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Millennium · Nov 30, 2006, 12:11 AM

Originally Posted by goMac

The Wii controller has gyroscopes, therefore it can tell how it is tilting.

Actually, it doesn't use gyroscopes. It does have accelerometers and tilt sensors, of course, but it uses different technology.

Millennium · Nov 30, 2006, 12:12 AM

Originally Posted by MindFad

Do the News and Forecast channels work for everyone? Mine have always said that the Wii needs an update, I do the update, says it doesn't need it, restart, and nothing happens. Are they just not ready yet?

At least as of yesterday, these two channels weren't ready yet. I haven't tried updating today.

goMac · Nov 30, 2006, 12:18 AM

The system update just said something about parental controls. No news or weather channels yet. Those are both waiting on the web browser.

I really want the web browser so I can do YouTube on an actual TV.

Dark Helmet · Nov 30, 2006, 12:33 AM

Originally Posted by Millennium

At least as of yesterday, these two channels weren't ready yet. I haven't tried updating today.

No I talked to Nintendo. Weather comes 5ish december and news 20ish January.

zro · Nov 30, 2006, 12:38 AM

Us.Wii.com -- The Global Wii Experience Website in English

Forecast Channel - Coming December 20
News Channel - Coming January 27

goMac · Nov 30, 2006, 12:58 AM

I think I've verified that when you run a Gamecube disc in the Wii it reverts to the Gamecube OS. I ran a Gamecube disc in my Wii and the entire Bluetooth subsystem in the Wii seems to have shut off. The controllers will no longer pair with the Wii, explaining why the classic controller won't work with Gamecube games right now.

legacyb4 · Nov 30, 2006, 01:50 AM

Tell me about it... even trying to score a pair on eBay at a reasonable price is impossible...

Originally Posted by itai195

Just getting extra controllers is taking forever.

Dark Helmet · Nov 30, 2006, 02:05 AM

Ok one thing Nintendo undisputedly ****ed up on is the component cables. Every store I talk to is frustrated they aren't getting any as everyone is asking for them. Everyone I know that wants/got a Wii is wanting to use component.

They did the same thing with the cube except it took a year for them to ship widespread.

itai195 · Nov 30, 2006, 03:29 AM

crap, double post

itai195 · Nov 30, 2006, 03:30 AM

Originally Posted by legacyb4

Tell me about it... even trying to score a pair on eBay at a reasonable price is impossible...

You can order them direct from Nintendo online if you're looking for an alternative to eBay.

Hawkeye_a · Nov 30, 2006, 04:18 AM

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

No I talked to Nintendo. Weather comes 5ish december and news 20ish January.

Id hate to be the guy who took your call. poor guy would have to listen to u whine about everything Nintendo

icruise · Nov 30, 2006, 06:52 AM

I decided to download a couple of Virtual Console games, because I wanted to see how they were. In particular, I was intrigued by a blog entry I read that indicated that the Virtual Console games had been optimized so that they would look a lot better than the original games on an HDTV. And I had thing classic controller just sitting here unused, too...

Anyway, I thought the best way to test this would be to download some things that I already have in other forms, so I chose Zelda (NES) and Mario 64 (N64). First of all, the Wii store charges tax on your Wii points, so 2000 points actually cost me $21.50. That's pretty lame, since it means that getting the physical card from someplace like Amazon is cheaper than just using your credit card. The downloads were surprisingly short and were accompanied by a cute progress bar of Mario collecting coins. Each game comes with a nice little online guide explaining the controls and so forth.

I don't have a functioning NES anymore and I don't know where my copy of Zelda has gotten to, but I do have Zelda on the Gamecube pack-in disk that includes the first 4 Zelda games. So I tried comparing that version of Zelda (played in the Wii) with the VC version. I can't say that I saw a huge difference between the two. The colors did seem different, but I can't say which is better. In terms of clarity of the graphics, I didn't see a big difference, although I wonder how component cables would affect the situation. I will say, though, that playing the game either with the classic controller or just the wiimote turned sideways was way more comfortable than playing it with the gamecube controller.

Mario 64 was a much bigger difference. When I first started up the VC version, I wasn't that impressed. It seemed more or less like I remembered it and I wasn't really seeing the improvement in resolution/clarity that I had read about. Then I fired up the Nintendo 64. Whoa! The Nintendo 64 looks like crap on my HDTV, but I didn't really realize it until I had something like this to compare it to. (Of course, I don't play much N64 anymore, but I had tried it out a few times since getting the TV). There was a lot of noise in the picture -- it looked like there were insects buzzing around Mario's body. The VC version wasn't completely free of jaggies of course (the text looks especially bad in this regard) but overall it looks just great on my TV. It's not exactly a "I'm seeing this game in a whole new light" kind of experience like you might get when playing a game in a higher resolution -- it's more like the VC version allows me to experience the game like I remember it being, while the actual N64 looks terrible. And the N64's controller is torture to use compared to the classic controller. The classic controller's analog sticks seem a little loose to me, but overall it's pretty nice. I think I prefer it to the gamecube controller, but it's not a huge difference.

I also tried backing up the VC games to an SD card. Zelda took about 2 minutes to copy its 22 blocks of data, while Mario 64 took maybe 7 minutes to copy 90 blocks. That's longer than either of them took to download, so I don't know what's taking so long.

Anyway, I'm sufficiently impressed with the quality of the N64 emulation that I will definitely be on the lookout for other titles to come. The NES games seem overpriced in many cases -- charging $5 across the board for these games seems a little odd. Is Soccer or Pinball the equal of Zelda or Donkey Kong? Still, I'll probably get some stuff like Super Mario Bros. Even though I can play these in emulation (even on my PSP), there's something about having them on a real TV that is different. In short, VC is pretty good. We just need more titles.

starman · Nov 30, 2006, 09:25 AM

I'd love to see the old Star Wars Rogue Squadron games from the N64 come to the Wii using VC.

Dark Helmet · Nov 30, 2006, 09:53 AM

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Id hate to be the guy who took your call. poor guy would have to listen to u whine about everything Nintendo

Actually it was a woman and I was very polite even thought I was calling because my Wii had two physical defects out of the box and needed an exchange.

zro · Nov 30, 2006, 10:24 AM

Originally Posted by starman

I'd love to see the old Star Wars Rogue Squadron games from the N64 come to the Wii using VC.

I wouldn't. Not after Roque Leader. Though they were fun at the time.

Hawkeye_a · Nov 30, 2006, 10:29 AM

Originally Posted by starman

I'd love to see the old Star Wars Rogue Squadron games from the N64 come to the Wii using VC.

love that genre and franchize. i'm very disappointed that factor5 is no longer making those games, and not on the Nintendo platform.

legacyb4 · Nov 30, 2006, 11:41 AM

Hey, thanks for the heads up. No indication of shipping dates, but better than being screwed on eBay!

Originally Posted by itai195

You can order them direct from Nintendo online if you're looking for an alternative to eBay.

Dark Helmet · Nov 30, 2006, 11:50 AM

Originally Posted by zro

I wouldn't. Not after Roque Leader. Though they were fun at the time.

Ya I was going to say the same. They started off well but the last GC game was the biggest stinker ever. After IGN's somewhat favorable review of Super Mario Sunshine and Rogue leader I never trusted them again.

Oh and starman... I tried the N64 Rogue leader again a few months after I got the gamecube and I couldn't even find myself able to play it as the framerate and trademark N64 fog was so high it made me ill. Goldeneye was equally disappointing that I think people are still dwelling on the memories of when they played it when it first came out not in the last few years.

Glad I still got all my old Nintendo systems so I don't have to buy the games again just for the odd time I want to play them. I pull out the SNES from time to time for my boyfriend but the N64 hasn't come out once since a month after the GC hit.

starman · Nov 30, 2006, 11:52 AM

My N64's in the garage under a bunch of boxes. If anything, I won't get around to pulling it out from there until the holidays, when I have time to make a mess

.

icruise · Nov 30, 2006, 12:28 PM

Supposedly the component cables are now available from Nintendo's online store (they were backordered before). I ordered one.

http://store.nintendo.com/

Choose "Parts Accessories & Manuals" and then "Wii."

Calimus · Nov 30, 2006, 12:42 PM

Originally Posted by icruise

It's not exactly a "I'm seeing this game in a whole new light" kind of experience like you might get when playing a game in a higher resolution -- it's more like the VC version allows me to experience the game like I remember it being, while the actual N64 looks terrible.

The reason Zelda looked the same and Mario 64 looked better is because it IS at a higher resolution(the n64 emulation that is). With 2d sprites, they can do anything to make them look crisper. With 3d games(n64) they can render at a higher res and reduce the "Jaggies" and everything looks a lot smoother. The textures will all be the same, but the edges of all the polygons will be a smoother line.

Here are some screenshots to compare:
Super Mario 64: N64 vs. Wii

It's more than just Antialiasing, you couldn't get that much smoothing of the jaggies with AA.

icruise · Nov 30, 2006, 12:50 PM

Yes, I realize that it's at a higher resolution, but what I was trying to convey was that when I saw it without the N64 to compare it to, I didn't realize how different it was.

When I played World of Warcraft, I started out on my PowerBook, which could barely handle it. Then I built my own gaming PC and was able to run it at much higher resolution and it seemed like a whole new game. I didn't quite get that impression when I first played the VC version of Mario 64, but when you compare the two the differences are striking. Thanks for the link, by the way.

Dark Helmet · Nov 30, 2006, 12:56 PM

"The new way of aiming has made the game a bit more difficult to get through than the 360 or PS3 versions, and the driving, well the driving is absolutely abysmal."

Call of Duty 3 Wii Impressions - Kotaku

Damn. Another FPS where the controls make things harder.

RAILhead · Nov 30, 2006, 12:56 PM

I just want to know where the all-knowing TETENAL is. Maybe he's busy playing a racing game on the Wii?

Calimus · Nov 30, 2006, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

"The new way of aiming has made the game a bit more difficult to get through than the 360 or PS3 versions, and the driving, well the driving is absolutely abysmal."

Call of Duty 3 Wii Impressions - Kotaku

Damn. Another FPS where the controls make things harder.

And right after that he says "Overall, though, I'm quite enjoying the experience." He also mentions he hasn't messed with the calibration & control settings the game offers.

Just because it's harder, doesn't mean it's worse. It's a new control scheme. The first time most of us tried playing quake or another FPS with a mouse we sucked also.

That said, I think it will take time before we see a developer really nail the control scheme for a Wii FPS.

Edit: Also, after reading most of the comments below, the majority seem to disagree with his assessment that it's harder(Saying it was too easy actually)

kman42 · Nov 30, 2006, 01:10 PM

Why are there two places for Miis (Plaza and Parade)? My friend and I registered each other and set our Miis to mingle and they show up in the Parade. We can then move them to the Plaza. If we send Miis to each other they show up in the Plaza automatically. It makes sense to me that you would have the Parade as a 'clean room' to prevent everyone's random Miis from cluttering your Plaza, but then why allow sent Miis to show up in the Plaza automatically?

kman

TETENAL · Nov 30, 2006, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by RAILhead

I just want to know where the all-knowing TETENAL is. Maybe he's busy playing a racing game on the Wii?

I'm not posting on this topic any more since most of you seem to be incapable to understand physics.
The Wii is released in Europe next Friday. If I can find a demo machine I will try it out.

kman42 · Nov 30, 2006, 01:31 PM

Another question. I added my friends console and it gave me the option of adding a Mii for his picture. Why doesn't it use one of his Miis instead? Wouldn't that make more sense?

kman

icruise · Nov 30, 2006, 01:38 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I'm not posting on this topic any more since most of you seem to be incapable to understand physics.
The Wii is released in Europe next Friday. If I can find a demo machine I will try it out.

The point we are trying to make is that... It works. You tilt the controller, your car moves. From what I have seen, it works well. What difference does it make how it works?

wallinbl · Nov 30, 2006, 01:46 PM

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet

"The new way of aiming has made the game a bit more difficult to get through than the 360 or PS3 versions, and the driving, well the driving is absolutely abysmal."

Call of Duty 3 Wii Impressions - Kotaku

Damn. Another FPS where the controls make things harder.

After playing Doom and Doom 2 for a while, I royally hated the addition of the mouse to the controls in Quake, and it made the game really hard for me. Does that mean the move to the mouse was a bad thing, or that I just needed to learn how to be better with the mouse? You can't really compare initial impressions with a new control scheme to years of experience with an old one. Of course the old one is easier for you - you have far more experience with it.

wallinbl · Nov 30, 2006, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

I'm not posting on this topic any more since most of you seem to be incapable to understand physics.
The Wii is released in Europe next Friday. If I can find a demo machine I will try it out.

It's not about understanding physics. It's about the fact that thousands of people are doing it and finding that it works and we're comparing that against one guy on an Internet message board saying the physics don't make sense to him.

Dakar² · Nov 30, 2006, 02:01 PM

NSFWish anti-Wii gif

I just thought it was funny.

TETENAL · Nov 30, 2006, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by icruise

What difference does it make how it works?

It's just nice to know how stuff works.

It's good to know that it works reasonably well at least for arcade style racing games. I'm looking forward to try it out personally.

RAILhead · Nov 30, 2006, 02:18 PM

Dude, did you even look at the vid links I posted? HOW CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE RACING GAME VIDS?

BlackGriffen · Nov 30, 2006, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

You have never been able to prove me wrong, and you can't now, because I have science on my side.

OK, again. For racing games you hold the controller horizontally, so the IR sensing is no longer working. Now the Wii remote measures orientation and motion with its non-optical sensors. It measures orientation by the direction of gravitation and it measure motion by acceleration. You can never measure motion itself without a fixed reference point. If you'd move the sensor in one direction at a constant speed it wouldn't register anything. Only a change in speed is registered as acceleration, so the remote registers motion. The orientation is registered by the direction of gravitation. However, physically gravitation is exactly the same thing as acceleration! If you close your eyes (like the Wii remote does when you hold it horizontally) you can not tell the difference between whether you are sitting still on earth or whether you are sitting in a rocket in space that is accelerating at 9.81 m/s². And in the same way the Wii remote can not distinguished whether it is held almost 90° to the left or held horizontally and rapidly moved to the right. It just feels the same. So whenever you make quick steering movements with the Wii remote it must be confused. That makes precise steering impossible. Qed.

If you only look at the instantaneous signal, sure. There's a real problem with your assessment, though - do you know of anyone who can move any of their body parts, without moving their body overall, at anything like a constant acceleration near 1 g for long? The solutions, then, are simple. One would be to look at the derivative of the accelerations - since the gravitational field is surgeless and any controller motion the player makes will certainly involve surge, it's possible to disentangle g from the user input. A simpler way is to just integrate up the orientation data using a long time average as a baseline. They could also take advantage of the fact that if a person is applying an acceleration of a similar magnitude as g, then it will be very short. Any motion that lasts a long time will have small acceleration involved, so g can be disentangled from them, too. Or something like that.

Long story short - inertial navigation is a solved problem. You can read about it in Feynmann's tips of physics back when it was relatively new - in the fifties. You just need to examine the signal more than instantaneously to get the answer you need.

icruise · Nov 30, 2006, 09:38 PM

Play-Asia has now said that the Wii is officially region-locked. Accessories will work with any system, though, aside from the point cards.

To make it short, Nintendo Wii™ consoles and software are region encoded. We have tested a large variety of games from different publishers on our systems and are confident to confirm that a full region lockout exists. This applies to Nintendo Wii™ as well as Gamecube™ software alike.

Gamoe · Dec 1, 2006, 06:49 AM

Originally Posted by icruise

The classic controller works with everything but GC games. The GC controller works with everything. Gabriel said that this was a plot by Nintendo to get people to buy Wii games instead of GC games. I disagreed.

Well, it's a theory anyway. I may be completely off-base. But, regardless, I would have appreciated a more integrated/compatible solution. I do still think, though, that at some point Nintendo plans to release GameCube titles via the VC.

Originally Posted by Chuckit

You could get a WaveBird, though, if you want wireless.

That's what I did, and so far I'm pretty happy with the setup, though Classic controller compatibility would have been nice.

Millennium · Dec 1, 2006, 07:18 AM

Originally Posted by Gabriel Morales

Well, it's a theory anyway. I may be completely off-base. But, regardless, I would have appreciated a more integrated/compatible solution. I do still think, though, that at some point Nintendo plans to release GameCube titles via the VC.

Actually, I doubt this. Although GameCube discs don't have as much capacity as a standard DVD, they do have more capacity than the Wii's internal flash memory can hold. Not every GameCube game is likely to use all that capacity, but enough do that you couldn't download them. The Wii Store doesn't let you save directly to an SD card, so many GameCube games would be too big for the Wii to hold.

Gamoe · Dec 1, 2006, 07:32 AM

Originally Posted by Millennium

Actually, I doubt this. Although GameCube discs don't have as much capacity as a standard DVD, they do have more capacity than the Wii's internal flash memory can hold. Not every GameCube game is likely to use all that capacity, but enough do that you couldn't download them. The Wii Store doesn't let you save directly to an SD card, so many GameCube games would be too big for the Wii to hold.

Ah, but couldn't that be remedied with a simple update? And what about USB mass storage support for hard drives (and flash drives)? The capability is there, it just hasn't been activated (or written for) yet. I'm not saying this year or even the next, but within the console's lifetime.

Hawkeye_a · 08:00 AM

I just fired up Metroid prime 2 on my GCN.... and i really dont know why that Marvel games looks so bad on the Wii. i mean in MP2, the textures are very crisp, even when ur standing right up against a wall, you sorta notice the polygons every now n then, but it looks so much better than some of the games making their way to the Wii for launch.

The best looking games seem to be.... Zelda, Raving rabbids and Excite Truck imo.

Millennium · Dec 1, 2006, 07:52 AM

Originally Posted by Gabriel Morales

Ah, but couldn't that be remedied with a simple update? And what about USB mass storage support for hard drives (and flash drives)? The capability is there, it just hasn't been activated (or written for) yet. I'm not saying this year or even the next, but within the console's lifetime.

I don't know if 'simple' is the word I'd use. While it could be done through software, it would require some fairly major changes to the Wii's user interface, which pretty much depends on there being a single location for storage.

wallinbl · Dec 1, 2006, 08:24 AM

I'll grant you that I'm not all that far into Zelda, but how much longer do I have to play as the wolf? I really don't care for controlling and fighting with the wolf and would prefer to go back to human as soon as possible.

Millennium · Dec 1, 2006, 08:30 AM

Originally Posted by wallinbl

I'll grant you that I'm not all that far into Zelda, but how much longer do I have to play as the wolf? I really don't care for controlling and fighting with the wolf and would prefer to go back to human as soon as possible.

There are four extended periods in the game when you must play as the wolf: before each of the first three dungeons, and before going to the Sacred Grove for the first time.

After your first trip to the Sacred Grove, you will gain the ability to switch between human and wolf form at will (almost: you can't switch when anyone is looking at you, but you can run behind people and switch then). There will be times when you'll need to use the wolf for a short time, such as when fighting Poes, but other than this you can stay human with no problems.

I do recommend using wolf form to fight the big shadow creatures that guard portals, however. Only the wolf can use the Circle O' Pain, and without that it's almost impossible to get multiple shadow creatures at once.

RAILhead · Dec 1, 2006, 11:09 AM

Too lazy to look on my own right now: can the Wii play GameCube games out of the box, or is that part of the Virtual Console thingie?

Millennium · Dec 1, 2006, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by RAILhead

Too lazy to look on my own right now: can the Wii play GameCube games out of the box, or is that part of the Virtual Console thingie?

It plays them out of the box. Just put the disc in the slot (aim toward the middle of the slot) and it works fine.

The big catch here is that there seems to be a full set of GameCube hardware inside the machine, and it doesn't seem to be able to access the Wii side of things. The Wiimotes stop responding, which is why the Classic Controller doesn't work. You can't save or load games using anything but GameCube memory cards, though you can later use the Wii data management system to transfer saved files around as normal. Network functionality doesn't work at all, though only two games ever used that functionality anyway.

This said, thus far almost all GameCube accessories seem to work normally. The big exceptions are the Game Boy Player and the network adapter, since the Wii doesn't have the necessary ports to hook them in. The GBP is the main reason I'll be keeping my Cube around; some of those games just plain work better with a TV screen.

RAILhead · Dec 1, 2006, 11:33 AM

That's good (re: games). So I CAN'T use my GC controller -- I need to buy one for the Wii that lets me play the GC games?

wallinbl · Dec 1, 2006, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by RAILhead

That's good (re: games). So I CAN'T use my GC controller -- I need to buy one for the Wii that lets me play the GC games?

Actually, you *have* to use the GC controller - none of the Wii controllers will work on GC games. There are four GC controller ports on the side of the Wii.

goMac · Dec 1, 2006, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by Millennium

The big catch here is that there seems to be a full set of GameCube hardware inside the machine, and it doesn't seem to be able to access the Wii side of things.

This isn't the case. The Wii uses the same processor architecture and video subsystem as the Gamecube, so it's more analogous to a Mac dual booting OS X to run new software, and OS 9 to run old software. In the same way the Wii has both the Gamecube and Wii operating systems loaded on it.

The only issue is the Gamecube OS has no bluetooth drivers. This could be patched later.

Millennium · Dec 1, 2006, 12:22 PM

Originally Posted by RAILhead

That's good (re: games). So I CAN'T use my GC controller -- I need to buy one for the Wii that lets me play the GC games?

You've got it backwards: you have to use the GC controller, and you can't use the classic controller.

icruise · Dec 1, 2006, 12:31 PM

I think the confusion arose from the term "classic controller" -- which is the name of the SNES-styled attachment that Nintendo sells for the Wii remote.

Originally Posted by goMac

This isn't the case. The Wii uses the same processor architecture and video subsystem as the Gamecube, so it's more analogous to a Mac dual booting OS X to run new software, and OS 9 to run old software. In the same way the Wii has both the Gamecube and Wii operating systems loaded on it.

The only issue is the Gamecube OS has no bluetooth drivers. This could be patched later.

That may be a good analogy, and I think there's about as much chance of Nintendo releasing such a patch as there is of Apple patching OS 9 at this point.