About Wii Controller: Wiimote

There’s no doubt that Nintendo Wii has the most distinctive controller of any console of all time. Known as the Wiimote, it more looks a lot like a TV remote control than a typical games paddle. At first glance it seems like a very easy device with no many buttons, apparently too few to effectively play modern games with. First impressions are very misleading. The Wiimote has movement sensors inside it, meaning that merely waving the controller in the air is a means of input in itself. The Wiimote also features force feedback, meaning actions in the game can cause it to growl for a more immersive emotion. It also has its own speaker, permitting for a depth of sound never before heard on any console. Yeah!

Qualified PC gamers will know that the only technique to control certain types of games is using the mouse. Up until now games consoles haven't been capable to contend with their ungainly controllers, most remarkably on first-person shooter (FPS) and real-time strategy (RTS) games. The Wiimote is the only controller for a console which can match and even exceed the effectiveness of a mouse.

The Wii is not all about games though. When powered on the Wii interface will include Wii Channels, a gateway to interactive features and using the Internet. Sound’s great. The Wiimote is a spontaneous position device suited well for this function as well. When needed the Wiimote can be joined with a second device to seize in your other hand. This second device features an analog stick and its own motion sensors that are autonomous from the main Wiimote. This is effect gives the user '2 hands' in the game, allowing for great ways of interaction.

This is the Wiimote linked to the analog stick 'nunchuck'. They're wireless other than the cable that connects them together. Powered by 2 AA batteries, up to 60 hours of usage is feasible. To sustain backwards compatibility with elder consoles the Wii also comes with a classic style game pad. Additional good news is the Wii also has sockets to connect a standard Gamecube controller, which is the easiest controller I've practiced so far.

Game Preview: Super Smash Bros. Brawl!

It's really hard to believe! But it's been nine years since the original Super Smash Bros. conveyed some of the most iconic Nintendo characters together for frantic battles, and approximately seven years since its sequel Super Smash Bros. Melee was released. Maybe even harder still to believe--and a evidence to the series' reputation and longevity--is that these games are still being played faithfully to this day. But no matter whether you're a diehard Smash Bros. fanatic or a neophyte brawler, you'll be satisfied to know that Super Smash Bros. Brawl includes a plethora of remarkable characters, features, and game modes, and is more easily reached and fun than ever before.

For the inexperienced, Smash Bros. is a multiplayer-centric series of fast-paced 2D combating games that features a cast of characters from all over the Nintendo universe. If you've ever established yourself quarrelling with a friend about whether or not Mario could beat Link in a one-on-one match, Brawl is the game that will let you reconcile the issue once and for all (the answer of course is that Kirby would eat them both). Characters such as Ike from Fire Emblem, Meta Knight from Kirby, Fox McCloud from Star Fox, Lucas from the unreleased-in-the-US Mother 3 (Earthbound 2), Pikachu from Pokémon, and many more are all on the roster in Brawl, boosting its size up to an impressive 35 total characters--14 of which are concealed and must be unlocked. For the first time, the list of visitors includes third-party, non-Nintendo characters such as Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog, and all of them bring their own signature fighting styles and moves to the game.

Smash Bros. has constantly been one of the most accessible fighting games on the market because of the effortlessness of its controls, and Brawl is no dissimilar. There are fundamentally only two attack buttons (one for normal attacks and one for special moves), and depending on which method you tilt your control stick when you hit them, they can create a variety of effects that include the ostensible "smash" attacks. In the interests of user responsiveness, Brawl recommends four potential control schemes, which guarantees that everyone can play either way they like; Wii Remote and Nunchuck, Wii Remote alone, Classic Controller, and GameCube Controller are all regularly symbolized. Each of these methods are similarly feasible, and fans of Brawl's antecedent will be pleased to know that the GameCube controls remain unmovable.

Combat includes up to four players scuffling on video game-themed stages. The goal is to bang your enemies out of the arena with one of the abovementioned smash attacks. The quantity of damage each character has continued is calculated in a percentage, and the higher this percentage is, the farther he or she flies when hit. Battles are fast-paced, frenzied, fun, and often shameful orgies of chaos, which makes Brawl a perfect party game. But just because the game's mechanics are so basic compared to traditional fighters doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of profundity to be found for those willing to invest the time.

All of the characters have their own strengths and weaknesses, and learning how to defend yourself while enchanting advantage of your opponents' flaws goes a long way toward protecting a victory. There can be a shocking amount of strategy involved, from knowing when and how to assault to make sure that the terrain of the sometimes over-the-top levels works for you rather than against you. But all that said, Brawl is an amazingly well-balanced game in which even a brand-new player can come away the victor against a hard-bitten veteran.

All through combat, a variety of types of items will seed on the battlefield for use by the first player to reach them. Some, such as the beam sword, are disgusting in nature and enhance your attack competences, while others are healing and will lower your damage meter. Many of these items are from the different games the characters originate from, such as the fire flower and the super mushroom from Super Mario Bros. Even though a lot of them have been attributed in the previous Smash Bros. games, many new ones appear in Brawl, including the superspicy curry, which creates your character respire fire for a time. Also worthy of a mention are the various support trophies, which summon non-playable characters such as Tingle from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker or the 8-bit racers from Excitebike to help or hinder you. Some things--especially the hammer, bob-omb, and warp star--could be measured game-breaking due to their abilities to impose fatal wounds practically all of the time, but these items and any others can be toggled off in the options menu before a match starts.

In reality, customizable is the name of the game, given that a wide diversity of parameters can be attuned when contributing in the special brawl mode. Gravity, fighter size, and game speed are just a few of the options, with some of the more bizarre possibilities being whether or not your characters are made of metal (which makes them much heavier and thus harder to KO) or are practically undetectable. Both special brawl matches and regular battles let you modify which items are permitted and how frequently items will spawn, what kinds of handicaps--if any--are in place, how stages are chosen, and more.

Teams can be formed if you so desire, and the types of brawls that can be started include timed matches in which the one who scores the most kills and the least deaths wins, stock matches in which the last player standing wins, and coin-collecting matches in which the number of coins everyone has when time is up determines the winner. Tournaments are a snap to set up due to a built-in mode that facilitates up to 32 players on a single Wii, and there's even a rotation mode to help up to 16 players figure out how to take turns. In short, there are factually dozens of ways that you can battle in your bed room.

Great News From Takao Sawako: Wii Fit at GDC!

You might not be expecting it based on its success in Japan, but Nintendo's Deputy GM in Entertainment Analysis & Development, Takao Sawano, was pretty unconvinced about Wii Fit's potential for success. Sawano headed up the team that developed Nintendo's Balance Board, which comes up to with the game. His lecture, "Wii Fit: Creating a Brand-New Interface for the Home Console," recorded the history of this enthusiastically expected product from setting up to release, and revealed some new features that European and American gamers can be expecting in their versions this spring.



Sawano kicked off the presentation with a warm greeting and a montage of ads for Wii Fit which are airing in Japan at this time, viewing both the game and people of all ages and demographics playing it. He asked the viewers, "after watching the ads, do you have an idea of what it's like? It has been two-and-a-half months since release, and sales still increase. As of last weekend, it has sold 1.4 million copies in Japan." He supposed those numbers to skyrocket when Wii Fit comes out in Europe on April 25th, with a Stateside release a few weeks later on May 19th. The next slide in his presentation demonstrated the Wii Fit package, which includes the Balance Board and the game software.

Even though the lecture definitely provided to attract the crowded room to pick up the game in May, the reason of the session was mostly to focus on the ideas that the new controller presents. The lecture broke down the Balance Board's history, features of the Wii Fit software, the specs and features of the Balance Board (mainly for developers thinking about using it in games), and promising future implementation of the Balance Board for applications other than fitness software."Even I look at it," Sawano said, "and I feel like it's something that should have come out as a part of the system. It looks as though it's inevitably linked with the hardware. Unfortunately, it wasn't borne of the classic business class textbook tale." He illustrated us a slide of iconic designer Shigeru Miyamoto's ideas for the Wii, well sooner than the console's release, and respectfully demanded that no one take pictures, in case Miyamoto-san get cross with him. Although the diagrams were in Japanese, there were parts that pointed out the future of Nintendo's casual titles. In one corner, there was a picture of a ping pong racket, fishing rod, and two remotes. Sawano said that this idea became Wii Play. A analogous diagram was below it with a tennis racket and a baseball. This idea became Wii Sports. The final diagram that Sawano pointed out was "The Health Pack."

The idea, Miyamoto told Nintendo staffers, was that he liked stepping on the scale every morning to ensure his weight. He considered that zooming in on body management and weight control with a playable scale would create a great game. The sentiment, according to Sawano, was not general. Among the questions that others asked Miyamoto: "Would you turn on your TV and system just to weight yourself? "Do you want to weigh yourself with everyone around?" "Can you get an accurate measure if you have your clothes on?" "Don't you have a scale in your bathroom that can do the same thing?"

Miyamoto's answer? "I have fun just weighing myself and collecting my weight data, so this idea is bound to lead to something interesting!" Sawano conceded along a few more encouraging words from the man behind Mario for miserable developers stuck in bad projects: "Developers must always approach their projects with the belief [that either] they're making a platinum hit or it'll be doomed."

Want to listen to MP3s or watch video on your Wii?

Winamp, the long-standing free media player for Windows, has just been updated to version 5.5 for Winamp's 10th anniversary. The update carries major revolutionizes to the player, as well as a new single-skin interface that sorts throughout albums, artists and songs, similar to iTunes.

What Wii owners will be most concerned with in this new update is Winamp Remote, a fresh free service that lets you to access the music and video files stored on your computer from any Internet web browser in the world, including the one on the my lovely console, Wii. Through the Wii Internet Channel's Opera web browser, you able to obtain advantage of this streaming service. Winamp has gone so far as to design a special Winamp Remote web interface specifically for web browsers on television screens.

This creates Winamp the easiest way to get media from your computer to our Nintendo Wii. All you require to do is download Winamp 5.5 (or higher), install the player and the Winamp Remote add-on to your Windows-based PC and make a Winamp account. After that, you able to access the Winamp Remote website from the Opera browser in the Wii, input your login information (you can use a keyboard for this now, thanks to the recent Internet Channel update), and have streaming access to all the music and video on our computer, or at least the folders on our computer that you particular as shareable in the Winamp Remote settings.

There are a diversity of ways to search through and sort your music. You can decide to search through music by albums (complete with album art) or artists. You can also search by typing the name of the file or song via a search box. Mostly, you have all the sorting and searching power on your Wii as you would as if you were using Winamp at your computer. That’s wonderful!

The playing interface is comparable to that of YouTube. It's a flash player that streams in a selected file, and the album art for that music file (if there is one) will show up in the video pane whereas the music plays. Off to the side there is a banner ad, but it's a small infuriation that can be unnoticed given the service to do this is totally free. You'll be capable to manage the volume level, pause, skip tracks forward or backward or view file information. From what I've sampled on from my computer, the audio excellence playing the music over the Internet and through the Wii's browser sounds pretty similar to the speakers on my computer. That's remarkable.

You able to even stream video from your computer to your Wii via the Internet. Once more, just like YouTube, picking a video from one of your folders will start a streaming playback via a flash player, even though it will begin playing instantly rather than buffering a little bit to make sure a smooth playback. With some of my smaller video files, the audio and video playback was incredibly high-quality. When I attempted to stream some of my larger files, though, the playback was choppy, though still tolerably watchable. The audio was also a little tattered, but not to the point where it would mess up it.

Obviously, since the files you are streaming to the Wii are placed on your computer, and these files must be routed throughout Winamp Remote via the Internet to your Wii browser, the quality you'll eventually get by using this process to play media on your Wii fully depends on the upload speed of your Internet connection. I attained the above outcome with a courteously fast upload speed on a cable Internet line. If you have a DSL connection with better upload speeds, you'll likely acquire better performance, particularly with the streaming video.

There are other orderly things the Winamp Remote interface provides that may make it worth your while to try it out. Even if you can't stream things to your Wii over your Internet connection, you may be capable to do so on your friend's Wii. Even on a different Wii browser (or any computer, for that matter), all you would require to do is login with your Winamp account information and you'll have access to the media on your computer, even if it's miles away. And if you and a friend both have Winamp Remote accounts, you'll be able to listen to each other's music—Winamp has completed it possible for friends to distribute their music and video libraries with each other. If you have more Winamp friends, you'll have more media accessible to you, all available on your Wii through the console's Internet browser.

For your attention, all of this is totally free, very simple to use, and takes only minutes to setup. If this sounds like a little you'd be interested in, you able to get all the particulars over at the

Winamp and Winamp Remote websites.

Introduce My Console: Nintendo Wii!

Why this great console is so cool??

Wii is not just a gaming console, it's a explanation to get together with your friends and family and have fun today's hottest and greatest games. Wii recommends legendary Nintendo franchises like Mario, Zelda and Metroid, as well as all new classics like Wii Sports and Wii Play. Create your own Mii great character to star in Wii games. Play friends online over Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection or utilize the Internet Channel to surf the net from your bed. You able even download classic Nintendo games using the Wii Shop Channel. Great isn’t it? Take a look around and see why your TV is not complete without Wii.

Hello, WiiLovers!

Do not hesitate! Please just read and play some great games! YEAH!!