Wii Problems

I love my Wii. The remote and nunchuck combination is the most comfortable controller I’ve ever used, and Excite Truck and Wii Sports are now ingrained into my daily schedule. But the Wii is not perfect. While that $250 machine is a great value and provides some good fun, it has its problems, as well. And those shouldn’t be ignored.

1. The Wii remote uses two AA batteries, and it uses them fast. It seems one of my two controllers is always going dead every other day. With how successful the DS Lite’s battery has been, I’m surprised Nintendo didn’t try to incorporate that into a rechargeable controller. Having to buy AAs in bulk feels like a step backwards, not forwards.

2. Getting online is more difficult than it should be. Wanting to stay in line with the DS’s Wi-Fi setup, the Wii is all wireless. The problem with wireless Internet is that it’s incredibly difficult to get working– if you even have that option in your house. That the Wii doesn’t have a LAN port on the system negates the whole “easily accessible” idea. You can buy Nintendo’s wireless USB adapter for $40, but you shouldn’t have to do that to get this thing going.

3. The Virtual Console is poorly implemented. You can only play games that are saved to the Wii’s internal memory, so what happens when you download more games than can fit on there? Nobody wants to have to delete and re-download a game every time they want to play it. That’s just silly. The pricing structure is also ridiculous. Nintendo is charging $5 for an NES game and $10 for the N64. The competition, Sony, is only charging $6 for a Playstation 1 game. I don’t care if the PS3 costs more or if you have to have a PSP to play PS1 games. Sony fans own all that anyway. These Nintendo “classics” are overpriced for what you are getting (which is just an emulated version of the original game; no extra content a la Xbox Live Arcade). Maybe if the games had cleaned-up framerates and level selects or save options where they didn’t previously exist, I’d buy into it. As of now, though, the games all need to drop by about $2. There’s no way to recoup your losses if you buy a stinker, either, but with lower prices, this wouldn’t be an issue. And did I mention you can only buy Wii Points in increments of $10? So if you want to buy TurboGrafx, SNES, or Genesis games, you can expect to always have leftover points with nothing to do.

4. There simply aren’t enough options in the Mii channel. This is supposed to be a feature where you create fun caricatures of yourself, but the parts you can choose from are quite paltry. I have yet been able to make a Mii that looks like my father, and it’s driving me crazy.

5. The classic controller is dumb. I was expecting it to plug into the GameCube port and let you play not only Virtual Console games but also GameCube games. It doesn’t. It plugs into the Wii remote. So when you use it, you have an extra controller dangling off to the side. It’s also aggravating that some games require the classic controller. I don’t want to buy an extra controller I don’t really want and would never use for anything other than a couple Genesis games.