Wow, just.. wow.

Had been waiting for Actraiser to come out on the VC since I got the Wii. Well, it came out Monday and I downloaded it instantly. I remember playing it on my friend's SNES back in the day and on emulators recently, but I never got very far into it.

Well, after a few short hours playing it, I beat it last night. I could go back over my Wii's logs, but I'd be surprised if I spent more than 6 hours on it, start to finish. Very underwhelming for what I remembered. Plus, for a deity, that dude's a straight pussy.

Yeah, it is a very short game. Fun, but short.

Despite a lot of complaints to the contrary...Mario Party 8 is in fact, 16:9. Sort of.

The good: if you have a 16:9 display you don't have to change anything to avoid stretching. The game displays everything at the correct ratio. Menu screens have a 16:9 image.

The bad: the actual gameplay is constrained to 4:3 at the center of the page. Which I'm not thrilled about, but it's better than I thought it would be.

I'd probably pick up Actraiser, but I have it on emulator saved about 3/4's of the way through from a couple of months ago. So it makes more sense to just finish that off sometime rather than shell out the stupid $8 on the VC.

If it was $4-$5 I'd be all over it.

CNN Money/Fortune has a great article on the success of the Wii.

Wii will rock you (CNNmoney.com)

Plus check out the cool cover for the print verstion of Fortune Magazine:

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

This is hilarious:

Good read, thank you!

Chris

Wow, I just got off the phone with Nintendo customer service. It was nothing short of painless. I was dreading the worst, and got the best service ever. I should have another system by next week.

Thanks guys for the wonderful advice. I would have never of thought to call Nintendo directly.

My Wii also broke last Saturday . Mine doesn't have the problem you have but rather the "unable to read disk error." I tried all the troubleshooting steps in the manual and online to no avail. So I called Nintendo and they were very nice in scheduling a repair. The problem is, tomorrow will be 1 week since I called them and I'm still waiting for them to send me the special packaging for me to ship it. They claim the box will arrive within 10-14 days, then I have to wait for it to get to them and they say to allow 3 days for fixing it. It looks like I won't have a Wii for several weeks. Now, I don't really consider this top service, comparing it to Apple ,when my iPod broke, the special shipping box arrived the same day I initiated the complaint and upon calling the shipping company, they came right away to pick up my broken iPod. I had the fixed iPod in several days. That Apple service is tops. As for Nintendo, I'm a bit dissapointed.

Call and complain. I had top notch service when I had to have my DS Lite repaired.

For the last few days all I've been playing is DKC2. I got home from college, saw it was available on the VC, and purchased immediately. Great game.

Glad I have the Classic Controller though, since the button mapping on the GC controller is horrible.

Seeing the posts about aspect ratio raised a question I've had for a while.

I have Wii connected to my 16:9 TV with a NOA component cable. Why do I have to manually switch the aspect ratio? Why doesn't it switch automatically like when I put an anamorphic DVD in my DVD player? Do I have something set up wrong?

Make sure your Wii is set up to output 16:9. Don't forget, your DVD player has to be set up that way too.

I did set it to 16:9. Thats why I have the question. What does that setting do if it doesn't automatically tell my TV to switch aspect ratios?

Are you saying when I switch to the Wii input on my TV (component), its supposed to flip on the fly?

It tells the game what aspect ratio to use, not your TV. You could use 16:9 mode on a 4:3 TV if you wanted to see a squished 16:9 picture.

Sure. I was just hoping that the Wii would send a signal to my TV like my DVD player does. Now I have to remind my 8 year old to change the AR which is really lame.

The image from your DVD player should require the exact same thing if it is outputing Anamorphic 480p.

I have to do the same thing for my LCD for 480i/480p stuff in widescreen.

Are you sure you don't have an upconverting DVD player?

Its definitely not an upconverting DVD player. You can actually see the TV change aspect ratio when the disc is read.

From one of the previous discussions:

Good Explanation

You are not the only one who has to manually set their TV mode to properly display the 480p 16X9 aspect ration of the Wii. All my other sources cause my TV to auto set to 16:9 mode (360, PC, DVD, HD Sat.) but the Wii sends a 480p 4:3 signal (as detected by the TV) that needs to be stretched to properly display. The Wii is set properly as is the TV. Some TV's will auto adjust, some will not...at least according to some people.

Just read that the Wii version of RE4 is playable with the GC controller.

Good news for any who never played it and end up not liking the Wiimote/nunchuk controls.

I was thinking buy PS2 version this week for $10 but the Wii version include GC control is awsome. My $$$$ for wii version

In my case, they are actually sending me a replacement, and I have to send mine out, since mine doesn't require service, just replacement. They told me I should be getting the package in about 3 to 4 business days. Sorry to hear about your system problem

anyone using component cables other than the official Nintendo ones? I see tons of different cables starting around 10.00 or so shipped. I know the Nintendo branded cables are only 30.00 but will I really notice any difference using the official cables compared to a set that costs half as much? the reason I ask is because monoprice now sells them(they are OOS at the moment though) for 8.75 plus shipping and I've had great success with all their other cables.

I doubt it makes much difference as long as they are fairly decent (as mono price's should be).

I use a third party S-video cable (React I think is the brand--Nintendo hasn't put out a first party one) and it looks great--big jump over S-video on my SDTV. Same with my PS2.