WiiNintendo

WiiNintendo Co-Creator, Dave (guy in Ramones shirt), takes the Wii for a spin along with his girlfriends brother, Nick.

Here’s what Dave had to say (NOTE: Dave has NOT been following any Wii news and has not read or seen anything about it, seriously):

Here you go. A quick breakdown of what I thought so far and a quick explanation of the games

Wii Sports:

Good First impression:

The controls are really intuitive but it’s such a different concept in video games to physically move controller, while you’re getting used to it, you find yourself trying to steer with the control pad on the wii-mote. I got the hang of it within the first 5 minutes of playing the sports pack though, and it becomes second nature. The Wii Sports games get more challenging the more you play so that will keep it relevant for a long time – it keeps rankings of your performance, and those rankings are stored on your memory card, so your status should stay the same when you play your friends at their houses … Also, the same way brain age for the DS has “training” the sports pack also has training, and lets you know what your “physical age” is.

The interaction of this is AMAZING and the wii-mote has a lot of cues when your playing. It vibrates AND has a speaker in it, so it gives you a surround sound experience when your playing. It completely immerses you in the game.

As far as appeal to non video gamers, I had my brother over who hasn’t played a game in at least 10 years, and he LOVED the Wii. We had a lot fun with the sports pack cause everything can be played from 1 to 4 players (with the acceptation of boxing) and he was completely hooked by Excite Truck.

The games:

Tennis: Tennis is my favorite in the sports pack. It’s mostly about timing, but it does register really hard hits (or so it seems). As I said before the wii-mote vibrates and has a speaker in it, so it’s really cool when you playing tennis cause it makes the experience so much more realistic.
Boxing: definitely my second favorite and I have no clue how it works. You use the wii-mote and the nun chuck on this one, and it registers when you move the nun chuck even though there are no visible sensors on it. It’s SSOOO interactive and picks up every movement. When you lean back, your character leans back (which I thought was amazing because the wii sensor bar really has an impressive range and doesn’t limit your movement). It’s the most physical of the sports pack games, and gets’ pretty tiring – I sweat like crazy playing this one. Of course, your wii-mote vibrates and makes sound every time you hit an opponent or get hit.

Golf: This is another one that I’ll be playing non-stop. It’s got great control, really easy to learn. Unlike the baseball game, you have control of most things that are going on. Golf also takes a lot of strategy and skill to play someone else and win.

These are my top 3 of the sports pack.

Excite Truck: This game is SO GOOD! I can’t stop playing it. You hold the wii-mote like a steering wheel and the sensor picks up everything even though your hand is covering it on the control. This game isn’t as physically interactive as the sports pack, but its a good game to play when your not in the mood to move to much. The controls are really easy to pick up. There is a lot of navigating by tilting and leaning the wii-mote, and it’s a fun game cause there are tons of over the top arcade elements like big air, bonus points, and in the same style as Sonic 2, you get points for completing different stunts, tricks, and crashes. So the first place winner doesn’t always win, which make it so much more fun when competing against other people.

Zelda: I don’t know if I should even say anything about this. I’m not a true Zelda fan as much as I know anyone else is, and anything I say won’t do it justice. In the 20 minutes I played it, there was a decent amount of action, and I can imagine it only getting better when your fighting off your enemies. The controls are great.

Bad First impressions:

Everything about the wii is wireless, so it seems kinda stupid that you have to have the nun chuck plugged into your wii-mote. Generally it doesn’t matter, but in the case of the boxing game your wire is swining all around, and I got him in the face with it a couple times.

Also, Your Mii character is very kiddie, and looks like a weeble-wobble toy. The entire sports pak has this feel, but on the plus side, the fun of the games makes you look past it.

The games

• Baseball – A bit of a let down. The only real interaction you have with it is swinging the bat and pitching the ball. The wii determines what base you got, if you opponent catches the ball (or drops it, which it does often), and it won’t let you steal. It’s more of a home-run-derby styled game… The lack of interaction with the rest of it makes you bored quickly. Maybe I was just expecting more from baseball. The amazing thing is the wii-mote is extremely sensative, and picks up every movement of your bat. So when your circling it in with your wrists before the pitcher pitches, it displays all that. Very cool

• Bowling – Maybe I just haven’t gotten the hang of it yet, but if that is the case, then this one takes a little longer to get the hang of. My problem with this game is that you have to hold the wii-mote like a bowling ball, and frequently, when I swing back, my Mii character will swing forward so it botches the shot. I’ve got to play with it more, because I can’t imagine the game would have that complex of controls. Everything else so simple.

Impressions 2

Next up to give his first impressions is Nick, a self proclaimed Nintendo doubter “I’ll admit i’m still a bit skeptical”. These are gut responses un-edited:

I was quite surprised with the quality of the wiimote. I was a bit skeptical about the wiimote in the beginning but once you begin playing with it, you realize it’s better than a bulky controller. The controls are nicer, its easier to physically move the controller, and if you tilt it sideways you really can’t tell the difference. In addition, there is no real lag between your actions and the characters’ actions in the game. (there was a slight lag on Wii Sports, Excite Truck had none, so if there is any lag it’s due to the game and not the system). Another surprising feature is the sensitivity of the controls. While most people may think you will need to be jumping around the controller actually just reacts to the slightest movement of the hand (if you are playing baseball there is no need to ’swing the bat’ but merely wrist snap the controller).

I did experience some disappointment in Wii Sports. You can tell this game was made to be more of a display of the potential for the wiimote than it is for replay value. After a while the games get boring and there are strict limits on what can be done in the game (such as in baseball you can swing the bat or throw 1 of 3 pitches but cannot control the speed/direction of the ball nor any fielding).

One other thing that is new is the setup. The wires only take a minute (including the additional sensor bar), however, you need to sync all your wireless controllers, so you will need to follow directions. Nintendo also wants you to mount the sensor bar to improve gameplay. Setup may take a while to sync everything and to create your mii character, but then you are good to go.

And, yes, there was an incident where I was hit in the face when someone else was playing. Expect injuries.

Video of first time playing boxing, tennis, and golf:

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