Previous rants:

Nintendo DSi
--------------------
***** READ THE FIRST PARAGRAPH BEFORE CRYING TO ME ABOUT RANTING ON THE WII *****

Before I begin my rant, let me say that I don't entirely hate the Wii, but there are many problems with the consoles. I am not a fanboy of any console, so don't even bother screaming "XBOX 360/PS3 FANBOY!" as the only console out of the current generation that I own is actually the Wii, although I plan to get a PS3 sometime this year. Anyway...

In the beginning, I was hyped for the Wii and so were many others. The Wii Remote was a great idea from Nintendo and the ability to download older games from the Wii Shop was also great. Well, to those who missed out on previous generations, that is. I unfortunately never owned a NES, SNES or even a N64 (though I almost considered it, but wanted a PS1 instead) and when I heard the Wii would allow people to download games from those consoles as well as others, I was really excited as I would finally have the chance to play games such as Mega Man 2 and Super Metroid, which are considered as classics by many.

Of course, the major titles such as Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Metroid Prime 3 were to be excited for as well, most especially how they would go with the Wii Remote. The idea of trying to get different kind of people into gaming wasn't such a bad idea back then since Nintendo wanted to get more people into gaming. So as time went on and more information on the Wii were revealed, I was more excited about the console and couldn't wait to get the console. However, things went wrong as soon as the console was released.

When the Wii was launched, there was a huge shortage of stock (most especially in the UK) of the console for reasons I'm not aware of, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo can't come up with any good excuses, especially when they released it near fucking Christmas when millions were wanting to get it. Most were unable to get a Wii that Christmas and either had to wait until they were back in stock or get something else such as the DS or even a PS3 or Xbox 360, thus giving Nintendo's competitors an advantage, which is what competitive companies should be avoiding at all costs.

What's more, when it was Christmas 2007, there were even more stock problems and the shops were fully stocked with Wiis that summer. There was even more struggle to get hands on a Wii and once again, people were unlucky enough to miss out on getting a Wii for the second time running. Fortunately, it's now easy to get a Wii, but having such shortage of stock for both Christmasses is a big fuck up by Nintendo.

As for the prices, the Nintendo Wii itself is at a decent price, which is £180. Although the console isn't technically as powerful as the Xbox 360 and PS3, seeing it at a price lower than its competitors when it was launched was good to know. Sadly, if you're wanting to get all the accessories you want, prepare to take out a lot of money out of your wallet as the Wii Remote with the nunchuck is £40 each and that's a ridiculous price for a controller. No-one should have to spend so much money for controllers when they've paid at least £150 for the console itself already.

The controllers have one huge problem and that's being run on AA batteries. No-one should have to keep buying AA batteries or buying special rechargers for these controllers, especially when you may have four of them. Why can't it be nice and simple by having USB rechargers like the PS3 does? This would take away the purpose of purchasing batteries or another accessory for the console.

The other problem with the Wii controllers is how most game developers handle the controls with the Wiimote. While some games like Mario Kart Wii do a great job with it, others have done terrible. Some set out the controls for their games so bad it feels like they didn't even think for one second "You know, these controls don't feel right. Should we revise the controls for this game?" The game developers that don't seem to test the controllers for the Wii really should be more careful with how they handle the Wiimote controls as making them feel awkward to use is only going to put people off from playing their games.

The Nintendo Wii came with such pointless features such as the News channel, Weather channel and Photo Channel. Honestly, what were they thinking with these ideas? They have absolutely nothing to do with gaming and the space they wasted on this crap should have been saved for something that would have benefited the games. If someone with common sense wanted to check on the latest news/weather forecast, they'd read the newspaper, watch the news on TV or have a look on news websites such as BBC.co.uk. The Photo Channel is nothing but a shitty image editor which has a little amount of things to do. You're much better off saving that time by editing pictures on a GOOD image editor such as Photoshop or GIMP.

The main issue about the Wii not being technically as powerful as the PS3 or 360 is how some games have to be stripped down in graphics or even gameplay just so it can be on the Wii. One example is what Tomb Raider Underworld on the Wii is like compared to the PC, PS3 and 360 ports. On the Wii version of that game, the graphics and gameplay was actually different to the other ports. Although I've yet to come across any other games that have had these sort of problems, I'm sure there are some out there that have had similar issues.

Another big problem with the Wii is how small the hard drive space is. Whoever bought a lot of stuff from Virtual Console/Wii Ware would have to delete stuff from the Wii to make space and if they wanted to play it again, they'd have to download the game AGAIN! The primary storage of the Wii is only 512 MB and that's at least 40x smaller than the hard drive space both the PS3 and 360 have. Having to redownload games is just a pain in the ass, especially when you're very limited on hard drive space. Oh, and SD cards, forget them, they're pretty much useless for downloaded games from the Wii.

According to a friend of mine, backing up games on an SD card incase your Wii console breaks and needs replacing or needs to be resetted does jack shit. He had a Freeloader to use for two games, but when he had to download an update, he was no longer able to use it and had to reset. Unfortunately for him, resetting the Wii didn't remove the update and what's worse, he wasn't able to put his downloaded games back on the Wii. This brings up a very good question, "What's the point in backing up games incase your Wii breaks or anything when you'll only find out that copying them back into the console doesn't fucking work?!" That's right, if my friend wanted to play the games he downloaded, he would have to pay for them AGAIN! I'd sure as hell be frustrated if my Wii broke and I had to buy all my games again.* This sort of bullshit only encourages people to download ROMs from the internet.

All in all, the Wii had great potential and it has some good uses, but it's been brought down by ridiculous prices for the accessories, pointless features, poorly set out controls for most games, small hard drive, terrible backup support for downloaded games and this is what someone gets after going through all the trouble to get his/her hands on the console. There's still more to rant on the Nintendo Wii, so this is to be concluded over the next week or two.

* The WiiWare/Virtual Console games I've downloaded are:

Ecco the Dolphin
F-Zero X
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 9
Star Fox 64
Super Mario Bros. 3
Super Mario World
Super Metroid

That's 6400 Wii Points worth, which is around £45 (excluding DLC).