Pros: Most fun game system I've ever played on.
Cons: Controllers might run a pretty penny.
The bottom line: With its innovative gameplay, affordable price, and great games, this is the system to buy if you have to go to the next generation.
To whom it may concern at Nintendo,

I'll admit it, I had some doubts about your system when I heard about it. But can you blame me? Your odd marketing strategy (which seemed to consist of no marketing strategy whatsoever) coupled with the fact that you admitted you didn't have the graphical power to match the other two systems, not to mention that your entire system was hinging on the success of a controller, I was bound to have some doubts. However, I have played your system, and I'm sorry I ever doubted you. Please forgive me.

Michael Denny

That was the end of the apology, now on to the Wii, Nintendo's chance to make up for lost sales with the tragic fall of the Gamecube. Ok, technically, the Gamecube did pretty well, but was generally scorned by third party developers, and more importantly, gamers. Well, those crazy folks over at Nintendo have officially done it, and if this is their comeback effort, I can't wait to see what's next. But let's stay in the present shall we?

We've all heard about the Wii, and we've heard the promises about how it's going to change the landscape of gaming forever. Well, this reviewer is inclined to agree.

Where to start? Let me say this: I haven't been truly excited by a game system since the original Playstation hit shelves. Granted, I have almost all of them, but I think I was just trying to capture the excitement that I felt when I was kid, and never did. But by God, I feel like I'm twelve again when I play the Wii. It has truly brought the fun back into gaming.

First and foremost on everyone's mind is of course going to be the controller. Everyone figured it would work with games like Wii Sports, and sports games in general, as well as first person shooters with the simple point and shoot controls. But what about adventure games like Zelda. That was where I had the most doubts, as I didn't understand how a gimmicky controller could translate well into playing a "normal" game. Well, all doubts have been erased, as the controller plays incredibly well with Zelda. You'd think that the controller would limit your ability to actually control a game, with its minimal amount of buttons, but since so much of a game can be played with just a few flicks of the wrist, you'll never even think about the buttons. Also, to be extra gimmicky, the controller has a speaker that gives you random cues in certain games, but like I said, is really just more of a gimmick, and fairly useless.

Now on to the graphics. There's a certain website, and I won't mention its name, that has given the Wii undue flack for its "lack of graphical power." We've gotten spoiled. As I said in a previous review, graphics are nothing without imagination to back it up. The same applies to the Wii. Not to mention the Wii isn't exactly weak in the graphics department. From the research I've done, the most accurate way to describe the power of the Wii is to think of it as packing the punch of two Gamecubes. When you think about it, that's a pretty good chunk of power. All that considered, the graphics are just fine and dandy in my mind. While the Wii hasn't fully utilized what it can do yet, I look forward to what they'll do in the future, and with games like Zelda: Twilight Princess, I've seen all I need to see. The graphics amaze me, regardless of what people say.

Let's get to what you can expect if you decide to buy the Wii. I've found that, unlike another system, made by a company that rhymes with Nicrosoft, the Wii is amazingly simple to pick and play at any time. Whereas that other system had fairly complex menu controls, and I found myself confused at a few points, the Wii was hooked up in minutes. Really, the most complex part of getting your Wii set up will be sticking the motion detector to your TV, which isn't hard at all. Then you turn it on, and get started. The wireless capability works great, and we were "online" in no time. Granted, our news and forecast channels aren't up yet, but you can still shop for some of those classic games off the virtual console, with classic choices like Sonic the Hedgehog and Ecco the Dolphin, you'll have plenty to do. Also, you can create an avatar, called a Mii for yourself that plays in Wii Sports. Mine actually looks just like me I'm told, which means that my Mii is incredibly handsome.

Anyway, after the initial setup, my fiance and I popped in Wii Sports, and I was instantly having fun. You start to forget that the controller is just a controller, but rather an extension of your body, or a baseball bat, or a tennis racket, or boxing gloves, or a golf club. Even though Wii Sports is really more of a demo to give you a feel for the controller, and the graphics are simplistic, we still spent a good hour on it before we moved on to our other, deeper games.

Another great thing the Wii does is take games that are out on other systems, and makes them more fun. Take a game like Happy Feet, which on another system would just be a boring, repetitive walk in the park. On the Wii you're actually involved, standing up, tilting the controller, and moving around.

Speaking of being involved in the game, the Wii is something that is not only an effort of the mind, and eye to hand coordination, but it also is a bit of a workout. After playing a few rounds of boxing, I was sore the next morning. I'm not saying that you can get in shape playing the Wii, as the fact that I was sore was more of a testament to being out of shape, but at least people who play won't just be sitting on the couch lazily pushing buttons.

Another plus with the Wii is the backwards compatibility. Not only are the games backwards compatible, but the Wii has four ports for Gamecube controllers, and two ports for memory cards. That was a problem with the Playstation 2, as I never could get my old memory cards to transfer over. And the games work flawlessly as far as I can tell.

It's a bit too early to talk about any hardware problems, but I'm going to predict no future hardware problems with the Wii. I know that's a bit of a bold statement, but I can say that my XBox 360 gave me problems from day one, and my first Playstation 2 had issues, and I've never had a bad Nintendo system.

You're going to hear a lot of things about HD capability, and the lack of sound support for the Wii, and so on and so forth. I reiterate, we're spoiled. Just sit back and enjoy. You'll be so busy jumping, twisting, and turning that you'll never notice.

Now on to the few cons, or potential cons. Online play isn't ready yet, as I said before, and we're going to have to wait and see if the novelty of the controller wears off. Will the Wii be able to keep cranking out games based around the controller? I have no doubt they will. While most of the games out are focused on what the controller will do, you still have Zelda, and the Wii is just getting started. The controller can be a bit iffy, like in Wii Boxing, where the controls aren't as precise as they should be, but that's a minor complaint in a free game, so we'll let that slide. The biggest problem is with the price that controllers are going to eventually run you. The remote itself is forty dollars, and the nunchuk attachment is an additional twenty. Multiply that times three, and you'll be putting down a pretty good chunk of change. But saving so much on the system should make up for that, plus the games are retailing at fifty bucks instead of sixty. But, to play classic games, and fighting games like Super Smash Brothers, you'll have to get a couple of classic controllers, which are twenty bucks. I haven't had a chance to play with a classic controller, so I can't accurately speak of the quality of them. One last con is the SD memory cards. So far, we've had plenty of memory to go around, but I'm sure we'll run out soon, and the SD cards are fairly expensive.

Here's the deal. Nintendo is back with a vengeance, with good third party support this time around, a very affordable price in comparison with the other two systems, and is by far the most fun system I've ever played on. No, it doesn't have a DVD player, but it's a gaming system, not a mini entertainment system. The fact is, this is a system that's instantly playable by anybody of any age, and I predict that it will be the system to beat in the console war. When you can get a hold of one, I would highly recommend doing so.

A little addendum: When the warning comes on the screen saying to watch out for people or objects that you may hit when swinging your controller around, heed that warning well. I made the mistake of walking behind my dad while he was serving in Tennis on Wii Sports, and I ended up with a nice little knot on my head. Those controllers hurt.