I want a Wii

....and a balance board. Nominally so I can improve my (still not
quite right) balance, and so F can do her yoga stuff. But really so I
can play the snowboarding game.

Anyway, some questions:
- Amazon and John Lewis both claim to have them in, and at what seem
to be fairly keen prices. Should I look anywhere else?
- Both sites propose I get an extra controller. Is this because the
base console just comes with one controller, and you need two for two
player games?
- anything else I need to think about?

[It's obviously Ask-ukrm-day]

 

you'll struggle to have a piss at Amazon but the bogs in JL are usually
pretty good

 

That's pretty cool actually. Obviously nothing like real snowboarding
but a good laugh, especially when drunk.

Not really, tbh. Nintendo are pretty tight on margins so there's
not much discounting and demand also helps keep it around RRP.

See if you can get any voucher deal; I think JL do a discount
for your first order which may be valid against a Wii. Could mean
a tenner discount or so.

Yes. It's more fun if you can play tennis against someone else who
is just as incompetent. The controller retails at £30 but the trick
here is to buy the "Wii Play" game that comes with the controller
for £35. You're basically getting the controller and another 10
pretty good games for an extra fiver.

Get a cheap "recharge station" set off ebay. These replace the
battery covers with a sealed battery pack and cover and come with
a charge stand. This uses the USB port on the back of the Wii to
recharge the batteries. Just plop the controllers into the stand
and they'll recharge for your next play. I think I paid less than
a tenner, so it's worth it if you don't like buying lots of
batteries. Something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180357939752
The 2800mAh batteries will be fine; same as we have.

Depending on your view of all things of the High Seas, I've been
told that this little gadget is very easy to fit and use.
http://www.wii-chip.co.uk/osc/product_info.php?products_id=100
Armed with that and a decent binaries source, you'll just need
a big stack of blank DVDs to keep you going. You can also add
homebrew software to play real DVDs on it as well, something
that the standard unit doesn't do but really should.

Other than that, it has wireless built in so you can connect
to your home network (no extra dongles required). You'll need
to purchase the Opera browser for it, but I think it's worth
the £5 it costs. The Beeb have put out a special Wii edition
of the iPlayer so it works pretty well. There are also a whole
load of sites dedicated to flash games (which work fine in the
Opera browser) for the Wii so you're opening up to a whole load
of extra (but simple) games through that too. Plus your usual
internet junk. Oh, you might want a USB keyboard too, but I'm
sure you'll have one of those anyway.

 

Yes.

#Don't believe da hype.

Great for young kids but you'll find it
tedious and annoying after a mornings use.

 

<snip reams of good advice>

Many thanks for that, Ant - just what I was looking for.

 

It's a lot of fun, even if the thing said I was a fat bastard.

 

Amazing perspicacity for a machine.

 

Heretic!

 

What Ant said, mostly. The extra games that come with Wii Play are
absolutely appalling so if you can't find a copy, just buy a standalone
controller. You'll probably want to also buy a second nunchuk, which
most people probably overlook.

The Shaun White snowboarding game is quite good. So, much to my
surprise, is Family Ski - it's a lot more twee but quite a good chuckle.
Don't expect to be able to use the balance board two-player, mind.

For extra comedy points, get Mario Kart Wii. It's legend when played
online.

 

I'll second that, alhough many of them (well, the one I bought and
another one I looked at) just come with a couple of NiMH AAA cells and
a new backplate. So you can swap them round if you need to charge them
up for any other purposes, IYSWIM.

Oooh, mebbe I'll have to look into this again. Last time I looked
(over a year back) the perceived wisdom was that web browsing on it
wasn't yet a viable option. Do you need to by Opera in a shop, or can
it be downloaded directly?

 

Once you've connected the Wii to t'internet, you can use the "Wii Shop
Channel" which allows you to download new "channels" (ie, games and
apps)
into the internal memory blocks of the Wii.

To purchase the (non-free) Channels you need to use Wii Points.
Channels
vary in points (price) but you can only buy Wii Points in chunks. I
think
the minimum you can purchase is 1,000 points. Opera cost me 500 points
when I bought it a while back, but I doubt it has changed since then.
The only problem is that you buy 1,000 points and spend 500 so you
have
500 left over. I donated mine to my old man so he could also purchase
the browser, but there are some old games you can blow the rest on.

The reason Nintendo use "Wii Points" is so that the shop is universal
from localised currency. This does mean that you can shop around for
your Wii Points as you can buy them from plenty of different places
like Tesco or Amazon or even ebay if you want to risk it!
Google says that 7DayShop is cheapest at 8.95 for 1,000 points:
http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=106027&r=G
I've used 7DayShop loads of times, so no issues with giving them
your money. You might get it cheaper if you buy them from another
zone, but I'm not sure if they're coded to be region locked.

As for Opera itself, it's pretty good. It will do most things that
your average browser can do. I think it suffers where some of the
streaming video sites insist you need the latest version of Flash
to play them, but then I get that on my iPhone too. Most of the
major sites work well, and the Beeb even have a version of the
iPlayer that is optimised for the Wii, both in video codec and
in screen size terms.

While it won't replace a laptop/netbook, it's a great way of
getting t'internet on your tv if you don't have a HTPC or want
to faff about connecting up cables to a laptop, etc.

 

Weird. I simply bought 1000 points online from Nintendo using the Wii
itself and they cost me 7 quid.

Though, of course, prices may have gone up.

 

that was the only game I liked on the Wii when we had one. We got
bored with the novelty pretty quickly, and traded it in @ Game[1]

I've gone back to my 360 now, and the kids have a PS3 each.

 

Check our your local Game, CeX or The-Other-One-I've-Forgotten. Any of
the places that do trade-ins usually have a few perfectly good
examples of all the consoles, for *much* cheaper than new (I'm pretty
sure our local Game is punting out pre-owned Wiis + one game for about
£70.

 

Yes, but consider if that's going to happen, or are you going to be
playing Wii Fit and snowboarding all the time, in which case, a 2nd
controller is obsolete.

It is useful though if you want to play the tennis/bowling stuff, which
can be laugh after a few drinks.

I don't bother with a power pack as I power off the Wii when it's not in
use, so wouldn't get any benefit. I simply use AA rechargeables.

The Wii Fit balance exercises can be useful, but the "fit" part seems a
bit much. I think the only real cardio stuff is the jogging mode, which
doing that on the spot is a bit pants. OK if you've got room to run
around the lounge though. I quite like the yoga, some of the muscle
workouts and a couple of the balance games.

The snowboarding game is OK, but despite all the praise, the control
isn't totally realistic. I actually had to dig the manual out because
the on-screen character just wasn't responding to what I was putting
through the board.

The voice acting is a little tedious too. Too much "dude", "what up",
"props" and "my bad" for my liking.

However, getting over that and the slightly irritating menu system, the
game can be fun once you crack the control. I've only borrowed it from
a nephew, and really am not bothered that he wants it back.

Overall, the Wii + Balance Board is suprisingly good fun and clever as a
complete package and I'm glad I got one.

 

Yeah, it's not really about CV fitness, but for Neal, as it was for
me, it could be of tremendous benefit as a recovery tool, showing up,
as it does, area where you're not balanced L-R and F-B, and those when
doing certain types of movements. I'd definitely recommend it to him.
Indeed ISTR I did just that last month when we were skiing.

Same with the skiing ones. There is a vague similarity in the inputs
you give, but it's far too sensitive, and that sensitivity doesn't
vary depending on speed or steepness as it does in real life. So a bit
of fun, yes, but not much more.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Scraggy

LOL! I like it.

Mrs WUN shall have one.

--
Wicked Uncle Nigel - "He's hopeless, but he's honest"

I have already made the greatest contribution to the fight against climate
change that I can make: I have decided not to breed. Now quit bugging me and
go and talk to the Catholics.

 

It's a good point and I can see it being very useful for that.

I find the skiing slalom on the Fit game more fun that the snowboarding
one, but I borrowed Family Ski from a friend and decided it was a kids
game. The interactions with the characters just seemed geared up for
children and I couldn't get any fun from simply "skiing" one place to
another.

 

Yeah, we found the same. Not had it out in months. Then again, the ski
season's been a good one, and there's still one more weekend[1] to go,
so why would we?

[1] Last weekend the snow was _excellent_, spring-like, but with a
cool wind keeping a nice firm structure to it. The glacier runs at
~3000m were pretty boring, but the run down to Stand (2400m) and the
four or five open runs down to 2000m were all great. The run back to
the gondala at Truebsee (1800m) was also still in great shape, and the
off-piste in all areas was holding up v. well indeed.

Anyone wanting a last blast would be welcome to join us this coming
weekend ;-)