We've played the Wii, Our Thoughts

We’ve played the Wii, Our Thoughts

Submitted by Shane on September 29, 2006 – 10:13 am41 Comments

I have been writing about and reviewing games for a little while and I fear that I will become overly bias and way too picky when it comes to my job. That is why I decided to give a few young gamers I meet at the Wii Fusion Tour a chance to speak their minds about the Wii and give us a perspective from first time Wii players. Reactions were mixed but overall very positive, November is shaping up to be one hell of a month!

First up is Zac from Terre Haute, Indiana. Zac is the owner of the Nintendomobile we posted about earlier. After waiting in line for nearly an hour to play Metroid 3 he gasps as the only Wii playing Metroid 3 crashes, luckily for Zac it booted back up with no problem.

Hi, my name is Xaq (pronounce Zack) and I played with a Wii for the first time. Let me first say it was amazing and felt really natural (pun). Anyway, the first game I tested my Wii skill at was Excite Truck. The first thing I noticed was the size of the Wii-mote. It is like… perfect and compact and sexy and… well it is comfortable to say the least. Though most gamers might be turned off by this game simply because of the lame name, it is actually a really intuitive game. You’ve got gas (2), break (1), boost (d-pad), and everything else is handled via motion sensing technology built into the Wii-mote. I played on the Tiji level with a random one of the three trucks (others were locked since this was only a demo). At first I found the controls rather touchy and sensitive, but once I got into it and saw that all I had to do was tilt the controller slightly, I pretty much had the hang of it. Performing drifts was probably the most fun thing next to boost-jumping the HUGE ramps in this game. It wasn

Tags: wii

Richard

While I love it when people leave comments on items such as this I think some of you need to put some of this stuuf into perspective, because no one really knows how the console wars will end. The 360 and Wii could do well and Sony will fail or Vice Versa. Anything and everything as of now is just speculation, talking about it is part of the fun, so have some and stop bitching!
Freaj

Fortunately this didnt turn into a flame war, it looked like it was going to, judging from the reactions of some people but it didnt so thats good . I didnt intend for something like that to happen so thankfully it didnt, just wanted to point out some things
Xaq(nintendomobile)

YEAH! hey, matt, whats up? i see your opinion made it to joystiq over my car. though my car is definately better, overall. haha, we need to contact each other, some time, man. maybe play some games online on our wii’s together. ssb brawl? i think yes.
icelaser

Nice job Xaq. I was really looking forward to Wii Sports and Excite Truck. Maybe your info on on metroid will make me want to get that…

Thanks!
Lucas

So I stoped by to check out me on Aeropause and today when I awoke my arms where sore….But anyway I am here to tell everyone my orgin I am from Madison but anyway my Dad is a human and my mom is a goat.I also have a statement for those who havent played the WII your Christmes Breaks will be filled with WII and glee.It is probably the best thing from Nintendo since R.O.B and the DS of course.Also dont stand to close to the sensor for the WII controler I mean I figured that is why I bombed Metroid Prime last night there where people pushing me up I was in front of the WII pad they had for the most comfy playing position.But anyways yes buy WII and have fun I recomend getting at least the Baseball and Tennis games,Metroid is a great starting game to test out how the WII goes with the first shooter games.

To Richard,This is my prespective on 360,PS3,and WII I think that at the moment more people are waiting for WII then PS3.It is because of the price and maybe the rumors and the Blue Ray technology in it.It would actually be really pissy if they did do what the big rumor was,For those who dont know what the rumor was it is that the games will have thumbprint things on them that you cant play the game until you enter your print(prints if its more then one player on it) into the system and that once you play your game it makes your print makeing it where you cant rent or borrow games,This would be stupid that and $600.00 for a game station is rediculous(sorry if I spelled that wrong)anyway let alone that once you buy the system you also have to buy some of the cords and attachments needed to play on it separately(again gramar.This might come to a cost of ma,ybe rounded to atleast $700.00 but im gonna say that WII and 360 are pretty much in a tie for first millions of people have 360 cause it is a good thing to have while waiting for a system that you really want like I went out and got a DS to have something to do while waiting for WII and got a 360 because it is a good thing to have(that and got it for mostly Halo 3 and a few other titles).Anyway this statement here is for everyone get a WII and a 360 if you dont have one they go together like bread and meat.So that is my statement on the console races so get a WII and a 360 and forget about PS3 for awhile.

Lucas
Ming

i like your article zac
Ming

ps:the nintendo thing is sweet!
Xaq(nintendomobile)

to lucas: yeah, you did bomb at metroid. HAHA. and i pwned you at tennis, man. but it was a fun night for us all, dude. later.
Ethan

After reading Xaq’s time at Fusion, I can’t wait to play Wii! I know a few ADHD kids myself *cough* *little brother* *cough*, and they basically COME with video games…

My interest in Wii has been completey rejuvinated. I have come to the point where hearing the word “Wii” is unbearable; I really need to play it, now. (Okay, I lied about the unbearable part, but…)

I really think Nintendo will put Microsoft and Sony (emphasis on Sony) in the dust this holiday season. The new style of gameplay may seem intimidating, but I think it will become second nature after you get used to it. As opposed to Sony’s motion-sensitive controller… well, I guess some companies just can’t let go of the buttons-as-primary-control concept (except Nintendo, that is).

Back on the original focus, I really enjoyed Xaq’s article. It was very informative, and it certainly added that “want” factor to my Wii desire. Keep up the good work!
Lucas

Yes you did beat me at Tennis oh well we all had a grand time while waiting in line for Wii. You should email me your email address if you have MSN ir Yahoo IM.
Christopher

“…it could be a while before we see a lot of games that really execute good use of the controller. This means that by the time good games are in a large quantity, the competition has a year or so of good solid software.”

Just think it should be pointed out that there is no guarantee that the competition will have a year of solid software. From all accounts, the PS3 software will suffer it’s own freshman blues. Like all consoles, it takes a while to get into a groove with the hardware and really make its potential show. At that rate, Microsoft should be in a position to show off some must-have games that the competition isn’t quite prepared to deliver. However, from my perspective it took about three years or so for the original Xbox to generate a list of compelling software that made me finally give in and buy one. If Wii development winds up mimicing DS development, then it will definitely be a rocky first year (except for 1st party games) for the Wii, at which point I hope to see that thing shine, shine, shine like my beloved DS.
Matt

Xaq – yeah man without a doubt we need to keep in touch. Lucas – you are one crazy weird little dude
Xaq

Matt/Lucas-My aim is amaninablouse and my email is mr_flappins@yahoo.com . contact me there and we can like.. exchange friend codes to play DS games and suff. Later, guys.
Sean

Now that you’ve heard what real people think, I’ll provide some incite into what real people should know:

1) Third party support won’t become the be all and end all for Nintendo, provided that they are able to maintain their three most prominent franchises: Pokemon, Zelda, and handheld consoles(of which Pokemon is substantial). If and when they finally do succumb to Microsoft, who would still be recuperating from losses caused by the joint venture with SCE sparked by lawsuits relating to their next X-Box 5-Alarm Housefire, they will still be developing software based on original Nintendo franchises. For example, when Microsoft aquired Rare, they licensed games that had been planned for development since the Nintendo 64; namely Banjo-Threeie (proof of which can be found in Banjo-Tooie) and a title based on Perfect Dark. Both titles would have been exclusives for GameCube and they are sorely missed due to what we all know now- the GameCube lacked a variety of stand-out titles.

2) When developing for a platform for which you have little to no retrospective information for, you have one of two options: over-spec or under-spec.

Any developer will tell you that it’s tremendously easier to subtract than it is to add; that is, to say, that it’s better to have to remove or tone down content than to have to make vast improvements to code and content, in addition to adding new content along the way.

What we are seeing with the first cycle of games is simply due to underestimation of the Wii hardware, which is a message that has been touted throughout Nintendo since last year’s E3.

Processor frequency holds a grain of salt when induced in a poor architecture. Despite the fact that reports indicate that the Wii is “twice as fast” as the GameCube, these are numbers on paper, not accurate benchmarks. The Wii’s processor and the graphics processor have several new instruction sets introduced, including new and more efficient methods of dealing with arithmetic and multimedia.

Furthermore, if anyone remembers correctly, the original X-Box pulled it off with a 733Mhz Celeron and a Geforce 3 MX. The Wii’s GPU is based on, at the very least, an ATI 8xxx series, which is a generation newer than the Geforce 3.

Based on the information I have presented above, it is safe to say that what you can definitely expect from the Wii will be the following:

It is unlikely that a 25GB or 50GB BluRay disk or HD-DVD will be used to their fullest extent when relating to actual game content, due to the fact that dual layer DVDs(8.5GB) are more than adequate to deliver the content currently being presented on the X-Box 360. What an increased medium capacity means for Wii owners is that they can finally have the core gaming experience, with some games having epic gameplay times.

While the resolution of the content itself might not be high definition, that doesn’t rule out highly defined environments.

For example, worlds will not be as easily plagued by the draw distance limitation(typically characterized by “fog”) that the Nintendo 64 and GameCube suffered from. Furthermore, lines are able to be more refined, with fewer aliased edges(commonly referred to as “jaggies”), while objects with textures that should protrude from the geometry will appear to, with the GPU most likely supporting a processing technique called “bump mapping”.

All of these obstacles have been, for the most part, overcome in PC gaming and the result has allowed strides to be made, such as games like Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and F.E.A.R.

Just my two cents.
http://raindog469.livejournal.com raindog

I’m glad to see the early reviews coming out, but I’m really looking forward to hearing reviews from people my own age, especially people who haven’t gamed regularly since the NES or earlier, rather than people who could be my kids.

Don’t get me wrong, the high-school-kid demographic is important to the Wii, just not as important as it is to the other two systems. I won’t even be a good yardstick of the Wii’s success when I play it, because I came back to gaming during the last generation and bought a Gamecube, PS2, GBA and DS.

There’s no doubt that the Wii is a risky move on Nintendo’s part, because if it doesn’t appeal to mature people my age and older (I’m 37), it will never survive on the kiddie market, by which I mean high school and college kids, alone. I’ve heard reviews like “OMG it was like an extension of my body” and reviews like “That was the most awkward and tiring thing ever”. We won’t know for about a year, after Nintendo brings out some more left-field titles (it took about that long for Nintendogs and Brain Age to appear on the DS), whether or not the gamble has paid off.

But it sure does look fun, so I’m hopeful.
ken

how much nintendo wii?