"The Wii is not wiik!"

As a fan of Nintendo for as long as I can remember, I eagerly awaited the launch of the Nintendo Wii. I was skeptical of the controller at first, but later decided it would probably be cool. I didn't get a chance to play it until a few months after launch, when my aunt and uncle brought theirs into our town while visiting. I had so much fun in that brief hour or two playing on the Wii that I decided it would be well worth the cheap price to purchase.
So, for the next two months I saved up my money and kept searching stores for them. They were sold out everywhere, the hype made it impossible to get one. This may have been a disappointment, but it also made me happy to know how well my favorite company was doing. One day, I found one of two left at an EB Games and gleefully brought my purchase home.

The Wii's controller, which many Sony and Microsoft fans have tried to put down, is great! The new motion sensitive design is putting a new name into video gaming and making it far more interactive. The games now instead of button mashing takes far more skill with timing and hand eye coordination than ever before. Reports of TV's being smashed are completely ridiculous; a wrist strap comes with the remote built in and is quite strong. People have also shown pictures of wrist straps broken, I also find this stupid because you'd have to be playing like an idiot just to have it snap.

The games collection, while right now seemingly weak (with only a few good games, namely Zelda) is going to improve over time. Titles such as Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Metroid Prime 3 and Mario strikers are going to take full advantage of the Wii Remote and will completely revolutionize the way we play games. To add to the collection, there is a Virtual Console, a shop where you may purchase (slightly overpriced) games from older consoles such as Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64 and play it on your Wii! As a final games plus, you have the Gamecube games playable 100%.

The gameplay itself with the remote can be awkward in some games, but many developers have taken the remote and made it work incredibly well with their game (Madden). In the future, I expect we will be seeing many more amazing usages of the controller.

The Graphics is probably the one weak point in the entire system. However, Graphics DO NOT make a system good. If you stopped humping your PS3 and 360 for a minute and realize that games are fun because of their gameplay, not because of how beautiful they are. Living proof of that is the Nintendo 64's collection. While not amazing, they are still perfectly acceptable and sound (maybe a few games developed by some third party company that has a budget of $200 may see their games poor, but not the decent ones.)

Sounds are pretty good, though sometimes go unnoticed in games like Wii Sports and Wii Play. The controller has a speaker built in that plays sound effects like hitting a ball and more, which is interactive. It also makes a beep usually in two player games when it is your turn to play. Games like Zelda have a great soundtrack that is very catchy.

The best part of the Wii is the fact that everyone seems to want to play it. Being the only person in my household that has played video games for a long time, it's nice to finally have someone to play with. I'm sure some of you have had some boring times being stuck to single player with your Xbox, PS2 or Gamecube. With the Wii, my sister is always up to playing with me (and sometimes even my mom, which is strange). My sister is also offering to split the price of some games with me, something that nobody has ever done before. The 60 dollar games just got a lot cheaper! I've had relatives (including great aunts and uncles and grandparents) that have fun playing Wii. The name "Wii" is supposed to mean "Wii as in We all play it". This name is the closest thing to the truth I've ever seen.

The price of the Wii is VERY nice. The PS3 came out with a whopping $600 for their next generation system. The 360 was out at $400, how much did my wii cost me? $250 USD (actually 290 canadian, but the others are USD prices too). So basically the Wii, a game and another nunchuck controller costed less than the 360 system did when it came out. This is also a contributing factor to the Wii's success. Did you know that the Wii recently passed the 360 in sales, even though the Xbox 360 had a year head start?

Memory cards aren't REALLY necessary for the Wii because of it's built in 512MB flash memory. SD cards can be purchased that store data, but unless you have a huge collection of games this isn't needed.

There are also several "channels" on the Wii that can do things such as download News from the internet. From a parent's point of view, this would be a good way to keep their child informed about what was going on in the news. There is also a weather forecast which is a bit useless but sort of cool. It turned out to be pretty accurate here.

On the Virtual Console is a downloadable Internet Channel. For 5 dollars, you can surf the net on your Wii and do things like post messages on message boards and more. This is kind of useless in my opinion simply because it's much harder to do this on a Wii than a PC. If you have one computer and 8 kids, it might come in handy to have two people surf the web simultaneously.

Another Virtual Console downloadable channel is the "Everybody Votes" channel. The whole point of it is to have a two answer poll that will change daily. You answer, and then compare it to the answers of region all over the world. It's a great way to chip off a couple minutes, and best of all it's free for download.

The Mii Channel is quite neat, you can make a small character that looks like you, a friend or family member and then play as them in games like Wii Sports and Wii Play. If you aren't using one, they will still appear in your games as another member of your team and more. As a joke, a friend and I made one that looks EXACTLY like Michael Jackson and this isn't a joke. Miis take up almost no space and it's a nice addition to add to the Wii.

There aren't very many games that support online play yet, but the few that do are great mainly because it's FREE, unlike the 360. If you own a DS, then the adaptor for that will work online for you with the Wii. Not to mention that soon some DS and Wii connectivity will start up.

Also like the 360, the Wii can be turned on and off from the controller which means you don't need to cross the room. It connects in a similar way as well. You also need to specially sync the controllers (which is about a 5 second process). This means there isn't any interference from outside.

There are also several extra controller holders (golf club shells, a steering wheel, etc.) and many other things you can use to play for an extra price. New controllers are cheap on their own, 44.99 Canadian for a new remote and 24.99 for a Nunchuck. Gamecube controllers were around 45.00 near the end of it's life, so this is a nice change.

There isn't really a buy or rent because I'm not sure if you can rent Wii Systems like you were able to get PS2's and Gamecubes from a video store. I recommend buying it if you can see one because of simply how hard they are to come by.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Few flaws merit this great console it's victory over the other generation's systems.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/07