Finally bought a Wii!

It's a load of fun. My family was bowling last night and having a blast. Mark! I can't believe you returned your Wii! I love the fact that it can play all the GameCube games too.

I love my Wii!

My friend is selling one cheap and I asked the missus if we could get it (from joint account) but she says no :-(

I love my Wii too.
Normally I only play with my consoles for an hour or two each week, but I play with my Wii in the evenings, and sometimes in the morning. A good few rounds of boxing really does wake you up.

Makes for a good work out!


[edit]

No jokes, please.

My son has just finished Resident Evil 4

He loved it - he says it is fantastic - very very violent and blood thirsty though from what I have seen of it!

Once the game is over, he has unlocked a load of goodies, and now has another game unlocked in which you basically run around trying to stay alive for the longest time.

IPete2.

Very true. I was sweating while playing boxing, which sparked an idea to do play a few games a day just for the exercise value!!

Wii Boxing is an AWESOME workout. I swear, I've lost 2st since Xmas, mostly due to the wii. I've recently taken up cycling and bought some Gym equipment, so woo.

You're just asking for it now :P

Yah, I was a sceptic of the WiiFit idea for a moment or two, but come to think of it, they do a great job of getting people keen on doing more than necessary. The exercises there look pretty simplistic, but the stuff in Brain Age is simplistic as well. The trick, I think, is that they get people keen on perfecting those simple exercises and in doing so they work beyond the game.

Good excuse :P

Punching the virtual punching bag in the Wii Sports training thing does work up a good sweat. Try doing that for 30 mins a day and you'll drop weight in no time. RE4 did breathe life into my Wii again, after the initial excited novelty wears off, and lack of good Wii games. Currently working on the pro mode of RE4 now....and its a tough one.

get some boxing gloves 10 - 20 ounces and then do some boxing, then you will have a real work out :), the gloves will knock you out in less than a minute.

Some statistics said you use about 40% more energy playing wii than other consoles.

you got a Link? 40% doesn't seem much! I'm a hyperactive wazzock and definitely overdo my Wii-ing. defniitely more than 40% hehe.


I agree, the real boxing thing is better. Playing wii boxing against real boxing makes wii boxing a gimmick.

I havent had a punchbag for going on 10 years now though :(

Oh yeah, and according to all the stuff that Nintendo had shown at E3, it's making me appreciate my Wii even more. Can't wait for Mario Kart and SSB: Brawl myself... Probably the two best franchises that Ninty has ever had.

Ipete2: I finished RE4 a while ago on GameCube it was the best game I've played in ages. Yeah the unlocked missions are crazy, they are extreme but there's lots of tactics like finding more timers and stuff.

Well, nothing is a good substitute for the real thing :). Training for MMA is also a good workout too. Especially those frickin stairs runs.... :(

But for the average overweight (or underweight) gamer, running the training exercises in Wii sports can definately help them get some exercise, without them even having to leave their living room.

It can be quite fun when your super fit and all your mates aren't. 5mins in and they are dripping sweat and panting like dogs :-)
Try 10x3 rounds of shadow boxing, 10x3 on the bag, 6x3 on the pads and 30mins on the excercise bike every morning, that'll keep you fit. Oh and 1500 stepups in 20mins :-)

Hello.

After finding out that SSX is available I've succumbed and bought one. Woohoo! Now if only Larn was available my joy would be complete.

Goodbye.

My wife, who doesn't play videos game at all, actually likes playing Wii. When she finally got a strike in the bowling game, she was hopping all around and yelling. This is like seeing a UFO or a ghost. I am in AWE (that my wife is playing a video game...)

Thank you Nintendo. THANK YOU.

Larn3D with sword waving would be nice.

I'd love to try that Wii Fit out just to see if it's worth all the hype.

On top of that, we're looking forward to those other peripherals for the Wii, like the Wii Wheel with Mario Kart Wii, due out next year, as well as the Wii-Zapper for other games coming out soon...

Yay! More lumps of plastic XD

Actually, yes they are lumps of plastic, but they actually do enhance gameplay by giving the control a different feel.

Wii Wheel looks like a waste unless it actually does more than being a shell though.
(and it's baseless, would mean having to hold it in mid-air, just be easier to use the Wiimote itself)

Wii Zapper on the other, I'm looking greatly forward too, hope they add a sight to it so I don't have to rely on onscreen crosshairs to know where I'm aiming.
(.....for the true Duck Hunt experience)


I didn't even know there was any hype, all I see on gaming forums are 80% of the people bashing it saying it's not worth jack, and the 20% praising it.................just like when they changed the name from Rev to Wii, and announced the controller. >.>

Isn't anyone else bothered by the number of controllers and controller addons Nintendo seems to be pushing out?

What I find great about the Wii's controller is that it is so versatile; it can practically transform into a real tactile object that responds to your movements.
With stuff like the steering wheel and the zapper, Nintendo is essentially giving up on that innovation, instead just creating a new controller for every game. This is not user friendly (nobody wants to think "oh, right, I'm playing this game now so I'd better get its special controller!"), it causes a game to take up more space than it needs to, it costs way more money than necessary and it makes multiplayer gaming difficult.

Essentially, these official controller addons are doing the exact opposite of what Nintendo wants to be doing. I very much hope that they do not go further with these than they already have, that a game does not ever require the special addons in any way, and that these things do not cause an increase in the prices of games. (I, for one, refuse to buy one of these cluttery, irrelevant and wasteful hunks of plastic).
If it's going to turn into this, fabricating cheap controllers for every game, what was the point of the Wii's controller? Those games may as well be made for any other console.

There is something to be said about making something out of nothing. When I first played with a video game console, I was really drawn in to the idea that I was playing a game like at an arcade but I did not need to keep depositing quarters. The Wii really interests me for that same reason, that the Wii's controller - though seemingly very minimalist - can become all sorts of things instantly!

Three of Nintendo's big releases now involve "special" controller addons. Sure, they utilize the Wii controller's nice features, but they take away its sleek elegance and its approachability as something like a tv remote. They needlessly complicate this, and make the controller seem a lot less versatile than it is by utilizing conventional tricks (physical objects that look like "the real thing") to achieve an effect that should already be possible.

I like the balance board. It's a really cool idea while also a cleverly simple device so it probably will not cost too much money. (One random thought: I really hope this game has clever extendability via downloads. Something like a Yoga pack would be really cool, and fairly inexpensive content).
However, symbolically, it is again building up this bother they've created. This is not far in to the Wii's life, and already Nintendo is nudging away from the Wii's controller, releasing an entirely different controller as though they can't innovate with what they (and Wii owners) already have.

Okay, okay, I am going a tad overboard, but let's hope they don't forget about us who like the wee side of the Wii. I like that it hardly takes up any room, and I want it to stay that way :)

> Isn't anyone else bothered by the number of controllers and controller addons Nintendo seems to be pushing out?

No, the reason being they are enhancements to the existing controller.

The gun thing is simply a way to make the existing controllers feel more, well, gun like. Could be quite imersive for FPS games.

The same goes for the steering wheel. (from what little I've seen of it).

As for the fit pad thingy, I don't know about that one.

Are there any Wii games anyone can recommend?

Yeah. If you're a girlie.

Zelda: Twilight Princess, Rampage: Total Destruction and Rayman: Ravin rabbids are all excellent games. WarioWare and Transformers are also a lot of fun I'm told, but haven't played them yet myself.

Put a bid in for one on ebay (it's my friend's so I know it's sound)

Excite Truck is vastly under-rated, at least for two-player action. I wouldn't say it's suited for non-gamers (ie. "your family") like Wii Sports though...

The Wii is actually doing what it was meant to do. Even my technophobe uncle was supposedly completely addicted to "one more go" of Bowling with my brother a couple of weeks ago. He's the very last person on the planet I'd expect to enjoy a computer game, or even be able to grasp how to play one. Just not his sort of thing...

Current budget prevents me buying my own Wii. I'd probably only play Wii Tennis anyway. I don't like Tennis, but I love that game.

It's not THAT accurate ;-)

Well, we'll soon find out how accurate that Wii Zapper is, if Duck Hunt is ever released on Virtual Console... Maybe that may be the next phase after the release of that new addon...

bah the Wii I was bidding on went for over £200.

the wiimote doesn't point directly where youre pointing at, it's slightly off, well, mine is- its close but not spot on.

close enough to work with a crosshair

sight-only? probably not, but i cant wait to see :)

I'm guessing you haven't played WiiPlay?

Yes, I did, but nothing beats the original, tho.

I really enjoy WarioWare. Wii Play has some fun mini games, and is a bargain if you need another Wii Remote. I've enjoyed what little I've played of Zelda, but I haven't found the time to really sit down and get into it. I have Mario Party 8, but wouldn't recommend it.

Really? Damn, how'd they manage to screw that one up? Mario Party on the Wii has the potential to be the best multi-player game known to man, surely. :/

They can always add a calibration tool for games that work in the light-gun fashion, Zelda:TP already has the option to modify the vertical height as to where the pointer is, I'm sure being able to get it spot-on is possible also.

Also regarding the controller shells, apparently Nintendo is packing the Wheel in with Mario Kart so it's not really much an expense since it's included by default, and the Zapper is being packed in with something as well which hasn't been announced yet.


Fake-widescreen, graphics are essentially first-generation GameCube (it's as if the developers never heard of mipmapping), minigames are lame compared to the earlier Mario Party, the new boards aren't of much interest (to me anyhow), pacing is a bit slow due to unneeded special effects (or ones that could have been sped up a crapload), player animations are rough, hell, they even stop when they run out of frames during a "You Win" phase rather than repeating a standing loop. Overall, just really unpolished, even though some fun can be had if you can play it ignoring the above.
(I'm a real nitpick, although my sister enjoys the game a crapload)

:(

The problem was that they once again gave the Wii what was meant to be a GameCube title.
Thankfully, I don't see Nintendo supporting that thing for much longer...

Well, with the Wii being so new, there probably WERE developers and/or publishers that were not prepared for the next step with the Wii, so you just come up with some games that really don't take full advantage of the Wii, which were actually rough ports of what was intended for the GC. That could probably answer your question, Picklesworth.

on the subject of the Wii, has anybody successfully managed to connect one to their monitor?

Not yet, will when I get to college though cause I doubt my residence has a decent TV already setup, can't see why a simple Composite/Component -> VGA/DVI adapter wouldn't work though.

Yes. But my monitor has component video inputs, so that was pretty much a no-brainer.

Well, have it hooked into my HDTV, and even tho it does take up the whole screen, it shows up as a 480p EDTV resolution at best... I'm still hoping that the Genessa processor would upscale it, but I have yet to see how well I can make that happen. I may have to go to component connection...

I've not played on my Wii for weeks. It's the lack of descent games that's doing it I think. And where oh where are the online games?

Yer in Europe no?

Mario Strikers Charged is released over there, first English title to get the WiFi treatment.

All North America gets is the spectacular pile of crap cashcow that is Pokemon Battle Revolution.
(which seriously, is crap)

The friend-code system is going to be the death of online gaming for the Wii though, no lobbies, no chatting with strangers, and customization in game matches is at a minimum, etc....

I still can't believe the folks at Nintendo could not design a working multiplayer system like the rest of the universe.

Having your own arbitrary username - one that actually makes sense to you - is the same difference as having an arbitrary username made up at random by a game. A stranger still won't figure it out, so you will be safe, since it of course remains necessary that both people add each other as friends anyway.

The only thing that would change is that people would actually be able to remember their usernames, and thus they would be far more useful.

As for customizing online play... Metroid on the DS was a real shame that way. Both "rivals" and "friends" play allows you to choose from all kinds of game types. Lots of customization. However, the random people play (the only one that is even remotely usable) only does one single game mode so it gets old fast. Why can't it choose a random game mode / settings? Or do a vote?

What is this? Nuclear fission?

the thing that gets to me, is that I've had an xbox for year, and been using xbox live for just as long. As far as I can see neither ps3 or wii have come close to matching the quality of online gaming that the xbox has had for several years. Why's there no headset for the wii? How am I meant to talk to other players? It's like nintendo are years behind in terms of online support, and it's pretty damn annoying. And this whole channel thing, there's a weather channel that only interested every now and then but hardly revolutionary, a voting channel that's boring and nothing new and a web browser. Where's the innovation?

Just popping in to say... I've bought a Wii too, yesterday!

YAY!!!

Mega fun... Love it! :)

Dabz