the launch-day enthusiasm that carried this into my cart; you can definitely give this one a pass.
Rayman Raving Rabbids
From the inane to the insane, we move on to Rayman Raving Rabbids. I've never really liked Rayman in his previous platform title outings; he's always been something of a forgettable character. Here, though, Ubisoft has offered up a crack-addled assortment of mini-games, and hung them very loosely around Rayman's neck. He's the central character of the game only insomuch as the little guy on screen has his name. Otherwise, you'll be concerning yourself more with the Rabbids: evil, stupid, ugly, bunnies from hell. The outline of the game is fairly simple. Ray competes in various events, spread out over a period of about thirteen days. Every day, there are four events to participate in. Completing three events unlocks a 'boss' event, which when cleared allows Ray to move on to the next day. Completing all four events during each day unlocks (on alternating days) new outfits for Ray to wear, and new music for you to listen to. Multiplayer play focuses on several people competing in individual events, with an option to string some of them together to make fairly anemic storylines for your adventures.
The beauty of this game, though, is that it's a.) absolutely crack-addled b.) hilarious and c.) completely addicting. Just a few of my favorite examples from the game include:
- "Bunnies Don't Like Bats" - Direct Rayman as he mounts a giant bat, collecting piggies and dropping them into a pigpen before the time runs out. "Bunnies Don't Like Bats 2" adds the complexity of fending off a Bunny raiding party while you collect the piggies.
- "Bunnies Don't Know What to do with Cows" - Whirl the Wiimote over your head, as Ray does the same with a chain attached to a cow's collar. Hit a button on the Wiimote to send the cow flying while it's facing away from you. You get more points the further the cow flies; the cow flies further by whipping that Wiimote as fast as you can above your head.
- "Bunnies Don't Use Toothpaste" - Grab horrible grimacing worms with the Wiimote as they emerge from the rotten teeth of a Bunny, and flick them away. They come slowly at first, but emerge faster and faster as you play. Allowing a worm to emerge and then disappear ruins a tooth. Allowing two worms to reenter a single tooth sends the worm borrowing up into the Bunny's soft palate and ends the game. Hilariously, the mini-game is backed by an homage to the the theme from "Brazil".
- "Bunnies Can Only Fly Downward" - This wonderful bunny-filled version of the parachuting level from PilotWings has you directing Ray down through smoke rings with your Wiimote. You speed up by pushing on the nunchuck's stick, but you lose control that way too. Your aim is to get to the ground before a set time has passed. (Hint to Nintendo: PilotWings for the Virtual Console. Get on it.)
- "Bunnies Are Addicted to Carrot Juice" - While pumping the nunchuck with your left hand up and down, aim the Wiimote at the oncoming diver-Bunnies to fill their dive masks with carrot juice. Filling them up causes them to fall over. You lose if the ever-increasing wave of bunnies reaches your bar.
Final Thoughts
The reality of the situation is that multiplayer Wii games make you look like an idiot. As strange as it sounds, this is just one mark of a system that has succeeded. For so many people, gaming is either a solitary pastime or one done socially via the cold detachment of a Ventrilo link. I, like many other folks, had the opportunity to introduce the Wii to my family during Thanksgiving, and it was anything but detached. It resulted in several hours of good-natured competition among my cousins, and allowed me the pleasure of watching four individuals north of 40 volley and serve via Wiimote. With the exception of my mother, I believe it may well have been the first time these people had ever played a videogame. It's not Half-Life, sure, but it isn't exactly Tetris either.
Even with a fairly humble collection of launch titles, Nintendo has managed to get gamers and non-gamers alike to drink the kool-aid. The system delivers exactly what the company promised when the 'Revolution' was announced in 2004. It's a system that offers the best of both worlds. Non-gamers have a completely intuitive control scheme that will now allow them to play with their game-loving friends. Hardcore gamers already have more innovative titles to play than they know what to do with. So what if some of them, like Red Steel come up a little short. For every Red Steel, there's a Trauma Center, a Rayman, or a Twilight Princess (whose review grew too large to fit here, and will be addressed tomorrow). Offering the best of new technology and plenty of unearthable retro memories, the Wii is a console that demands attention. I've yet to encounter anyone with a mild opinion of the little white box; you are either going to love this thing, or hate it.
Either way, Nintendo has finally broken free of its 'me too' position, held since the days of the N64. Even if the Wii stays the third-place console, it's no longer possible to think of the company as an also-ran. Sony and Microsoft are in for a hard fight this time around. The only side guaranteed not to lose is our side; whatever happens in this war, it's the gamers who win.
But it contains Twilight Princess. Sold.
(29 hours to go...)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
After having a 360, and being impressed with it. I looked at the Wii, and went "annnnddddd......?" I wasn't impressed. but after reading reviews and seeing it in action, I'm considering it. Assuming I can get my hands on it.
Listen, my parents didn't have a lot of money so I'd appreciate it if you just let it go that my first car failed the safety inspection.
Now there we differ. On the contrary, I bonded in college with my friends, the super smashed brothers. Leinenkugel's for the win! It was all very similar though--a punch here, a puch there, a flaming Luigi & a princess was an instant party.
Yeah, it sure is going to hurt to have this removed.
My work here is dung.
My nephew bought a Wii. I got to play with it for a night soon after. This past weekend he brought it up to my parents house, since I thought they would enjoy playing the bowling game, since they used to bowl a lot when they were younger. I was right, they stayed up until after 11pm playing it. My parents are in their mid-sixties, and they are going to buy one as soon as they become more readily available. Nintendo took this thing in an entirely new direction, and it is going to work for them.
Why is it so hot? Where am I going? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Excite Truck? You know, the game that every store I've seen is demoing on their Wii.
And the first time I got my hands on a Wii-mote, I held it backwards & was confused as shiat as to why left was right & right was left.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I agree, have a Wii, two nunchuks, one wiimote, three GameCube controllers (see the top slots), but how in the heck do you get four Wiimotes?
One of the good things about Wii Sports is it lets more than one person share the same controller - and quite frankly, I've been dropping by game stores for weeks and still can't get a second wiimote.
But I agree that Rayman's Raving Rabbids is the best game - and yes, we've played many many hours of Zelda.
And, yes, it IS that fun - all ages too. My 15 yo son loves it, as do all his friends (14 to 17). But so does everyone else.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's still impossible to get a Wii at MSRP (i.e. you have to buy from eBay scalpers), and I don't see this getting any better before Christmas...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Think again, botnet mule, Real Men play Nethack.
music lover since 1969
Done better. PS3 is failure of marketing.
The 360 is a really solid, machine, I'm completely impressed by the options they have launched with.
On the other hand though the Wii is a console that is innovative and unique. The big missing point is achievements (yes they are important) but the Wii controller and everything else earned it the center stage in my apartment.
The PS3 on the other hand is so dead to me after all the hype, the failed launch, the lackluster system and so on. I'll pick one up when some amazing rpgs are out but even Metal Gear Solid 4 is not enough. Especially with it's price point.
For the Wii though Avoid red steel, but check out Excite trucks, Zelda (duh), and trauma center (if you don't have it for the DS). And Elebits is sounding to be the Second half of the One two launch combo.
I'm hopeful for the Wii, with talented developers (not EA) we can have some amazing games on an amazing system. Konami is already releasing Elebits and with more attention some really radical games can come out. But that's still not enough for me to discount my 360, which is fun, has better graphics and has achievements (again they are important, don't ask me why). It appeals to me in every way the Wii doesn't and that's fine as well.
Personally I think it really is a wonderous time to be a gamer. If you have yet to try the system I highly advise you to give it a shot, because it'll revive that kid who shook the controller to make mario jump "Farther".
The good: Good controller design. Has a major nostalgia appeal. Compatible with all (?) GameCube games
The bad: Controller eats batteries. Lacks the advanced HD graphics and surround sound found on the Xbox 360 and the PS3
The uggly: It's lights years behind 360 and PS3 in multimedia features and graphics.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Wii Sports is fun, for little while. Probably a great "party game".
Zelda never interested me, but it seems like it's well-done.
Basically every other game currently available is just not worth mentioning. There are some *decent* games, but nothing particularly exciting (again, assuming you aren't a big Zelda fan). It's the standard "launch games are kinda lame" syndrome. Personally, I'm holding out for the WarioWare game. That will rock.
Still, the Wiimote works very well, and is fun to use. Nintendo might have a big hit on their hands.
Just remember to invest in a plexiglass TV protector...
http://wiihaveaproblem.com/
I'd like to know realistically how long the batteries in those remotes last. Prob too soon to get any good data on that I suppose.
It's been not quite three weeks. You've finished Zelda? Bloody hell. Do you even sleep? I just finished playing through Ocarina, and THAT took three weeks, with me knowing pretty well where everything in the game was from the outset. By all accounts Twilight Princess is substantially bigger.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Xbox 360 core ($300) + Wii ($250) = the average of the two PS3 options.
You would be a fool to pick the PS3 over the first 2.
360 has the same graphics, a much better game library, and ton better online capability than the PS3. The Wii is that console that changes the way you play games.
Gears of War and Twilight Princess are 2 of the top 5 games I've played since the NES came out. You won't regret the purchase of either console.
The PS3 on the other hand is so dead to me after all the hype, the failed launch, the lackluster system and so on.
I played with it for exactly 4 minutes because that's how long it took for it to load one of the games (some dirt track truck racing thing IIRC). I didn't actually even bother to play it because it was just too much of a time waste.
I'm very disappointed in the machine from the one console company that always impressed me.
Then again, I don't need a PS3 to play Katamari and Gran Turismo 1.
"Even if the Wii stays the third-place console, it's no longer possible to think of the company as an also-ran."
Has the Wii sold fewer consoles than the PS3?
Oh god. Thanks for the laugh. You made my day.
---k--
</stupid>
You've finished Zelda? Bloody hell. Do you even sleep? I just finished playing through Ocarina, and THAT took three weeks, with me knowing pretty well where everything in the game was from the outset. By all accounts Twilight Princess is substantially bigger.
...
We had a big holiday weekend, and two snow days, so there was a lot of time - plus we got it at midnight on release day.
Amazingly, my son has kept up his grades throughout this
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Stores keep getting in shipments and selling them out the same day, usually 20-40 at a time about once a week.
Pick your favorite retailer, and just call them once a day when they open.
This worked for a friend, and I'm trying it now.
EG, for Black Friday after thanksgiving, the local Tarje (thats Target for those not from SoCal) got some 30-40 Wiis (and 3 PS3s that got placed in a corner and nobody cared about).
Test your net with Netalyzr
So Super smash brothers brawl, wario Ware, Wii Play, Super mario galaxy, Super Paper Mario,Metroid Prime 3 are all shovel ware? then you have the vc games like super mario world and oot coming out in 2007 too. How are all those games shovel ware? Thats not including games like animal crossing.
Think again, x86 lamer. Real Man play Rogue on a VT100 terminal connected via serial to a machine running AT&T Sys-III on a 68000 series processor.
NetHack is way too old, but there are wonderful Dwarf Fortress and GearHead out there, which are quite modern. An yes, real hardcore gamers play those game. Because it's where real innovation is. But, alas, waving 3-dimensional controller around is far more "lolz, fun!!1" than acting in huge, dynamic and procedurally-generated worlds.
The bad: Controller eats batteries. Lacks the advanced HD graphics and surround sound found on the Xbox 360 and the PS3
Um, dude, drop by Home Depot and buy a four-battery recharger, and get four rechargeable batteries.
Problem solved.
Seriously, doing that costs less than a new controller combo (wii-mote plus nunchuk).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
That's nothing, real men play with their girlfriend.
...
Oh wait
I don't think the OP was implying those games were crap. Since it is so easy for game companies to take an existing GameCube game/engine and essentially dump it on the Wii hardware and slap some Wiimote pointing/swinging in place of the existing controls, the Wii is most likely going to have the same library of quality titles the GameCube had but with the addition of a ton of crap. If that is true or not is a matter of opinion. Third party Wii stuff so far makes the outlook pretty grim.
Think again grungy unix hacker- real men play pen, paper and dice role playing games. :P
My humor is probably your flamebait
I played through Ocarina on the N64 in 3 days.
No, I did not sleep ^_^
I waited 20 hours in line for it, but I bought it at the store.
No idiot, the Wii is 100% backwards compatible with the GameCube titles, just like you think and write backwards. Next time try reading your article and see if it makes any sense before defecating it onto the Internet.
Actually elebits is one of the games I expect from the wii, a small conceptual highly interesting game only doable with a mouse or the wiimote. I expect way more interesting stuff for the Wii than ever has been for the cube. It is pretty much like the DS compared to the GBA. On the GBA, tons of shovelware almost no gems. The DS has this 1-2 really weird but interesting titles coming out every 1-2 months which are hidden under tons of shovelware, but make it. Project rub for instance has been one, trauma center, then the first real point and click adventures on a console etc.... So far the lineup in the wii looks very interesting since many companies currently toy with the input system and seem to give the devs more freedom than on the other consoles, to make smaller but more interesting games. Also in the long run I expect excellent perso 2 person sport games. Wii sports is an indicator that a very good tennis simulation might be possible or even something like decathlon on the c64 which in this concept has not been done with current gen tech for a long time.
It really seems like Nintendo managed to latch on to what the other console manufacturers have long lost sight of: Fun. The Wii may not have the most current up-to-date blow-your-mind specs, but the games are simply fun. I lost interest in gaming around the time of the PS1, when graphics and storylines became more important than the actual gaming experience, but the Wii has something going for it that might make me whip out the credit card in the future: it LOOKS like a lot of fun to play. I really can't say that for the other systems.
"Looking at the release schedule for the next year for the Wii it looks like there is a ton of shovelware coming from gaming companies with a few gems."
honestly i think that's been true of literaly every gaming system. looking at both the ps3 and 360 launch scheduals for the next few months i only find i'm interested in maybe 10-20 percent of the games. i think you're asking a bit much from a system if you expect to be interested in even 50 percent of its titles. not only are tastes in games relative to the individual but there are also just alot of crappy games made for every system.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I'm suprised people are still blah blahing about how the 360 and the PS3's price are accceptable when the Wii is clearly demolishing both of them.
Sure for some people the 360 isn't too much but it's at that point where people really have to think about it before they'll get it.
The Wii on the other hand is almost cheap enough to be an impulse buy. If the 360 can pull off some real japanese RPG's to get some actual sales in japan it might not bust. The PS3 though is doomed though if their exclusve titles don't save it.
"But that's still not enough for me to discount my 360, which is fun, has better graphics and has achievements (again they are important, don't ask me why)."
what on earth are achievements? you mention this term a few times in your post and i have no idea what you're talking about.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
I really like the review and the family thanksgiving party blog :) (Rayman like Samba Di Amigo!).
Although, I don't think Nintendo is third like the reviewer says in conclusion.
Deux lettres grecs collées, PhiPhi. Ça c'est drôle.
I hear a lot of talk about Zelda and Wii Sports. That's cool as they're both fun.
But, I rented Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 2, and I was thoroughly impressed. The game takes a little while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, it can get pretty damn crazy. Using the nunchuck and Wiimote, you'll perform a variety of moves that you would normally use a standard controller (WHICH IS AN OPTION). However, the remote adds a bit of depth that just plain excites you.
For example, the way special moves are peformed, it makes it that much more exciting. Not only can you shoot a fireball as if you are really doing it, but you know it's coming when you see your opponent making peculiar moves. Trust me. It's a great joy to execute a combo and end it by actually making the motion for the possible final attack. Plus, other than the remote depth, the game itself is deep with a great assortment of characters from all Dragonball Sagas.. The graphics are crisp and run fluidly like any worthy fighter should.
If you're a Dragonball fan, it's a must buy. For everyone else, it's worth a shot no matter what.
Golf is particularly bad, as even the slightest swing will have the game registering 'too much force' on the ball.
... if you can get your flailing arms to work right. I've personally found boxing to be highly enjoyable, despite its lack of precision.
I admit golf probably has the least pick-up-and-play controls, but it is really true in real life also. The controls reflect the ease of their real life sports. Bowling's controls are easiest because bowling is an easy sport. Tennis is easy to start but hard to master. Golf, however, is very hard to start up in real life...I don't know many people who can pick up and start swinging for 100+ yards without major accuracy problems.
So yes, golf has sensitive controls but if you put in the time you can develop precision with them.
The final game, boxing, is much the same. Using the Wiimote and the nunchuck, you can deliver one-two punches to your opponent's Mii
Now this is just plain not true. I've put in probably 40 hours to Wii Boxing, it makes a great workout game. The punches aren't easy to throw accurately, that's true. There are some tricks to the game...like developing rhythm, knowing when you're leaning in the right direction to be able to throw a certain punch, etc. Those are all things that are true to real boxing.
Again, boxing is a sport that it's easy to pick up the gloves and "flail" your arms around, but if you want to be good at it you have to practice and start thinking about your moves. However, the controls in boxing do seem to be the least precise of all the games (though as I said, they aren't bad), and I'd like to see a full fledged boxing game that has a little more time put into it.
You know, I've read the exact same review for the Wii about eight times already. I fail to see how this is any new contribution to the Wii review that couldn't have been read in a Arstechnica, 1up, IGN, or Gamespot review already. What are they doing? Making you all write a persuasive essay for your high school English class I assume?
A full review inside slashdot and with images! Quick, delete those bits of evil innovation! What have all you done with my good old non-w3c compliant slashdot?
Dude, he said "Don't ask me why!" :)
Seriously, though, Achievements are a feature of XBox Live that allows you to compete for high scores and other feats in a game. They are tracked online, and you can see how you're keeping up with the Joneses.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
I'll admit. If I look in the mirror I might just see a Nintendo flavored Kool-Aid mustache.
But...
I am all for the new innovation the Wiimote offers, but after playing Zelda TP for about 20 hours, I really don't think its integration with the Wii is anything special. I understand it was originally a GameCube game, but even as great as the game is, I think it still is a GameCube game for the Wii. Where with Wii Sports the movements of the players mimic what you do, with Zelda you just shake the Wiimote. I noticed in the E3 vids showing gameplay of Mario Galaxy (or whatever its called) you shake the Wiimote to do a superwarp or superjump. That struck me as weird, like it wasn't an instinctive motion. Why can't you just map that to a button? Did you need to put the motion sensitivity in there somewhere so THERE YOU GO? If the motion can be replaced by a button, I don't see it causing excitement. I see a lot of developers thinking "How can we incorporate the wiggle?" I hope soon enough they figure out how this new interface really works. Hopefully Trauma Center and Elebits can be used for a future template on why there is motion sensitivity in the first place!
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
Last week, I discovered that the OpenBSD team still maintain a version of it, although they are not constrained by 6 letter file names, so theirs is called 'adventure'. xyzzy!
Footnote: xyzzy was also a cheat code in Minesweeper. Entering it then holding down shift would change the colour of the top left pixel of your screen depending on whether there was a mine under the cursor.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Hmm, here is something that I would love to see: a charger in which you insert batteries to be charged and once done automatically drop them out. That way you could potentially have a magazine of rechargable batteries always at the ready.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The bad: Controller eats batteries.
:)
For those that don't have a Wii yet, don't listen to this guy. The cheap no-name batteries that came with the unit lasted some 20-30 hours for me, and the replacements (rechargable NiMH RULE) haven't worn out yet (past 40 hours now by my best guess).
"Eats batteries" makes people think you'll be replacing them every time you play. Even if you play 5-6 hours every single day (ie: you're unemployed), you're still good for a solid week.
Unless you really hate wireless devices. Then yes, you'll hate the Wii
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
PS3 is failure of marketing.
I honestly don't understand how you can say that. The failed launch and the fact that no one is really talking about it is because it's so hard to get ahold of the damn things. The PS3 so far is a failure of product development, and Sony political infighting. Sony decided to put a Blu-Ray inside each machine in an attempt to prop-up the Blu-Ray into the next-gen DVD replacement. The effect on the PS3 is a large price rise, delay of the lauch, and has limitting the quantities available.
The other strike against Sony is difficulties of game developers in making games for the console. I've always heard it's a lot harder to develop games for the PS3 because of it's strange architecture.
Combine those two and you'll get lost exclusive games, and lost initial sales. Those two factors feed off each other.
Sony isn't dead yet of course. They still have a year or two to pull themselves out of the rutt they've dug. But it won't be easy, especially when the Wii has done so well.
AccountKiller
Sounds like bad design. Why don't the controllers have a wired mode that lets them charge, and a wireless mode when they are unplugged? It's how I would have built the system...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
One of the developers for Wii Sports has mentioned a pending Internet Leaderboard update. So it's definitely something they have their eye on.
I don't have much doubt that those will all be great games. However, those are also all being developed by Nintendo. That's not much different than the Gamecube where most of the best games were also developed by Nintendo. These games can sustain the system but they won't make it a true success without good third party games.
because of cost.
Pretty much exactly what he said. It's like an online pissing contest to the extreme. That combined with gamerscore (basically total achievements for all games you've played). It gives you a reason to go for a perfect game, or to master the small parts of the game.
But like I said, it works. I can't even explain why it's important but for some reason I feel it is, and I know others who do. It's not a big loss for something like Zelda, or something that's only on the Wii, but with Marvel Ultimate Alliance (which was fun btw) in the back of my head there was "you could have played it on the xbox 360 and gotten achievements". Something that the Ps3 and the Wii doesn't have (though the ps3 claims to have entitlements, I have heard nothing about it other then the name).
Youre not familar with the concept of a REVIEW are you?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Maybe I can get a used Game Cube for cheap now and play Windwalker, before moving to Twilight Princess.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I used to play advent on an Osbourne "portable" that a friend of my dad's owned. It has two 5-1/4", a tiny b/w screen (maybe 6" diagonal) and a keyboard that you could beat a door down with.
Rogue was on an AT&T 7300 machine (20 MB Miniscribe hard drive, 68020 processor I think, monochrome green screen). I actually hacked on that enough to create my own unique monsters and artifacts in that. It helped a lot that the code was beautifully structured, well commented, and just easy to read.
I also remember "Space Taxi" from the TRS-80 days, and another Adventure-like game on a Sinclair Z80. Good times.
Think again smelly D & D fanboy- real men dress up in armor and weapons and play real life role playing games. :P
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
most modern ones plug into a wall socket, and have individual red or green LEDs that tell you if they're charged. Once they're green, you just pop them out (in pairs), and put in depleted ones.
Again, buying a four pack recharger costs about the same as a Wii-mote.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The failed launch and the fact that no one is really talking about it is because it's so hard to get ahold of the damn things.
Not in my experience. I've been in line for a Wii twice where I could have gotten a PS3 (the more expensive one, even) had I wanted it. Both times the Wiis ran short, and someone further down the line said, "Oh, well, I guess I'll just get a PS3. A guy I work with walked into a Walmart in a small town over Thanksgiving and they had three PS3s left over from the launch. Combined with similar comments here on this review, I would have to say that all the hard-core gamers got their PS3s, and demand has dropped off precipitously. At least enough so that I was not willing to take the risk of buying one and trying to resell it.
Bah! I play Nethack using a stick and a patch of dry dirt you girly men.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
because most people already have rechargeable batteries for their remote controls, gameboys, PSPs, etc.
the point is to drop the weight to the level where it's a functional wii-mote and not to bulk up the size and weight of the game console.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Been there tried that. I couldn't get NiMH rechargeable batteries to work for more than an hour or 2. Regular alkaline batteries are 2.5 volts but NiMH rechargeable batteries are 2.2 volts. From my experiences it seems that the remotes don't work when the voltage gets to around 2.2 volts. For alkaline 1.5 volt batteries that only happens when they are discharged. For the 2.2v NiMH batteries it happens within a few hours because 2.2v is still an almost fully charged NiMH battery. The wii controller just turns off when the NiMH battery gets to 2.2 volts too.
Has anyone else tried MiMH batteries in the Wii? If so how long did they last? Are you experiencing the same problem?
I am thinking about buying Energizer lithium 1.5 volt AA batteries(non rechargeable). They are more expensive but they last almost as long as the same money would buy in regular alkaline batteries. You just don't have to replace them so often.
I hope you're getting paid by Microsoft for what you do.
Oh poor Zelda realm, Your world can wait while I fish. Hyrulian crack!
http://www.coderoshi.com/
It has elicited comments on / free of overwhelming cynicism, anger, and negativity.
This is a first.
... that it is the UI that distinguishes this consol the most from others given Nintindo's past failures to do the same on it's original console. Nintindo's ingenuity in this respect is not new--remember the Power Glove? I bought one of those... man that was a waist of a $100.
Basically standard who has the bigger dick type of shit.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Gamecube sold 4 million units in Japan compared to maybe 450-500k Xbox 1's (couldn't find a number beyond mid-05 of 450k. They stop production around that time of the year so close enough). What's more Nintendo actually made money on each console sold. Sounds like a success story to me. Not quite so successful compared to the PS2 perhaps, but, as someone else has pointed out too, how many of 110 million PS2's are from users having to buy a multiples because of hardware failure?
No sig for you!!
...waiting for the holidays to open our gifts? Call me old fashioned, but I've got a Wii I'm giving my kids but I'm hiding it. I want to see the look on their faces when they open it. I've dying to play it but it seems wrong to open it now and make the holidays a little anti-climactic since the Wii is the big thing they are waiting for.
I have yet to encounter anyone that has played the Wii and hated it. If anyone does hate this system it's because it's not made by Sony or Microsoft and nothing more.
Think again LARPig! Real mean take LSD and just sit on the couch hallucinating that they're running around with armor and weapons!
I have a laptop. I *WANT* to play dwarf fortress, but I do not have a number pad, and switching in and out of number pad mode constantly makes the game almost unplayable.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
because most people already have rechargeable batteries for their remote controls, gameboys, PSPs, etc.
And most people love rechargable batteries because they don't have to spend money on new ones. Rechargable double A's are nice, but I think it definitely is a knock on the system that the Wiimote isn't rechargeable. Sure, you can go out and get a decent charger and four batteries, but that's an extra $25 to spend on a cheap system, right? And they couldn't just add that in for no cost and potentially take a small loss if necessary?
I don't think weight is really an excuse - does an iPod nano weigh 4 pounds?
Where are all the guys who earnestly, self-rightously, haughtily, caustically, pretentiously, dismissively, condescendingly hold forth on how bad it is to name a program The GNU Image Manipulation Program? Have they noticed that this game console ...
a) does not arrive with an intuitively obvious pronounciation?
b) sounds like a word for urine / urination, according to the apparently correct pronounciation?
c) does not convey any information about what the heck it is?
Not that I care about the console per se, because I don't, but this is a name that even *I* hate (and I happen to like The GIMP, and its name).
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Am I the only person in the world who likes this game and didn't find the controls impossible?
I'm now actually looking forward to EA Tiger Woods for the Wii (making an assumption here). I'd enjoy swinging my wiimote down Pebble Beach.
100% compatible? Not so.
No compatibility for the Gamecube Broadband adapter seems to exist. That means you can't do networking in Mario Kart Doubledash like you could on the Gamecube.
And Halo.
The number of people that I know who have xBoxes and use them for nothing except as "Halo appliances" (or occasionally as a DVD player) is staggering.
People who have other systems all seem to have multiple games...the xBox is the only platform I've seen recently that seems to produce that kind of mono-game mania. (Maybe GTA on the PS2 got close.)
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
DVD is obsolete.
9 Gigs is hardly any space for modern games. Blue Dragon for the 360 ships in Japan as a 3 DVD set. DVD meant nomore multi-disc CD games, and BluRay and HDDVD should do the same for DVD.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
"Navigating menus is actually ... fun, in an odd sort of way."
This is the same thing I said in my own mini-review on the online gaming community I belong to. The Mii Channel in particular is amazing.
I've played video games for a long time, more than 25 years, and the Nintendo Wii is just the most fun platform I've ever played with. I've had some great gaming moments on other platforms in the past, but not one as fun as playing Wii Sports with a friend or two. There really is nothing that compares. The controllers just work. I'm particularly fond of how the Wii Sports Bowling uses the controller.
It's a great machine and it's a BIG mistake to think the graphical advantage the XBox 360 and PS3 have over the Wii has anything to do with how much you actually enjoy playing with the console system. I own an XBox 360 (recently deceased thanks to three red lights) and will most likely get the PS3 as well once they're more readily available, but the Wii has already impressed me.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
This is the third title I picked up for my Wii. (After Super Monkey Ball and Zelda) Excellent party game. Highly recommended. However, there is one thing about the game that just annoyed the shit out of me.
When you play in score mode, you can actually post your scores to an online leaderboard. Cool huh? All you have to do is write down a code that displays after that particular game, go to your computer, and manually key it into a website.
Good thing the Wii is online enabled, eh?
OMG, are you on crack? You need to check out the platform because you obviously have no idea. I don't know where to begin?! First of all, before the Wii launch "Ocarina of Time" was named best game of all time. Second, before the Wii, the Gamecube was the best "multiplayer party game" console of all time. Then there's Monkey Ball, Smash Bros, Bomberman, a ton of FPS games like the James Bond games and Call of Duty games. Then you have "Tales of Symphonia" which is without a doubt the largest and best RPG game ever made. I'm sorry, but that's just off the top of my head. The Gamecube was a HUGE success.
I really, really wouldn't want to play online with some fucked up furry bestiality creep getting off on their avatar.
Like many others on Slashdot, I bought my system on release day. I find it to be a blast, but the most surprising thing is that my parents found it to be a blast, too.
I took mine home for Thanksgiving because my little brother had been quite interested in it for a while. I was unable to procure a second Nunchuck (still can't), but I did have two Wiimotes so we could have some multiplayer fun on Wii Sports. Both the brother, one of my sisters, and my other brother loved the system. I decided to call my mom down to at least look at it, just to see what her reaction was.
Now, before I go on, it helps to speak of my parents a bit: They are both very, very conservative, and don't appreciate video games. Even as the main gamer in the house, I was lucky to get any sort of video game as a gift. My parents never had any interest in playing any of my games, even the simpler multi-player ones.
So imagine my surprise when I had my mom play Doubles Tennis with me- and she adored it. Not even one match was over and she said (ad-libbing) "This is so much fun! And it's better than your other systems, because I'm not just sitting around." In fact, she liked it so much that she called my dad (who was at his office next door) to come over and play it- and he did, despite being even more disproving of video games than my mom. In fact, they played three rounds of golf, and then two sets of doubles Tennis. And even he commented on the fun.
The final topping of this delicious cake? The next day, while I was out shopping, my mom called to ask where she might buy a Wii. For the family.
So we have a 12 year old boy, a 15 year old girl (who, by the way, is not a gamer in the least), a 17 year old teenager, a mother and father over the age of 40, and me. Not a single unhappy person in the bunch.
More now than ever, I think Nintendo is going to take this round.
I'm using some of those expensive camera rechargable AAs - probably NiMH, I forget. They outlasted the camera I bought them for, so I'm glad to have a use for them.
Anyway, I swapped them once or twice so far when the console started to report them being in the red, i.e. low on power. It seemed a little too quick to me, though, so at the moment I'm running a pair of them until they stop working. They have been running at 'low power' for quite a while now, probably longer than they were above low power. Determining battery charge must be a black art, and it looks to me as if Nintendo is being conservative in their power estimates.
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
The oft-ignored Photo Channel deserves a lot more attention. Let me highlight some points that you may have missed while skimming it, or that just seemed inconsequential:
It plays nice with normal digital camera storage. No special computer equipment required. Take the SD card out of your camera and stick it in your Wii and you get big screen views and slideshows of the pictures you just took. I know I will be making use of this functionality when I visit fandom conventions in the future.
It can play videos. Standard (and poorly compressed) MJPEG+PCM, the same thing you get out of most digital (non-video) cameras. Transcoding from xvid+ogg to mjpeg+pcm takes about 20% runtime on my 1.5GHz computer, and the result file is about 6x the size, but now I have a handful of tv show episodes on my 4GB SD card to watch on the Wii. This functionality can only get better in the future.
While viewing individual images, a slideshow, or a video, up to 4 players can enter "Doodle" mode and use paintbrushes and stamps to draw on the screen. This is hilarious fun on some occasions, and I can imagine it actually being useful to someone (sports commentator-ish applications?).
And even better, there is a Puzzle mode, in which up to 4 players cooperate to solve a puzzle-ified version of the image or video. Yes, you heard me right, video. The movie keeps playing on the puzzle pieces.
The photos, and the results of doodling, can be sent to other Wii users (and email addresses) via the Message Board. This means Joe Sixpack can take a picture, write on it with his wiimote, and send it to his buddy, all without touching a computer.
If you live near a MicroCenter store, (there are, what, 15 or so in the U.S.??) they are offering a $100 rebate on any XBox 360 as long as you buy it in the store before the end of the year. I hate rebates, but at least that brings the price closer to that of a Wii. Actually, that puts a base 360 at a price lower than the Wii, but the general consensus appears to be that the core 360 is nearly useless. That doesn't necessarily make it as qualified to be an impulse purchase as it does a Wii, but it might be enough to make people pick one up as an impulse. I will probably be driving out to the Philadelphia store for a 360 after Christmas.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
At the risk of being obvious: because the way you use the Wiimote would make having it tethered to the console unwieldy? We're talking about an item you're supposed to swing, twist, wave in circles over your head, punch with, putt with, and bowl with.
Having a cord from the controller to the console would make that a real pain.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
YOU think again! A real man takes LSD and sits on the couch hallucinating while revising the GPL!
I've been looking to buy a Wii console for weeks now. It's not available for sale anywhere, unless you want to pay $600 for it or line up in front of the store at 12AM. Is there some sort of availability tracker online that actually shows anything other than "out of stock"?
Are the new crop of game consoles High Def? I assume they are
backward compatible with current (NTSC) tv sets, but do they also have
a high def mode that looks better on the new sets? What about wide screen
video, or are they just 4x3? Finally would anybody be crazy enough to hook
up a game console to a Plasma TV (would this ruin the screen?). I'm sure
LCD sets would not suffer any damage (aside from the extra use chewing hours
off the life of the backlight bulb).
I recently picked up a 360, and I've not been impressed at all. The graphics are good, it has some decent games, and I can even accept the pricepoint. But...
Its scratches games ridiculously easy (no its not just if you move the console)
It crashes from overheating (yes I keep the thing in an open area)
Its loud as hell
It plays many old xbox games for crap.
Its bonus features sound really cool, but in reality are poorly implemented.
-You can record live tv iff you have a Windows Media PC hooked up, why the hell should you need that?
-You can play media from your pc, but the 360 is not great at finding it, and you need specific codecs.
So I guess its a typical MS product, clunky, fragile, expensive, but does a satisfactory job, nothing more.
And as a side, am I the only one who doesn't see the point in achievements?
The Japanese version of Will Wright's Sims - for the Wii - is already up in Japan - and it imports your Mii characters from the Wii to create Sims from.
Yes, they're adorably cute, and very manga or anime influenced.
More info at The Sims website - follow the Wii link.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I havent played the actual game long but the multi-player frag fest is a blast. Would/Will be more fun with networked systems so everyone gets a full screen rather than part of one. But it suffers none from a lame story line (dont need one - go find your friends and kill em!). Some extra tactics like crawling through/sniping from air vents add to the basic run & shoot. The nunchuck doubles as a knife/sword so you can run up to an opponent and stab them.
That's nothing, real men play with their girlfriend.
While the titles in the long term look pretty good, it's that boring launch lineup that's got me looking elsewhere.
according to NGW it has sold more than triple what the ps3 sold, and in 3 weeks has sold more than 1/6th what the 360 has done in a year
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Fuck, I new I screwed it up! I took LSD and run around with armor and weapons while hallucinating that I was sitting on the couch!
The enemies of Democracy are
...there aren't any online connection services outside of Wii Shop, which can only get you VC games, none of which I'm particularly interested in paying $5-$10 to play. Then there's the Wii Friends thing, the sending Miis to each other as well as messages back and forth. Even system updates amount to wireless internet connections. And, for whatever reason, I can't get any of those to work with my old Lucent AP1000 (802.11b) access point or my new Linksys WRT54GX (802.11g/b) without disabling encryption. To be fair, I must admit, I never tried WEP because ... well, what's the point in WEP really?
I think Nintendo took a page from Sega. Sega had the cool fishing controller and if you ever played the bass fishing when the controller shook as the fish pulled you from side to side . .it was just a whole different experience.
Then they came out with the Samba De Amigo which was a pretty cool maraca game. I know you are thinking, "maracas!??" Yes, it was one of the most entertaining games we ever had. It was a family game, it was fun and again ..a whole different experience.
This is what the Wii is selling. A different way to interact. And you see that growing trend with that "heavy metal guitar" controller and some other ones . . like the dance pad . .etc...
Parents are playing games with their kids again. Parents who don't even care about video games are picking up the Wii and playing it. That is what is meant by Nintendo took this thing in an entirely new direction, and it is going to work for them.
Have to agree on this. One thing I've heard over and over at the coffee shop is dads and moms who are now playing Wii games with their kids and their parents (the kids' grandparents).
It's just darned FUN!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why do systems have to have third party games to be successful? I always thought that Nintendo's greatest strength has been the games published by Nintendo and not third parties. If a company can rely on what it does in-house to succeed, isn't it better for them that they can be so independent? If Konami or Capcom or Electronic Arts went out of business tomorrow, would Playstation continue to be as successful as it is now? I don't think so. Nintendo, on the other hand, could continue to rely on its in-house development team to make successful games. I can name a bunch of games I love/have loved that were made by Nintendo. I have a hard time coming up with an equal list of Playstation games actually published by Sony. In my opinion, that speaks volumes about the success of a system.
One game I have to recommend for the Wii is Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. It hasn't received a lot of press, but the game is absolutely fun to play on the Wii. You hold the Wii Remote so that the arrows are on your left hand, and the 1 and 2 button are at your right hand. Then, you turn your skater by angling the wiimote. It is extremely intuitive. I have Zelda as well, and I find myself playing Tony Hawk a lot more often.
Depending on where you live, this may not help right now, But the upcoming game Wii Play will be packaged with a remote.
Also, a warning: Super Monkey Ball will not let you play multiplayer unless you have more than one controller, even the turn based ones.
Wow, I always thought the Bon Target was just a family joke. I haven't lived by a Bon Marché for about 10 years now, so noone around me ever understands the Bon Target joke, but now the Bon Marché in my parents' hometown as well as my local Meier & Frank store are all Macy's stores now, so I guess the joke is truly dead. If only Beowulf cluster jokes on slashdot would die (and Netcraft could confirm it).
So what do you do? Practice etching "Elbereth" into the dirt with your stick?
Yeah, i have a brand spanking new reciever and the surround sound is fine with PLII. Yeah its not exactly the 6 discrete channels i get from DVDs or my HD channels, but its fine. Woulda been nice if the component pack (which i still have yet to get) had coax digital out, but its not a huge deal. Only a couple of times in zelda would better surround have been nice, but i dont sit in the middle of my speakers anyway, so it wouldnt have mattered. And im still on the original batteries that came with the wiimotes, but i did pick up a rayovac charger and 2 4 packs of 2500mah batteries in anticipation as well as for my fiancees keyboard and mouse.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
This article is best read with the voice of comic store guy from the simpsons
actually, what that tells you is that nintendo is still a company based around games, and it shows. You can certainly buy their systems only for their games (i do). And you can buy their system because you know that there will certainly be some absolute classics on it (because nintendo will provide that).
But the overall 'success' of a console is measured in the total number of units sold and games released. And for that, they need (good) third parties to create more games that people want. Once you get that past a certain point, it picks up speed of its own (more games -> more people buying the console -> more games created -> more people etc., which can also be started by people buying -> more games etc.), but when either of those drops out, the system is considered a failure. Nintendo has made some of the best games in history, but it needs other developers, just for sheer numbers.
IMHO, this is what happened to the N64, and the Gamecube. Both are great machines with absolute killer games. But both the third parties and 'the public' skipped out on them, mostly opting for the PS(2). And even though (imho again) a higher percentage of games on the ps2 are crap, there are so many of them that it's inevitable that there are some great ones among that too (if i had had a ps2 i'd have bought games like ico, colossus and okami, in a heartbeat).
Actually, I'm glad I am not burdened by some proprietary battery, which is almost always the case when they include a rechargeable battery for you.
And $25 sounds steep, I got 4 AAA, 6 AAs, and a charger (all Panasonic, all with a decent aH rating) for $16 at Costco some time back.
I am sure he is referring to the previous gen where the Gamecube came out third in worldwide sales compared to the Xbox and PS2. He should have said something like "Even if Nintendo ends up in third-place again for this generation, it's no longer possible...". Everyone knows the Wii is outselling the PS3.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
I beg to differ, there was never a real danger of karma loss.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
I'm looking forward to my son getting Elebits from a relative for Xmas, and I'll pick up Animal Crossing and Will Wright's Japanese Wii Sims when they come out.
So far, don't know anyone who has found a single turkey for the Wii - worst I've heard is Red Steel, but even that is 3 stars out of 5 (most Wii games are 4 or 5, amazingly).
Still not much good on PS3 from what anyone can tell me, except for one game. Hope that changes soon for those people who spent so much for it.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Then don't. Oh noes, heaven forbid you meet somebody different from you.
I'm also guessing that you haven't seen the Wii creation options at all. You're pretty much limited strictly to human avatars. The point is for people to create Wiis that look like themselves, not like whatever they can imagine, so there's not a lot of room for unrealistic customizations.
Has anyone else thought of the sexual implications of the wii technology? In terms of sex games with devices attached to sexual organs and such. Or am I the only one with a perverted mind...???
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
I personally find myself playing the ps3 more than the wii. Both are incredibly fun systems. My GF loves that she can beat my ass in bowling. My problem is not wanting to actually get off the couch to use the wii and really you are more consistent with the controller movements if you aren't sitting.
I have a projector, panasonic somethin 900. It's a 720p projector, excellent image even on my stucco beige wall!
It was a little tough to get the wii hooked up to it and positioned so I don't step in front of the projector, but it's so worth it to play tennis like that. It's like playing in real life man, unfreakinbelievable.
Ooh, GearHead. I'm a big GearHead fan, and you're right - it IS innovative. THey chat about Dwarf Fortress too and I think I'll give it a try.
EA has devoted more resources to the Wii, Disney has formed a Wii development studio, and companies like Konami are coming out with games like Elebits. The third-party support is there.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I believe on launch day the WII had outsold the PS3 and has had a much better supply since then. Neither company has released any numbers since the release week(that I am aware of), so we can't really say for sure.
You're right, 9 Gigs is hardly enough space for hour upon hour of boring, bullshit FMVs.
DVD is far from obsolete and 9Gigs is plenty of room for a modern game. You're just an idiot.
I've not picked up a Wii yet but it really doesn't matter who had the best launch titles when one of the consoles launched a year earlier. Thats more of a p1ssing contest for publicity and market execs. People are going to choose between one, or a combination of all three consoles for various reasons, but if a consumer put more weight on game titles today, what was available at launch only means something in terms of the Wii and PS3.
While I agree in principle on the EA comment, I secretly desire a Wii release of Tiger Woods PGA.
Wii sports golf kills me only in the sheer amount of potential a golf game could have....
I am billdar, and I approve this message.
There's 44 release games (41 third party), another 103 confirmed in development, and another 71 announced projects. Doesn't seem shabby for a system that's less than a month old.
or getting pwned on...
I did all that. I'm telling you: i've tried every variation on configuration I can come up with from switching channels to 1, 11, somewhere in the middle, 802.11b, 802.11g, mixed, yada yada yada, with TWO different access points. The results bear out in my case: reliable, consistent connections = NO ENCRYPTION. Nothing else made a difference.
YMMV.
Madjo - Move to Canada and get NTSC to avoid the black borders on VC.
ratboot - You can move to Europe and play the MULTI versions of all the titles with French language option.
You might even just swap houses. Problem solved. NEXT!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
You can also view it as a tenet nosce-type thing, you know.
I read that if you achieve a "Pro" highscore in something like Boxing, that Wii sends out a message to everyone online. Is that true, and if so isn't it something comparable?
You know, I laugh because your post reminds me of all the nintendo-fanatics whining about the "other systems" having nothing but rehashed games.
And look what we have here: rehashed games.
Nintendo is the KING of rehashing. They will keeping pooping out mario/zelda/metroid titles for DECADES and the hypocrites will just lick it all up.
Like, shy of goo?
I don't really know what you're trying to say...
Those pics only take up a quarter of my monitor. Oh, wait...
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Nintendo doesn't need 3rd party support to stay in business, but they certainly need it to be "successful" in the same sense that the PS1/2 were successful. 3rd party support is, afterall, why Sony is #1. So you're right in that, uniquely, Nintendo doesn't rely on 3rd party software; the fact that they're still around is a testament to that. However, I don't think that Iwata and Reggie are keen on maintaining the status quo, so I expect that they would appreciate as much support from 3rd parties as they can get.
PS3 is failure of marketing.
It is more that just that. It is a failure of focus. Is the PS3 a games console? Is it a media center? Is is a computer? Is it a web appliance? Is it a blu ray player?
In addition some of the decisions were just plain bad, for example the decision to include a blu ray player. This decision alone has:
- delayed the launch considerably
- added to the price significantly
The benefit of the having a blu ray player is dependant on blu ray becoming the dominant format, which is questionable.
meh
Problem solved.
Seriously, doing that costs less than a new controller combo (wii-mote plus nunchuk). The problem is not the remotes eating batteries while playing, the problem is that the remotes remain in search mode even when the Wii is off or not being used. This happens when any of the buttons is accidentally held down.
Leave your remote upside down under a throw pillow? By the time you come back and notice it the next day, it's dead. This has happened to me personally twice. I bought one of those custom Wii carrying bags for easy transport. The first time I used it I just put all my controllers in the front pocket. While in transport they all kind of turned and ended up smashing against each other, draining the batteries to red in 2 of my 3 remotes. Do you know how much of a pain it is to have to replace the batteries before you even start playing??? In the case of me bringing it to my relatives house to play, this was quite embarrassing to have to ask for batteries before even powering it up.
Now I make sure to remove a battery from each remote before transporting it and I'm careful to make sure the remotes are right side up on the table when I finish playing. These are problems I've never had to deal with with any other wireless controller that I've ever used. Hell, even my wave bird has an off switch.
Aside from this problem though, the battery life is very good. I finished Zelda in 46 hours with 2-3 bars remaining on the battery meter (default sound, rumble on).
---k--
</stupid>
Speaking of parents and video games, this one struck me the other day when discussing "The Battle For The Living Room."
In environments where the kids play video games and the adults don't, how often is the video game system in the living room?
I know three families in this situation. In 2 of them, the video game is not hooked to the TV in the living room--it is hooked to either another TV in the corner of the living room or is hooked to a TV in the kid's room. Only in one family is the video-game console hooked to the family TV in the living room.
Now, this is anecdotal and I'd be curious if other people have similar experiences. But "trans-generational games" like this will help Nintendo beat PlayStation and Xbox in "The Battle For The Living Room."
USB Calculator/Numeric Keypad
Would this solve your problem?
GR
"Paranoia is the flaw and gift of man. Heed its advice, but do not live by its will."
Well, yeah. But a magazine like this would be much cooler. As a battery goes dead, you insert the dead one in the top and a fresh one pops out the bottom with a reassuring ka-chunk. You could sell units that hold two, four, and eight batteries. Make it look cool...
Quick! Let me run off to the patent office!
If you rent or buy Rayman for the love of God play Bunnies Don't Sleep Well. All you do is point at the screen and avoid ghosts. That's it.
And I'd pay the full US $50 for a game that just has a ton of levels of that. But I'd rather not. *hint hint* Virtual Console. This game is the future of the Wii (or a good chunk anyway. Wii Sports shows promise too)
Seriously, don't return the game until you get that far.
As for the Wii itself, I'll say this. Say you want to play a game with absolutely no motion sensing or pointing. The nunchuck is still by far the best controller ever simply because the two halves are independent. You do lose some buttons but... nothing needed. Play the racing levels in Rayman if you want an example of something that doesn't use the motion sensing (except you shake the nunchuck for nitro). Rayman gets the control just right for most games.
I'm expecting an Xbox 360 controller that splits in two down the center and is connected by a wire. I can't really see myself buying a 360 if they don't do that. Ok maybe, but that's how great I think the nunchuck is.
One more thing, if you want to see the Wii controller done wrong, by all means rent Super Monkey Ball. The party game controls are atrocious IMO for the most part. The main game controls are ok (and the main game levels are generally great, unlike SMB2), but I have a sneaking suspicion the SMB staff are genetic cyborgs that can somehow manipulate their wrist to point the controller straight and 30ish degrees downward without it feeling awkward. Sorry guys, but a slight upward tilt on the controller should equal flat surface in the game. Anyone play SMB and disagree?
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
Here's a better review
XBox 360 and Playstation three gives you 1080 while pretendo gives you piss.
Sony Gives you a Pretty Superb Play-control with the PSP while pretendo gives you Dumb Shit.
That is the review of the day
Myst 4 came on 2 DVDs, but it was a pre-rendered and extremely detailed world. In my opinion, it was worth it, but for a game that is not prerendered, 9GB seems pretty bloated.
Think again. Real men aren't sitting around commenting on Slashdot. Um, or... wait... um.... I'm not... uh... oh, hell.
I didn't have any problems playing multiplayer with only 1, or at least only 1 turned on - I can't recall if I tried it before I synced the controller.
"It just works." /. account to just to be able to beat you senseless with a two-button mouse.
You've done it now, boy-o, sealed the poor Wii's fate on Slashdot.
Utter this phrase about Macs and people get a
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
when did /. turn into cNet?
If I want staff writers to feed me critiques I go to anandtech.com
If i want to discuss with my peers about ongoing stuff that matters, i come to /. :-(
http://frag-legion.uk.net/wiibar/mario-5732799551
Because its fun.
They have a Wii at the local EB Games on display. My friend and I saw some kids playing it, and it had whatever that racing game is. When we got to try it, it was instant fun. The controller is the coolest thing about it. Theres just so much potential, and its so intuitive.
I keep hearing people buying a 2nd ps2 because the first one died, so surely 25m of those 100m are dead ps2 in a land fill.
I know mine is alive, but then again it has barely done >200 hrs in its life time.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
bring those memories of 1940s back.
And use those wiimotes to bash the evil nazis in the head or stab them.
This will really be popular with the old folks.
Instead of Mario Bros, they need Helmitz and Holtz brothers game.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
With polygon numbers going up and not stoping and games becoming incredibly more detailed and sounding better... If DVD isn't obsolete, it will be within the current generation of consoles.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
How well do people think the targetting of non-gamers will work out long term? I can see it causing a short term buzz and interest but wonder how many will stay as single game households, treating the console more like an appliance. Its success will likely depend on whether these people turn into regular purchasers of games, which is how you'd probably define current gamers, or if it is seen as a furby style craze that they'll lose interest in after a while. If few people buy anything other than launch titles then you may not find a big Wii games section in shops.
I've seen it with my parents. They may become interested in one game for a short period of time, and play it a lot, but it will be one game and not necessarily lead them into being interested in any other game.
Wii Sports was fun for about 10 minutes and then the novelty wore off. The graphics suck and the music sucks. The game seems like its 10 years old. Sure, the controller is cool, but it didn't really strike me as totally groundbreaking. I've been playing the new Zelda game for a couple weeks now, and it suffers from the same controller issues that conventional controllers present. Camera problems, too many buttons, etc.
AND about The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: it sucks.
1) The graphics are 10 years old.
2) Where are the voiceovers??? The characters make odd squeaking noises instead.
3) I'm 4 hours into it, and the story is not really there yet.
4) Same camera and movement problems that so many older games have...
It seems like the Wii is just a Gamecube repackaged with a new fancy controller.
I want my money back!!
Not really, since I am not going to carry one around with me all the time just on the off chance that I am going to play a roguelike. :-D I have a full sized keyboard at home, I play on there.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I can't say anything for or against Rayman, having not played it.
But Monkey Ball does have 50 multiplayer mini games, which are all enjoyable to varying extents, depending on who you are. The majority are 4 player, but some (~5) are two player, and some don't use the nunchuk, so if you're strapped for cash and only have the wiimote, you're not all lost. It also has a single-player game (also using just the wiimote) which has the potential to make a grown man cry with its insanely difficult later levels, and will definitely level up your fine motor control ability. But in a good way, because you know they are able to be beaten and that they've been playtested to death to be sure that there's guaranteed to be a sliver of hope, no matter how small, that you can indeed beat the level. There are even two hidden worlds of 8 levels each that can be unlocked only after beating each world with no continues.
I vote Monkey Ball. I got Zelda and Monkey Ball and they've served me well.
The latest bookworm game (the adventure) has nods to classic text and ascii games.
There is an artifact named the arch of XYZZY.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
Well, I thought I should at least suggest something...
Be nice on Slashdot...
Maybe stand out a little...
GR
"Paranoia is the flaw and gift of man. Heed its advice, but do not live by its will."
Achievements are cool though. It's a way of providing positive reinforcement that's been implemented really well.
LOL, no prob, futile attempt at kindness appreciated. :)
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Yes, it's very popular. I've heard it described as "brilliant". Personally, it doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm actually annoyed when the game distracts me with it's "Achievement Unlocked" message. Mostly it's harmless though.
What really annoys me is how loud the DVD drive is when it's playing a game.
I consider myself a hardcore gamer and when a great game comes out i will play marathons of it. the thing i found with the batteries is that while playing LoZ, which uses the speaker on the remote, the batteries drain in about 8-9 hours of play. HOWEVER, LoZ uses the speaker everytime you swing your sword, use items, or just for things in the environment. when i muted the speaker i was able to play 4-5 DAYS, clocking in a average of 4-5 hours per day.