Nintendo Wii First Impressions

Feature from Oracle - Monday, 08 January 2007 @ 12:00am

The home screen allows you to view your Wii channels, it’s crisp and clear and is also very simple to use. You’ll notice straight away that your Wii has News, Forecast, Photo, Mii, Wii Shopping and a Wii/Gamecube Disc Channel.

In the Mii Channel you’re able to create a virtual character of yourself known as a Mii Character. It’s like having your own Xbox Live Tag except you have virtual character. While creating your character you’re able to choose your sex, height, weight, hair, facial hair, eyes, eye brows.. the whole damn lot. It seems advance but it’s actually very basic and easy to use. One of the cool things about creating Mii’s is that you’re able to mingle your little buddies online with your friends in a room known as the plaza. In here you get to edit your friends and create weird yet wonderful versions of Jesus, Elvis or even Johnny Howard.

But one of the big advantages on having a Mii character is that you’re able to choose them as a playable character in games such as Wii Sports and Wii Play. It’s pretty funky and on a positive note you won’t forget which screen you’re on.

---

In the Photo Channel you are able to view photos on your Wii by either viewing photos people have emailed to you on the Wii or by pushing an SD Memory Card into the SD slot located at the front of the Wii. You’re able to copy photos over from SD cards and send em off to family and friends via Wii email, so it’s fairly useful. Once again it’s very easy to use so don’t expect Grandma Betty screaming out to you how to send a photo to Uncle Jake in Alice Springs.

With the Wii Shopping Channel you’ll be able to utilise the Wii’s Virtual Console feature by purchasing the games from here. Purchasing games on the shopping channel requires you to have Wii points; you can obtain Wii points by purchasing a prepaid card from a game store or by purchasing points online with the Wii using a Credit Card. The virtual console list grows every month for each console such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES), Nintendo 64 (N64), Sega Mega Drive and TurboGrafx. Depending on the game you’re able to play virtual console games with a Gamecube Controller, a Wii Classic Controller (sold separately of course) or the Wiimote (tilting it on its side so you hold it like a NES controller).

The News and Forecast channel gives you the latest news and weather reports both local and world wide. The news channel is not available yet but Australians are now able to access the forecast channel. As you click the forecast channel it will pop up a screen with your local weather showing the current temperature and weather. If you click start underneath it takes you further into the channel so you’re able to check national and international weather. The coolest part about world weather is being able view the globe much like Google Earth. You use the Wiimote to spin the glob, zoom in and out, etc.. it works a treat.

---

And finally the Wii/Gamecube channel, in this channel you’ll be able to view the current Wii or Gamecube that is inserted into the Wii. The Wii is fully backwards compatible with the Gamecube library so don’t be trading in 40 of your Gamecube games so you can get the PS3 for $150 cheaper.



Discuss in official forum

Name

Comment

Latest from Forum