Nitendo Wii

Nintendo Wii

Overall

New console launches are always slightly farcical events with queues of adoring fans, the specialist press and even mainstream press all converging on one manic day. Indeed, it's one the few times when the games industry receives any significant mainstream news coverage, though such coverage is often little more than reinforcing the idea that gaming is the sole preserve of geeks, teenage boys and social outcasts. That is, until Nintendo's Wii.

Once codenamed Revolution, Wii has already done much to open consumers’ eyes to the potential delights of gaming. It eschews the quest for “photo realism” and is not only fun to play but looks like fun too.

At E3 Nintendo showed off multi-coloured Wii Remotes

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Connecting to the bottom of the remote is the Nunchuk unit, which is rather like a prong from a GameCube controller, albeit slightly larger. Featuring an analogue control stick, Z trigger, C button - it's a rather more functional unit compared to the remote and is noticeably lighter. Again, though, it sits very comfortably in the hand and serves its purpose admirably. Though the Nunchuk is the first extension for the remote, Nintendo has already demoed concepts for further add-ons and there's plenty of potential for more unique add-ons.

No review of the Nintendo Wii would be complete without mentioning the now infamous Wii Remote wrist strap. Though the strap is certainly thin, I, and every other Wii owner I know, have yet to encounter any problems and the true scale of the 'problem' is inconclusive at best. Regardless of this doubt, Nintendo has promised to replace all wrist straps, faulty or otherwise, for no charge with all future Wii Remote's featuring the new thicker straps. In which case, whatever problem there may have been is of little concern.

The Wii menu interface is designed around a series of channels, navigated using the pointer or the plus and minus buttons to flip through each channel. As of now there are only five channels, with the news channel yet to be activated. Nintendo has recently announced, however, that a free trial of the Internet Channel – an Internet browser based on the excellent Opera – will be available this coming Friday bringing the total up to six. The full version of the browser should be available early next year.

The first channel, the Disc Channel, does no more than launch games so lets move onto the Mii Channel. The Mii Channel is a neat idea, allowing you to create cartoon like characters and likenesses using a series of menus to select the kind of face, hair, eyes, nose and all sorts of other details you want. It's really fun to play around with creating versions of yourself, your friends, celebrities, animals and other weirder creations.

These can then be used as playable characters in Wii Sports and also sent to friends with whom you've exchanged Wii Codes – more on which later. There's also the Mii Parade, where friends can set their Mii's to 'Mingle' and visit your Wii as part of a parade. This particular feature is somewhat restricted since it only works with friends but in general the Mii Channel is well implemented, and there will no doubt be further games that use Mii's as in-game characters too.

Next up is the self-explanatory Photo Channel. Here you can look at, play around with and enjoy photos from an SD Card and load them onto the internal flash memory. There's even a puzzle mode that makes puzzles out of your photos, and a doodle mode for making basic and fun changes to your photos. You can also make slide shows, and add MP3 music files to accompany them. All in all it works well enough, though it's more of a fun diversion than anything you're likely to use on a regular basis.

The same can be said of the Forecast Channel, which was unveiled in a recent update. Once you've selected your nearest town or city it gives you access to five day forecasts, current weather and all the little details you'd normally expect. There's also a Globe that you can move around and zoom in and out of; allowing you to discover what the weather is like in the South Pole and elsewhere. Again, this works fine as it is, though it lacks the sort of detail you'd find online, especially if you live in a remote area.

The Wii Shop Channel is altogether more important and gives you access to Virtual Console games, and eventually new channels when they become available. The shop uses a points system, imaginatively named 'Wii Points', and every 100 points represents 75 pence of your hard earned pound. You can buy points on cards at retail, with 2000 points costing £14.99 or you can purchase them online using a credit card with up to 10,000 points allowed at any one time.

Navigating the Shopping Channel is pretty easy and you can view games alphabetically or by console, as well as reviewing all the latest releases. Currently there are classic games from the NES, TurboGrafix16 (PC Engine), SNES, Sega Mega Drive and N64 with prices ranging from 500 points for NES titles, up to 1000 points for N64 titles. Once downloaded, these games can be stored on the internal memory or on an SD card and should you run out of space you can delete and re-download anything you've purchased.

Currently, the selection of Virtual Console games is fairly limited, though the numbers are bound to increase with Nintendo's huge library of retro games joined by many from other platforms. Emulation is generally fine, though it's a significant disappointment to find Sonic running in the slower 50Hz PAL mode when most modern TV's support the faster 60Hz NTSC mode.

The final major interface feature is the Wii Message Board, which allows you to add friends, send messages, emails, photos and make short memos. Before you can do any of this, however, you'll need to trade Wii Codes – made up of 16 digits – with your friends. As part of the system to prevent abuse, it isn't possible to send messages unless both parties have exchanged and registered these codes on their consoles. Once this takes place you are free to do what you want, while also exchanging Mii's should you wish to do so.

The Message Board also keeps track of your gaming activities, leaving messages informing you how long you have played on the Wii, what games you've played and, in the case of Wii Sports, achievements earned. This is a nice addition, though it's a little disappointing that information is provided for each individual day only, with no collected record kept for posterity.

One of the more unusual and unique features of Wii is WiiConnect24. When activated, the console will remain in a power saving mode when not in use but maintain a permanent wireless connection to the Internet.

At the moment, this is used to download updates and receive messages on the fly - a nice touch is that the disc drive glows blue each time there's some kind of new content. It may not seem like a major feature right now, but it makes the Forecast and forthcoming News Channels possible and the potential uses are numerous.

Animal Crossing, well known for the DS edition Wild World as well as the original GameCube version, is one game that will reportedly use this feature extensively; allowing for instantaneous interaction and trading of in-game assets among players.

If the Wii console is a large ice cream sundae, then Wii Sports is the cherry on the top. As a bundled game Nintendo could not have chosen a better title to relay, in a simple way, the true strength and appeal of the console and its unique control system.

Consisting of tennis, baseball, bowling, golf and boxing, Wii Sports is by no means a simple tech demo as many may have suggested. Tennis and bowling in particular are beautifully balanced, and the Wii Remote allows you to add all the nuance of spin you'd find in the real sports. Baseball and golf are great fun too, with golf adding a rather more relaxed theme to the collection.

The only sport that doesn't quite work is boxing, which suffers from some rather imprecise control. Despite this it remains good fun, especially in multiplayer, and it's a testament to the quality of the other sports that the boxing is noticeably less agile and precise.

Simple it may be but Wii Sports is the most fun I've had all year, and it doesn't get old. It can be played in short bursts on your own or with friends at parties, and it all feels instantly intuitive to gamer and non-gamer alike.

Wii Sports is not just a great bundled game, it's a great game full stop and you can't say much better than that.

Verdict

Farcical they may be, but new console launches are a staple of the industry and Wii represents something truly 'new' in an industry often criticised – not always fairly – for being unoriginal. It's exquisitely designed, superb value at £179 and, though it may not be graphically advanced, playing Wii is an unique experience in gaming.

It's not a perfect experience. The Wii Channel system feels rather underdeveloped and a rechargeable remote would be welcome, but these are minor quibbles for what is otherwise a console without genuine comparison.

The Wii Remote, the object on which Wii above all else relies, is a wondrous piece of design managing to be both easy to use while adding a level of depth unsurpassed by anything we've ever called a “controller” in the past.