Gamer's Perspective

After some pre-order confusion I have finally picked up my Nintendo Wii (packaged with Wii Sports) and a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. These are my initial impressions from the moment I took the box out of the bag.

To start, the box is much heavier than I imagined. It’s a relatively smallish box, styled much like the DS Lite box, in that it’s pretty plain and stark white with some graphics here and there. Upon opening the box, I was surprised to see two trays each numbered with little pictures of what comes in each tray, how very Apple of Nintendo. After thinking that Steve Jobs may secretly be working for Nintendo I removed Tray 1 from the box.

I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything packaged so nicely. It’s almost a shame I had to unpack it all…Almost. Tray one includes all the necessary booklets, with a trilingual instruction book, Nintendo Power leaflet, quick set-up instructions, Wiimote, nun chuck, batteries, sensor bar, and the Wii Sports disc. After lying it all out I decided to get out Tray 2 and see the whole spread before I went any further.

Tray 2 contains the real meat. The console itself. After picking it up, I see that this little thing is heavy! For something barely bigger than a DVD case it weighs a lot. They must jam pack it full of nifty doodads and hardware. Also included are standard RGB (the red, white and yellow cables) and the AC adapter. The AC plug is pretty hefty, but not nearly as humungous as the 360’s. The stand and two other clear pieces, which I haven’t figured out their purpose, were there too.

Setting the console up was easy with the quick instructions. I opted to place the sensor bar on the bottom of my TV just for looks, and it’s stuck on there good. Since I couldn’t find a pair of component cables, the regular ones are going to suffice for now. I also don’t have a good place to put the console since I wanted to stand it up, so it’s kind of awkward now, but I may deicide to move it, or give in and lay it on it’s side. Right now it’s okay, just not totally ideal.

I turned the system on using the power button on the Wiimote and the disc tray lets out a quick burst of bright blue light, which startled me at first, but in a good way. After some fine-tuning of settings I was let into the main menu for the Wii. I set up my Mii avatar and browsed around. I had some trouble connecting to the Internet, and from what I’ve heard; it’s picky on its routers. I’ll have fiddle around with IP addresses to connect, which isn’t a big deal, but I would have liked some easy connectivity.

The Wiimote is much more sensitive than I imagined, which isn’t a good thing nor a bad thing. You can adjust the sensitivity of it, but after a few minutes I had my bearings with it. For some reason I was inclined to use my left hand, though I am right-handed. We’ll see if I keep using it once I actually play some games, but I found this odd. I have average, but on the large side, sized hands and I thought it was a perfect fit. It is a really good size, weight and shape. It is odd at first, but so was the DS’s stylus and now that is second nature.

So far, I am thoroughly impressed with everything I’ve seen. I do wish Internet connectivity would have been an instant thing, but that has been the only flaw I’ve noticed. It seems to be a well built, sturdy, and overall totally sexy machine. While I realize the real stuff that matters are the games, the system itself is a definite A all around. Stay tuned for more impressions.

Andy Staats Gamer's Perspective

Want to talk about it? Click here to discuss in the Gamers’ Perspective Forums.