Wii want the funk

I was one of the lucky ones in Finland who managed to secure themselves a Wii on launch in December. I pre-ordered it apparently just in time as some who ordered later ended up empty-handed despite the pre-order. Now that the console is almost a year old here and I’m sending mine for repair, it’s the perfect time to finally publish this article I wrote about six months ago…

First thing I noticed about Wii (no surprise), was the size of the console. Best way to visualize it is to stack two DVD-cases together. That’s how big it is and you can place it either horizontally or vertically. The package comes with a stand which adds a bit to the height.

The console is white. No other colors available yet. Many have said that the design and color remind of Apple’s products and I kind of agree. The stand is grey and the disc slot has a black cover. Which really looks out of place, although occasionally it’s masked by that awesome looking blue light you might’ve seen in pictures and ads. Overall I liked the appearance a lot.

I had more than few negative things to say about Xbox 360′s noise. For Wii it’s the other way around. You can hardly hear it after powering on and the disc drive isn’t loud either. You can certainly hear the drive being accessed, but it’s nothing compared to Xbox 360′s disc drive. Probably about the same level as PS2 as far as drive noise is concerned.

Wii continues the fine trend of humongous power adapters that the Xbox 360 started. The grey colored power brick is about 1/3 of the console. Still, it’s no match for the champion, in both size and stature.

There are two USB-ports, but no Ethernet-port. The console has built-in WLAN, however, so those wishing for Internet access need to either have wireless gear or buy a USB to Ethernet-adapter Nintendo and a couple third-party vendors are selling.

Being fully backwards compatible with GameCube games and accessories, Wii has slots for GameCube controllers and memory cards. In addition the front panel has a Secure Digital slot, which you can use to view pictures or play music from your SD card. You can also save data from Wii to SD memory card, but that has limits. You can’t store GameCube saves there, for example (why not?). The legacy ports for GameCube accessories are located on top of the console, behind a hatch. Which is, quite frankly, not the most aesthetic place to put them. The GameCube stuff sticks out like a very lame console modification gone wrong, especially with the Wavebird wireless receivers. I understand that the controllers can’t be hidden, but what I don’t understand is why you can’t close the GameCube memory card hatch. Now there are two different hatches open when playing Cube games, one of which could’ve been avoided by making the console just a little bit taller. Sure, you can remove the hatches (in fact, you have to, if you plan to use Cube stuff in a horizontally placed console), but the stuff still sticks out and the surface around the ports is black.

Wii has 512mb of internal memory. This is used for game saves and all other content you might want to store there. Except GameCube saves, you need to buy a GameCube memory card for them. Which is nice. Good luck finding those after few years while used GameCube games continue to be available. I hope future software updates will fix this. The internal memory is addressed in available blocks (like in GC memory cards) so the use of space is really vague. It might be useful knowing the available space in megabytes too instead of just blocks…

My eyes! It’s not in high definition!

Three common complaints about Wii:

1. It’s GameCube 1,5!
2. There’s no HD!
3. It’s just a gimmick

One is mostly wrong, second is true and the jury’s still out on the third one. There is no HD support. The highest resolution you’ll get is in SD: interlaced 576 in Europe and elsewhere you’re limited to 480i. Fortunately, most Wii games support progressive scan, which improves things a bit and by using component cables you can get progressive scan 480p, considered ED (enhanced definition).

The first complaint originates from Nintendo’s announcement that Wii uses the same architecture as the GameCube. Despite of that, calling it GameCube 1,5 is plain dumb. Pentium processors have been based on same architecture starting from the first one. Same goes for other x86-processors. What this basically means that the processors are technically able to run the same software. An old 486-computer could technically run latest version of Windows. In reality I couldn’t, of course, due to lack of processor speed and memory. Still, there are no architectural limits to prevent it. Therefore, same architecture makes Wii capable of running GameCube’s software. It doesn’t mean that it’s an overclocked version of it. Calling Wii an updated GameCube is like calling Xbox 360 a glorified version of my Apple iBook G3 from 1999. A bit exaggerated comparison perhaps, but both are based on PowerPC-architecture.

That being said, from a technical standpoint, Wii pales in comparison to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in raw power. In addition, Wii is limited in it’s output: For NTSC-consoles, interlaced 480 and progressive 480 are the best it pushes out. In PAL-regions where the typical horizontal resolution is a bit higher, you get to choose between 576i, 480i and 480p. No progressive 576.

Included cables are the standard composite ones. Meaning you have to pretty much invest in better ones. If you want the progressive output, you need component cables. Otherwise, S-video or RGB-scart are also an option although for some reason Nintendo believes that PAL-region gamers do not need S-video support.

As for the third complaint, although many games bring nothing new to the table excep for the waggle, it’s hardly the console’s fault. People said the same thing about early Nintendo DS games and the console, but look at it go. It’s still the definitive handheld and no end in sight. I agree that Wii-developers could come up with more than just minigames, but the console is still young. Year 2008 should give us some answers.

Wiimote!

Probably the most hyped up thing above Wii is the controller. Or controllers, to be precise. The main controller is called Wii Remote. It’s a bluetooth capable remote-shaped controller with built-in accelerometer and potentiometer. These fancy words mean that Wii remote senses both the speed it’s waved at and the angle it’s placed.

The controller also has a pointer function. When you point at your TV with it, it senses your position and where you’re pointing at. To achieve this, a small infrared camera is used. The camera records the infrared signal the Wii sensor bar emits. The sensor bar itself is placed above or below your television and gets its power from Wii.

Bluetooth is used for communications between the console and controllers. You can pair multiple controllers with Wii, but only four can be used simultaneously. The Wii remote also has rumble function, a small speaker and a few kilobytes of memory to store your own avatars (called Mii).

As a precaution, the remote comes with a hand strap. The originals have already been changed to stronger ones, since there were few cases of them possibly breaking. Despite of this, people continue to have completely understandable incidents with the console, such as cracked tv screens (Letting go of the controller really sounds like a plan) or twisted ankles (for playing with high heels on… must’ve been a surprise). Survival of the fittest, I guess.

Now you’re playing with power

After switching the console on, you’ll be greeted with the initial setup. Like on Xbox 360, update & reboot was necessary before completion. The updating was a fast process, but no info about whatever it did was given.

The Wii main menu consists of little tv-screens called channels. Initially there are a handful available and there are going to be many more. When I got the console in December, the available channels were disc channel (Starts Wii & GC games), Mii channel (create and manage your avatars), Photo channel (view photos) and shop channel (spend money).

Since then, additions have been News channel, Weather channel, Internet channel (web browsing using Opera browser) and Everybody Votes-channel (vote about all kinds of things and view results worldwide). Both the Weather and News channels have a really cool feature of viewing the entire globe, being able to zoom in and seeing what’s happening and what’s the weather like in, let’s say, Shanghai.

Shop channel is your gateway to Wii’s virtual console, a heaven for old-school gamers. You can buy games for old consoles – such as NES, SNES and Sega MegaDrive (Genesis for US) – and play them on your Wii. Basically, legal emulation. Prices range from 500 to 1000 points, with N64 games being most expensive and 8-bit games the cheapest ones. You either need to buy a points card from a store or a credit card to buy anything from the Shop Channel. Included with the purchase is also a digitized version of the games manual. Virtual Console games are added to Wii menu as new channels and you’re bound to run out of channel pages eventually if you’re going to buy a lot of VC games. You can use either the GameCube controller or the Classic Controller for these. NES games can also be played with a Wii remote turned sideways, so you can re-experience the ergonomic joy of old 8-bit controllers.

Now all I need is a third-party to bring back TAC-2 controller for Wii. That Commodore 64 joystick made your hands feel the same pain as your characters in games. That level of immersion hasn’t been achieved ever since…