Ok, so I didn't really want to get a wii right away, but my brother had the cash and wanted to camp out at the target to buy one. So in the spirit of furthering his childhood I decided to go with him and his friend since my parents said no if I didn't go. He'd buy the system, i'd buy the games. I figured I now have one so I'd share my views with the board.

I have not had this much fun since I played the original nes for the first time. Wii Sports alone was amazing, and especially the boxing. There's going to be some serious learning cure. It's not steep, but it LOOONG. Red Steel was immensly fun and the possiblities for Jedi games are endless. We also have the new zelda and my brother got the DBZ game. I haven't tested either of those yet, but from the looks of it the potential of this system is absolutly mind blowing. It's not a gimmick, it's a totally new system and way to play games, and as you get used to it...it's very very smooth and intuitive.

Very disappointing Sunday for me. Started out at 4:30 AM EST and ended up at Target. They started handing out vouchers at 7:00 AM for 24 units. A couple of people who cut in line and a few white trash families later, I ended up 25th out of 24 units. So I go over to Circuit City, similar story: 13th out of 12 units. Best Buy I didn't even bother with, the line started forming there around midday Saturday and was starting around the building at 4:15 AM when I passed it on Sunday. Stopped by the Kmart next (we have a disgusting Kmart up here but I was going to give it a shot) manager opened the door for me when I walked up at 8:30 AM and handed me a voucher for Wii #5 saying, "This'll get you a Wii at 9:00 AM, so I thank him and go and get breakfast. On my way back I dropped by Toys"R"Us to see how many they had (comfortable in the notion that I might as well have had one at Kmart) and they were down to 2 more vouchers available (with a stupid bundle deal, but whatever).

Get back to Kmart at 9:00, there's a few more people waiting out front with vouchers, they open up. So we make our way to the electronics section and it turns out the manager lied to us because they only have 2 units. So some dirty looking kids who proclaimed that they were going to "ebay this s**t for CASH!" walked out with the only Wiis there. After the utter dissapointment of being screwed out of the imaginary unit at Kmart and my chance for getting one at Toy"R"Us I went to the Game Stop in the mall. They had sold out their 24 as pre-orders and didn't have any available. As a last ditch, I went to Sears, ended up 4th in line at 9:30 AM so we're waiting and finally the manager comes out at 10:30 to tell us that they don't have any Wiis (Sears was opening at 11:00).

So, no Wii for me, too much lost sleep and too much cold for my efforts. Tallahassee, FL got screwed (college town, come on . . . we need more units) from talking to other people in line it sounds like Best Buy got 26, Target 24, Wal-Mart 20, Toys"R"Us 18, Circuit City 12, EB and Game Stop about 50, and Kmart 2 for a total of 152 units. Not nearly enough for this area, while my buddy down in St. Petersburg went to Circuit City at opening, bought 1 unit and they still had another dozen remaining. Maybe I'll get lucky on Black Friday.

Good god man. The target I went to alone had 156 units. What the hell. Granted the same thing almost happened to us. We were 101 and were told they had 100 units at first, but they either changed there mind or learned how to count. Still. Ouch.

Well, Eji's post re-affirmed my faith in how hard the new system is going to rock; but I'm a bit worried by how hard it will be to find this thing come Christmas. I have an XBOX 360, but I have no real desire to use it; I can name maybe 3 games at most that even look MILDLY interesting for that system; everything else looks like crap.

So, I'll be trading in my 360 and getting a Wii instead!

An interesting glimmer of hope. I've been enjoying the Wii sports boxing insanely. I've been hoping....HOPING we get a new Super Punchout. God I would be sooooo happy if they could do that.

I think I'll wait for SSBB. Melee was the only reason I bought a Gamecube, Brawl will be why I get a Wii. Actually, I always wanted to own Donkey Kong Country.

Can the Wii read GameCube disks? If so, I'll probably just get a Wii and a couple of Cube controllers, and then get Brawl.

According to reports, that is the case. The Wii is, reportedly, backwards-compatible.

As a matter of fact, it's the exact same architecture as the GameCube, but with faster clockspeeds and extra RAM.

The GameCube had a lot more firepower than people give it credit for; it just never realized its potential.

Heh... I had once looked into getting a Cube emulator and putting Smash Bros into my optical drive. Then I saw the specs on the Cube... 485 MHz custom PowerPC processor? 485 MHz frontside bus, with 16M RAM (full speed) and another 24M at a slower speed? Umm... I don't think I should be emulating that thing on this system... I would need a fast Opteron/Xeon/Core 2-based system for this. My L2 cache would have difficulty keeping pace with the RAM on that thing.

The stores that I went to were sold out by the time I got there.

I'm currently going through Wiithdrawal.

You and me both! Man we should set something up, so that when the next shipments become available, everyone in this board that wants them can be alerted..... or something like that.

I sooooo wanted to get one launch day, and had the money saved, but now that I'm going to be spending a semester in France all my savings has to go toward a new laptop that can double as my PC (read: MacBook Pro). Looks like no Wii until the summer, especially now that the ebay price has gone done to something more reasonable (for a little while there you could unload one for twice what it cost originally).

I really want to play Zelda.

Also, the general consensus on Red Steel is that it sucks, so I wouldn't recommend picking it up first thing. Save that honor, if you must get a game other than Zelda, for Rayman or Trauma Center. CoD 3 is supposed to be pretty good too.

I'm exceedingly excited about the Wii as well. However, with as busy as I am, there's no point in my buying one until maybe February next year. I figure by then it'll be clear what games are worth getting and which ones aren't (soooo looking forward to a Star Wars game on the Wii...).

I gotta say I don't see a problem with Red steel. It's NOT HALO. You do not run and gun and occasionally hide behind a pillar so your shields can come up. I think a VERY large part of it is getting used to the controls. Also for graphics complaints I personally don't care so long as everything is clear enough that I can figure out who and what I should be shooting at. The sword play is a little gimmicky but it does show the potential for other games to use it. It's not exactly light gun like. The motion sorta becomes like a stick to help you turn. The only things that still throw me off are the fact that you can't just turn without moving your aim to the edge of the screen, and that sometimes when throwing a grenade I'll accidentally move my aim and end up throwing it at my feet.

Every day I go without a Wii and Twilight Princess a lot part of me dies. I think I'll be camping out for Black Friday sales.

*drool*

you people are nuts

And you're qualified to make this judgement because......(please don't say stating the obvious, please don't say stating the obvious.)

Agreed. BURN THE HEATHENS!!!

...no, not really...

They way I've heard the controls described, correct me if I am wrong, is that rather than a light gun the wiimote is more like a 3D mouse. Basically, you don't point it where you want to shoot at the screen but rather move it, and your motion is then translated into shoving a virtual cursor around. It's true that from what I've read Red Steel can be enjoyable, but from all the bug reports and reviews I've seen it really sounds like the sort of game you'd want to pick up when the price drops $20 or just rent, and apparently even CoD 3 does the FPS setup a lot better, and Metroid Prime 3 ought to be amazing since they're taking time to really get it right. For some people Red Steel seems to work just fine, for others it barely works while other Wii games play flawlessly.

As for Star Wars games, there's definitely some potential there, but when in the past few years has LucasArts not been an utterly crappy company releasing games that are 50% gimmick? I don't have high hopes of ever seeing another game like Jedi Knight 2 or X-Wing Alliance...

Am I the only one who wants details on what comes in the box? What comes in the box!?!

Specifics man, specifics!

Wii video game console
Wii console manuals
Wii Remote
Nunchuk attachment
AA batteries (two) for Wii Remote
Wii stand
Wii stand plate
A/C Adapter
Set of composite audio/video cables
Wii sensor bar
Sensor bar stand
Copy of Wii Sports

Source

And one hooker.

Azadra: Its true about it not being totally light gun..it's gotten to the point where moving the controller is so second nature it's a lot like using a joystick. The only bug I've encountered is that very very rarely the controller or game will glitch and my gun will suddenly move to one side or another. This has happened like twice. As far as Im concerened the games enjoyable.

Um, when they released Battlefront, and Battlefront 2, and Republic Commando, and Empire at War...

I prefer to stick to PC/Mac games, because I can take them with me, but the Wii looks pretty cool. I'll see if I can get it sometime.

this reminds me. I need to see if they're making a second republic commando. Oh and jedi academy was cool to...and KOTR.

Well, since this topic is about the Wii, I figure I might as well put games I know FOR SURE I'm getting once I get one:

Prime 3: Corruption
Smash Bros. Brawl
Twilight Princess (big time doy)
Super Mario Galaxy

And that's all I can think of right now.

Man, I saw an ad for Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on the Wii. Apparently you can swing your arm to throw Captain America's shield, or flick your wrists to use Spider-Man's web-shooters... quite cool, and very surprising for a non-platform-native game.

I'll probably get one at the beginning of next year, unless Amazon lets me know that they've got plenty sitting around...

I want a Wii so bad. I'm going to go looking around town tomorrow. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Update: The local stores are all out. Of the all the weeks for me to be forced to go on vacation! I may have to wait until Christmas or worse!

A bunch of people I know have one; I've played Sports and Melee on it. Melee is no different (just loads a bit faster) but Sports alone made me want one. I plan to get one eventually, but, I'm not in any hurry; my main want at the moment is Brawl.

Melee couldn't be any different because it's a GC game. Tell us about sports. I've heard that golf is really hard to play. Is this true? How well does the Wiimote work?

I, too, am curious. My faith in the Wii's popularity has been increased by several reports, but I want to be absolutely sure of what I'm getting into.

Golf is pretty difficult. It's very very sesitive so getting the power right where you want it is very very hard. It doesn't help that most golf games are naturally a pain in the ass anyways.

For all of the sports games you just move your how you would realistically. Or if you don't want to flicks of the controller work to. I just played the new Madden with a friend and I have to say it's quite cool. It's one of the few times he didn't just trounce me because he had a better use of the controls. Kicking is also finally difficult. Basically any game which used to have sliders where you had to press A at the right moment is now much difficult because most of those are replaced with the actual movement. Hence kicking in football and golf being much more difficult.

Finally another game I'm having a blast with is Trauma Center. Realllly hard but when you get things down flying through the procedures to fight whatever disease or whatnot is really quite fun.

With my new TV, the Wii actually seems kind of fun. I still want a 360, but I want to buy a Wii eventually. So, I'd like to know, what are your favorite Wii games? (One's you have and haven't played.)

Well, there aren't that many. Just check reviews - Zelda is practically it with Trauma Centerm, Rayman, Call of Duty and the VC to taste. It's hard to have favorites when that's the complete list of quality titles.

Indeed, Igadzra. Indeed.

Well, there's Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, which has Wii-exclusive stuff.

Managed to get one out a shipment to Best Buy last week. Zelda is . . . amazing, it certainly blows Ocarina of Time out of the water (probably has something to do with having 650MHz and 4.6GB on the N64 ). Characters are much deeper and much, much more interesting. It's nice having a sidekick with some personality, too. Controls aren't all the revolutionary, the biggest improvement comes when you have to aim the slingshot, bow, clawshot, boomerang, etc. It's much easier to point at what you're trying to hit than fumble with a joystick until it kills you. You do your spin attack by shaking the nunchuck back and forth, regular sword strikes you just shake the Wiimote. There are some Hidden Skills that you get later in the game like the Shield Strike where you thrust your shield forward to knock your enemy's guard down.

Wii Sports is really nice, too. Tennis is the best and especially enjoyable as a party game (anyone remember Mario Tennis on the 64?). Bowling is next for fun, I suck at getting the right spin on the ball but one of my real-bowler friends has no problem getting it, so it's not the controls. Baseball is ok, but there really isn't a lot of action, you pitch, you bat and that's the end of it. Golf is finicky, I usually take 3 or 4 practice swings before each hit to get it right (you hold down A to actually hit the ball) and do ok but it's very sensitive. Boxing is the worst of the group. At the lower difficulty levels it's quite a bit of fun ducking and weaving, but when the opponents get harder it seems like the game becomes less-and-less responsive—you punch and nothing happens. It's too bad, since it would be great fun if it were a little easier to control. I played Call of Duty 3 at a friends house, the Wiimote is quite good for aiming, you move it to the edge of the screen to turn, but it really couldn't be more fluid.

Virtual Console is really cool. I bought Zelda (NES), Bomberman 93' (TurboGrafix), Echo (Genesis), Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis) and Mario 64 (N64 ). You can use the Wiimote as a controller for most NES, SNES, Genesis and TurboGrafix games by just turning it sideways and disconnecting the nunchuck. Virtual Console games show up in the Wii Home screen. The Wii outsaves (more of a freeze than a save, but yeah) when you go back to the Home screen.

I'm waiting on Elbits, Brawl, and Metroid 3. They look like they're going to be really good.

I have always been a devout Nintendo Zealot, and I have always believed that Nintendo would always, always, ALWAYS blow Microsoft and Sony out of the water. (Was that enough emphasis for you? )

Indeed, Wii looketh quite awesome. But more than that, the greatest thing about Nintendo is their replay value. Indeed, I often find myself going back to my old SNES (yes, you DID read that right) for a quick game of Super Mario All-Stars or Faceball 2000.

There's no doubt about it. Wii is going to dominate the market.

Whoa, I thought the Virtual Console was just for Nintendo games. Sweet. Is Donkey Kong Country available? I used to play the hell out of the first two games back in the day...

Eventually, Nintendo will release a "classic" controller, but it is nice that you can use the standard Wiimote.


I have no problem believing you. Super Mario World and All-Stars were hella fun (those two, along with the aforementioned Donkey Kong, are the reasons my SNES isn't in storage).


I'm no Nintendo zealot, but I couldn't agree more. Microsoft and Sony are aiming at just the hardcore gaming market, whereas Nintendo is catering to practically everybody.

Does the sidekick in the new Zelda say "Hey! Listen!"?

Couple notes:

1) Nintendo is slowly doling out games onto the Virtual Console. No Donkey Kong Country yet; in fact, in my opinion the list is rather anemic. You can see the full list here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtu...orth_America%29

2) Nintendo's already made a classic controller. It looks like the bastard child of an SNES controller and a Dual Shock (PS2) controller. It plugs into the Wiimote, which technically makes it a wireless controller.

3) The sidekick in Twilight Princess speaks in gibberish.

Altered Beast? ###### yeah!

And that controller is what I what I was thinking of.

Didn't Nintendo only have trouble getting Rare games for Virtual Console since they're now owned by Microsoft? I know there won't be Goldeneye or Perfect Dark

They might.

Nintendo selling Rare to Microsoft...*shudders*...the only significant blight on its near-perfect track-record. Kameo actually looked somewhat attractive, and I was REALLY looking forward to Perfect Dark Zero...then I find out that Rare's been sold to Gates.

Makes me wonder what it would have been like had Rare NOT been sold...

First of all how I understand it is games that were totally rare property will not be making it. Golden eye and Perfect dark. Games that are nintendo and rare property, Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong Racing, etc. Should be making it. I also agree that selling rare is one of the worst moves ever. On a sidenote the new perfect dark really wasn't nearly as good as the first one. The one thing I'm hoping for that probably will not make it from Rare is Killer Instinct 1 and 2. I miss those games soo much.

On another note, I noticed the Points system when I saw how you would obtain the games on Virtual Console. How many points does each game get you, exactly? The lowest point value I saw was 500 for the current NES games that you can obtain.

Something tells me that it's going to be like every one or 2 games you buy, you can get one from the list.

Of note: IR mouse control is now working on Mac: http://homepage.mac.com/ianrickard/wiimote/.


To tell the truth I haven't noticed. It got so ingrained in my brain after playing Ocarina and Majora's Mask that I stopped noticing it. I played for a little while after I read your post but I didn't end up anywhere where Midna wanted to talk to me. I think she says, "Hey!" or something but I really don't remember.

I think it's something to the effect of "buy a card loaded with points, and go online and spend them."