Eh? The Wiimote is hard to find? There are piles of the things everywhere here. What is impossible to get is the Wii Play pack. The Classic Controller is kinda hard to find in shops as well but you can mail order that.

My wife bought me the Nyko charger for my birthday. The thing is pretty sweet. It comes with two battery packs and two replacement battery covers. The wiimotes slip right in. If you guys use your Wii a lot, its definitely a good investment.

I didn't really feel like the battery pack/cover changed the way the controller felt, aside from the rubber on the cover which is actually pretty nice.

Cool, ordering one now.

P.S. Happy birthday!

Just an update on SSX Blur- Apparently this is one of those "let it sit for a day" kind of things, because I played for a couple of hours last night and the entire control system worked perfectly. I had a blast and had no issues with tricks or landing. Also, I tried the slalom tracks and they work great with the new control scheme (the weaving back and forth feels nice moving the controller rather than pushing a stick). So if you're a fan of the SSX series, definitely worth getting if you're willing to put in a little effort on the front end.

The next time you have an issue check the sensitivity of the remote in the prefs. Make sure movement is not jumpy. One night playing Wii Sports everything just started going nuts and I had to make adjustments to the remote settings to make everything playable again.

Bruno

In a sad turn of events, my Wii can no longer connect to the Internets. The error I get when trying the connection test is code 51130. Some Googling suggested changing the network to mixed B+G mode helps, but for me, it has not.

Here are the other things I've since tried to remedy this problem, all to no avail:
- Power cycled the router (several times)
- Changed wireless channel (was 1 before when things were working, also tried 6 and 11)
- Disabled wireless MAC filter (Wii's MAC was in the allow list prior to that)
- Completely disabled security
- Manual IP/DNS settings on the Wii instead of DHCP
- Flashed router with OpenWRT firmware (instead of Tomato)
- Changed the MTU on the Wii from automatic to 1500 (1500 works fine on everything else on my network)

When the connection test runs, I see the Wii's MAC address show up in the router's "Device List" page, so I know the router can "see" the Wii. When trying to use DHCP, no DHCPREQUEST is shown in the router's syslog. All of my other wireless clients are okay, and can get a DHCP lease. The signal strength shown coming from the Wii's MAC address is very high.

Feeling like I tried everything, I tried to jump on an open wifi network in my neighborhood (albeit one with a low signal strength for me) and still didn't find happiness. That could be because the signal isn't strong enough, though.

My next move is to drag the Wii over to my girlfriend's house and see if it likes the network there. After that, I guess I'm stuck calling Nintendo support and dealing with the invariable "is the router on? is the wii on?" line of questioning. So, I figured I'd ask here to see if anyone's run into / heard of any wifi problems, or has any idea how I can go about troubleshooting this further without dealing with support.

I have no idea what the issue may be, but I just tried mine and everything is running as expected (also using Tomato on my WRT54GL).

Twice before I've seen network connection errors, but simply trying the feature again allowed the connection to go through. Not sure what the reported numbers were in each case.

Let us know how the call to Nintendo goes if the problem doesn't mysteriously disappear on its own. I still have to call them to get my unit replaced due to the permanent graphics glitches.

Bruno

Interesting. I was having nothing but problems with my connectivity before. I simply could not connect to the online store, and all the internet-related channels were either terribly slow or refused to connect. Then I switched to channel 1, and everything works perfectly now.

I have a question for everyone:

I seem to be doing something wrong in Wii Sports: Boxing. Everyone raves about how great that game is, but it frustrates the hell out of me. It just seems to me that my motions are simply not getting recognized. I feel like I'm just swinging wildly and every other time it'll actually do what I'm doing. Half the time I'm punching with my right and it'll punch with the left.

Maybe I'm holding the controllers wrong. The diagram shows to hold them straight up and down, doesn't it? Is that right?

Maybe you should try using a wired connection. A friend of my is using a USB network adpater to connect his Wii to the network.

If you want to win at boxing, just hold the controllers as instructed and shake them vigorously non-stop until you have defeated your opponent. That's the technique that works for my brother's fiance.

Bruno

I did a couple of the training exercises for Boxing, and what I found is that really getting into it (JUMPING left and right, not just shifting) works out well. I never had it miss-read anything while doing that. Not the blocking, dodging, or punching. Of course, to this sit-on-my-butt-all-day-programmer, about 15 minutes enough to make me almost throw up, so I haven't touched it since. Yup, I'm THAT lazy

However, I did watch my brother-in-law and a friend of his play and they were insane, jumping back and forth and really slugging it out. I was exhausted just watching. When I get a chance I'll probably revisit boxing, as it seems I would be much healthier if I played it more

Right now, though, SSX and finishing Zelda are more my speed (I've gotten to the castle finally, and gotten almost all of the heart pieces).

Let me assure you, it DEFINITELY gets easier with practice. I blazed through peak 2 without any issues.

Regarding Ubers- I was able to do the "heart" Uber almost instantly, and I can do the other three easily now. Certainly holding and releasing the "A" button is crucial to this, as is not rushing the motions. When you rush it is easy to make horizontal lines crooked etc.

I don't know if you know this already, but there is a way to practice drawing the Ubers. Hit the "+" button, select "Ubers" and then the one you want to practice. This was actually how I figured out what we were supposed to be doing with the "double loop" Uber, as I couldn't make it out from the tiny drawing (when you select it from the menu, the drawing is a lot bigger).

Quote:
and it maybe understood my motions about 10% of the time.

I just want to mention that I don't think this is a hardware problem of the Wii not understanding the motions as a couple of the reviews semi-suggested. I have gotten close to 90% when I'm focused, so the issue isn't doing it correctly and not being detected. I only mention this because the thought of doing it correctly and still having the system ignore it is very frustrating, but knowing that they CAN be pulled off consistently is encouraging.

Also, I figured out the trick to slalom- make wide passes around the flags- don't try to breeze past them tightly. If you go wide left and then wide right then you'll use your momentum going sideways rather than forward.

How exaggerated would you say your motions have to be?

Actually, I've found they really don't. For example, the single circle that you make going right to left- I've made really big circles and really small ones and both worked. More important it seems is pressing the button before I start and letting go when I'm done, and not getting anything else in the mix while I'm doing it. I think there's a tendency to let go too quickly, right near the end of the pattern, in order to get it to register quickly.

The heart is the easiest if you just remember to go up as your first movement. I've watched friends mess it up, and mostly it's because they tend to try and make a circle rather than a heart, going out instead of up as their first movement, and this never works. However, I've almost never failed this one if I remember to go up first.

Cool, thanks for all the tips. I predict quite a few hours of SSX in my house tonight.

One more thing: would you say that you tend to move the whole Wiimote to make the motions, or is it more like you're drawing, so the front tip is moving more than the back? Did I explain that okay? I think I'm doing the latter, and it seems like that's not the way to do it...

No, I think my problem is just the ubers part. I think there's something that I'm just missing. I was also trying to pull those off while sitting back with a cat in my lap, so that could have been giving me trouble

In fact, I seemed to have the opposite reactions that you did. The ubers were insanely difficult to me, but everything else just came naturally and I really got into it! I didn't have any problems with the normal tricks, although I would agree that it doesn't feel as natural to stop a trick by pressing the A button. It felt much more natural to have to hold a control stick and have to maneuver yourself upright. Other than that and the ubers, I think the controls are really cool.

Well, one more data point. Took the Wii over to my girlfriend's place and it couldn't connect to her network, either. So, I guess I'll be calling into Nintendo support soon. In the mean time, my fix for the problem was to plunk down the cash for the Wii LAN adapter, which I pretty much wanted to do anyway because I like to have devices wired wherever possible to keep the WLAN from being congested.

That being said, I'd still like to get the wireless working, and I'm pretty disappointed that it's not. I'm thrilled with everything else about the system and the games so far, though.

Anyone have Madden 2007 for Wii (or played it)? Comments? The reviews seem mostly positive but I thought I'd ask since there are quite a few Wii owners here.

I have Madden 2007, and enjoy it. Keep in mind I don't know anything at all about football, it has been a goal of my roommate's to teach me football the last couple of years. Between the Cardinals and ASU, he loses heart and can't watch it halfway through the season, and I lose all retention

The controls are 'different' if you don't know football. If you do, they might be pretty easy to pick up, such as a stiff arm you stick your arm out. It's kind of hard to explain. I will say this, there is a learning curve. The first 2v2 we played as co-op, we lost something like 403-46. I was probably a huge handicap, but it was still pretty depressing Near the end of the game the strategy moved from 'try to win' to 'try to keep them under 400'. It was fun enough that it kept our interest.

While I'll admit that transcoding in advance is a pain, Wii Media Center X seems to work really well. The biggest problem (besides the transcoding) is that you use the Wii browser, and there's no way to get rid of the big nav bar.

I've still got my fingers crossed that Nintendo will step up and first improve their photo viewer to support the network and then possibly add a video player (which I don't technically need, but it would be great for a lot of other people).

The photo player actually plays MJPEG movies.

That's cool but I don't shoot MJPEG movies. I'd like to browse my images from the network or Flickr in that UI. I've used it to browse from an SD card and thought it was pretty neat and usable. I'd also love to be able to set a sticky option for one or more of the adjustments you can make. I found that for some reason all the images I was viewing that day needed to be brightned to show up well. Like many other aspects of the Wii interface, it took a lot of clicks to get through that operation.

Bruno