Some Wii Thoughts

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One thing bad about a Sunday launch (which actually might be good if you're the parents of children) is that you've only got Sunday afternoon and part of Sunday evening to play with it -- the next day is Monday, when normal people go back to work or school, or whatever it is that normal people do, and then when you come home from that activity, the system is sitting there, staring you in the face, as if to say "You kept me waiting all day, let's play!"


Zelda is proving itself to be an excellent game to demo the system -- the use of the Wiimote and the Nunchuk is quite exciting -- on more than one occasion of frenzied gameplay, I've gotten of the sofa and done some slashing and stabbing. That being said, I kind of wish the Wiimote was a little more ergonomically friendly -- I can already tell there will be a market for foam grips for the Wiimote for those with bigger hands.


While I was initially worried about the size of the TV in our apartment, the Wii seems to be just fine with it. There's no need for calibrating the sensors to pick up on the Wiimote either -- it seems to know exactly where it is.


My natural inclination with the Wiimote is to hold it with my arm fully extended -- this is likely muscle memory from years of holding traditional remote controls.


Here's something that I didn't realize about the Wii until we started playing Zelda -- there's a small speaker on the Wiimote that can broadcast sound, which brings the environment to life that much more. The rumble feature is very cleverly used in the game, (such as when a big baddie appears or some hidden passageway is revealed). On the regular Wii menu, as you roll over the buttons, the rumble shakes to indicate the movement over the buttons.


Zelda hides the load times very well -- I haven't really noticed any disc access or level loads with a giant "Loading..." screen.


I took a spin on the Wii online store, and looked at the games on the Virtual Console -- I don't have a Wii Points card yet, but it's a very clean looking interface, and there are a good number of games there.


The Wii will also read SD cards, and will let you modify and display your pictures or convert them into interactive puzzles. The Wii also records the amount of time you spend on each part of the system by date. This is a nice feature for parents to keep track of whether Junior has been spending too much time on the Wii.


Overall, it's been a great fun experience so far, and it plays GameCube games too, so any games you've got in your GameCube library work for it as well.

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