I got myself a secondhand Wii today. Seeing the upcoming games such as MadWorld, The Conduit, Spyborgs, the temptation of the virtual console and the eccentric and innovative Wii-Ware titles, well, I gave in. That and I'd thought I'd buy a cheap Wii before UK retailers shove the price up in April and one was going about £30-40 cheaper than retail prices and six days until MadWorld apparenty.
Bit by bit I've been doing my research on the Wii and what it caters in. I've come to the point that as much as I like mature titles on the PS3 and 360, well occasionally I want something a little lighthearted, as to say, casual and I was curious of the Wii for many years, but find what the hardware is coupled with (this does NOT mean graphics) the pure amount Nintendo sell that the price of the Wii compared to both other consoles is well...unjustified...thats my opinon, but hey, I'm damn happy to get one cheaper, especially seeing how the Wii is selling like hotcakes more expensive everywhere else.
First of all, I knew that the Wii was NOT a HD console like the PS3 and 360, I had accepted that and taken it on board, I had heard that the Wii had graphics that could easily be compared with or were better than the Gamecube (which I also own a second hand one of) which isn't a bad thing at all, because the GC looked pretty damned slick.
After a short time of setting up the console, I accidentally pressed eject and realised I had a free copy of Sonic Unleashed which was left in the drive when it was sold. I turned the console on, the Wii has a pretty clean interface on the 'Channels' system, which I must say, I like. The background sound was very calming as it repeated on the menu and that odd kind of Gamecube menu audio was heard.
Using the Wii-Mote at first felt weird as heck as it vibrated like a small pulse everytime I would select something, I can see that being implemented in case of cramp and blood circulation, which is pretty thoughtful. Operating the Wii-Mote felt like when you had to calibrate a GunCon on the Playstation for games like Point Blank and Time Crisis and took a while to get used to it, then I realised that I was using the wrong hand and my hand eye co-ordination was far better on my right hand, then I made my own Avatar...oh wait, I meant, Mii, the original system that works in the same manner for the same purpose and actually seems to have a point to it and not just an afterthought to immitate someone else. I Deleted a few old Miis from the previous owner as I grabbed hold of the Miis like a non-forgiving god during a Mii-March and sent their souls to 'obliiviion' just leaving my own.
After some faffing around because the fool who sold his Wii secondhand left the damn pin number up on everything, I was left with a Wii capable of playing games, but not yet going online.
"Where were you born?"
Asked the security question, after a few guesses of local places around where I live in lower case, in capital letters and capital lettered with the rest in lower case, I was finally granted access, celebrated that I was a 'Master HaXXoR' and then was told to install a 'Wii Software Update'. Fair enough, I'm pretty used to updates when turning on the PS3, so I patiently waited.
The update completed, I looked at my free bundled game Wii Sports and then looked at my lucky 'free' copy of Sonic Unleashed, so I tried Sonic Unleashed...yeah...anyway, Sonic was pretty entertaining as I got used to the nunchucks anlogue stick but it came to the point that my charged Wii-mote had stopped working...
One hour later I decided to look on the Virtual Console and saw what was up for grabs and quite a few N64 games such as Lylat-Wars (Starfox 64, baby!) took to my liking, but alas, once again, like many services, my Maestro wasn't accepted (Thats Steam, XBLM and PC World now). So no VC games for me yet. I Looked on the Wii-Ware channel and saw quite a few titles that I would indeed be interested in, Bomberman Blast comes to mind, half of the ones I really wanted aren't due for release yet, quickly looked at the Channel Shop and thought it was right cheeky to charge me for a webbrowser and went back to the Wii's main menu.
Then I looked in the box and saw my copy of 'Wii Sports' that I ignored earlier for the sake of playing a platformer which was kindly given to me by fate. Inserting Wii Sports in, I decided to first play 'Bowling', turns out that I found the bowling game actually pretty addictive, next I had a go at 'Baseball', which I miserably failed at due to being British and only played Cricket and Rounders in PE at highschool and was even below par in that, Tennis which I was quite good at and reminded me of the classic 'Anna-Whatsherface Smash Court Tennis' on PSone. Back to bowling for a bit (told you I found it addictive, at this point I discovered my Wii-Mote was making the motion sound effects like the TV did, that's AWESOME!) and then I had a pretty good game of Golf and then I found my new addiction other than bowling...Boxing, which was basically a small section of Punch-Out! But hey, I'm not complaining and then...yeah, then I discovered alarmingly I had the 'Wii Sports age' of...73, well, I personally found this a little disheartning seeing how I'M ACTUALLY ONLY 22, shunned it off and went bowling again.
All in all, I enjoyed the Wii. I can see it primarily being great just to do something to get off my backside for maybe and hour or two and play some motion based mini-games by myself or with friends, which I actually have NO complaints about. I'm looking forward to get more Wii games, because I never realised how actually cheap most secondhand Wii games are (Boom Blox - £10 nearly everywhere) and even brand new games are compared to the prices of PS3 and 360 games, even PSP games.
Well, there you go, I enjoyed playing my brand new Wii today, will it get old?
I don't know, probably not, if it does, its my secondary rather cool looking Gamecube system which I can play Mario Party 6 on, but I don't think it will actually because I think that potentially, if Nintendo wanted to at GDC or E3, they could easily make gamers focus on the Wii again. Nothing I've played so far on the Wii has moved as smoothly as flying in PS3's Warhawk with Sixaxis enabled, but maybe Motion-Plus will improve the already pretty accurate motion controls more.
Not to say that the Wii is my favorite console of the the three (That's still PS3) anyway, any suggestion for games, except the obvious (SMG, SSBBM, Zelda, MK) feel free to mention providing they are fairly cheap in the secondhand market, I'll even have a look in at any shovelware mentioned providing it actually has a degree of 'so bad its good' level of fun. I love platformers, puzzle, minigame based games like Mario Party and quirky games, fire away folks.
PS
Oh yeah, going to test the Wii with my parents on Sunday, call me strange, but I've been waiting to get my mum to play a videogame with me for what seems to be eternity. Lets see how that goes.
The Nintendo Switch is on track to surpass the Nintendo Wii in lifetime sales. 101.63 million – that is the total number of Nintendo Wii consoles sold since the system’s release in 2006. Yes, that is an insane amount of units that the big N was able to move. What is even more astounding is the number of Nintendo Switches that have sold to date. The Switch is currently sitting in the #3 spot for lifetime overall Nintendo console sales and is on its way to surpassing the Wii.
These comparisons are always dangerous. The Switch has everything to overcome the 3DS + Wii U combination (if you haven't already).
But directly comparing the Wii U to the Switch is wrong. It replaces all the company's devices.
The comparison was not made to the Wii U, it was stating the total sales numbers of the Switch and the total sales numbers of the Wii and how, based on the timeframe that each were available for, it appears that the Switch will surpass the Wii in total sales numbers.
Nintendo’s only systems that outsold their predecessors are DS, Wii & Switch
Sega’s only system that outsold it’s predecessor is the Genesis
Sony’s only systems that outsold their predecessors are PS2 & PS4
Microsoft’s only system that outsold its predecessor is the Xbox 360
Guess you forgot Virtual Boy existed. Nintendo 64 sold more than Virtual Boy.
The Gameboy sold more than the Game & Watch line of handhelds. As did the NES when compared to the Color TV-Game Series. Game & Watch was Nintendo's first handheld and the Color TV-Game Series was it's first home console. Both of Nintendo's follow ups to those performed way better.
Be careful with the hope of Star Fox. The one on GC sucked. However I agree. I would love a new one =D. Another Zelda would be nicer for me though. make sure and pick up twilight princess. One of my fav games ever hands down top 5.
After playing so many next-gen games I think even a 5 would be overrated for Wii's graphics.
i might get a wii soon, just for Virtual Console.
i wholeheartedly agree...
the Wii isn't the best console ever... but it has some good games (i won't list the obvious Ninty games... but you should check out games like No More Heroes and Rayman Raving Rabbids) and the waggle stuff is more than a gimmick IMO... a whole new way of playing and enjoying gaming and on that front... the Wii succeeds
it's feature-poor... but i did like some nice touches like the Opinion channel and the photo jigsaw thing (definitely should be a feature in the next update for the PS3's Photo Gallery thing)
Like you probably do, I mostly game on my PS3. But make sure to purchase Metroid Prime 3, even if you never played one. That game is simply one of the best games of all time. So amazing. I could give you a list of reasons why, but I encourage you to find out yourself. Do some research on it and see for yourself. I only wish I had never played it so that I could have the joy of playing it for the first time. Make sure to check Super Mario Galaxy as well, its absolutely fantastic.