Category: Wii

Wii: Mario Kart impressions.

Posted on by Forge77

Well its another month and Another Good wii game comes out. As a big fan of Mario Kart for the SNES, I’ve not really played any mario Karts till i purchased the Wii, I had downloaded Mario Kart 64 for the wii and my reception to that was pretty blah..

Usually when it comes down to games I have an interest in , I tend to stay away from prerelease reviews and anything to do with the guts of the games. I have 2 reasons for doing that, I’d Rather figure out things for myself and I want an unbiased opinion of the game in my mind. Anyways…

Continue reading “Wii: Mario Kart impressions.”

Console Gaming without a TV part II..(VD-W2 Wii VGA cable)

Posted on by Forge77

I do not usually watch TV, the last TV i had I ended up giving up because it just took up too much space. So I’ve always used my PC to watch Movies, Play games and such , until i purchased the Wii. From my last post
Console Gaming and Movie watching

I have tried almost every PC HD TV card under the sun in order to get a better picture/ less lag time out of the display with results fairing for the worse rather than better. One of my biggest problems was screen lag time.. On the HD Cards you had at least a full second of delay while moving the cursor around, on the analog card the lag time was barely perceivable but enough where it was noticeable if you had played on a TV, also If the PC is doing ANYTHING what so ever , you will get graphical corruption in the display thats the fault of the PC not the Wii. As far as using a TV card the display is fuzzy in fullscreen.

Wii On TV Card
After all those cards my thoughts on internal tuner cards for PC’s are they are all piles of shit… But, looking around i saw one possibility the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable from Vdigi I had taken my time on ordering this because I didn’t see any sort of review for this cable. Also being from HongKong and I am weary of Ordering from sites i don’t know. Resellerratings.com had next to No information about them, After much thinking I finally decided to order the thing…

After an impatient 2 week wait the cable arrived in a simple brown envelope from hongkong. Following the USPS tracking site.. Not really worth even tracking because they barely update you on the location of your goods. Anyways the packaging is dead simple , right to the point, you don’t need user testimonials on how it works. Anyways anything with a billion testimonials usually is a pile of shit.

the cable seems to be built of really good quality, Setup is a breeze as long as you understand the basic premise of what your doing. since the monitor your plugging into does not have an analog tuner, you have to use the component cable plug in on a tv

Wii VGA cable closeThe Green RCA jack you just plug into a TV and power on the wii , After doing so you goto your system menu and Display selection of 480i or 480p , You want to choose 480p , but doing this will look like something bad is happening . the screen will look completely fucked, don’t worry here,  because the TV doesnt know how to handle the signal. after this Power down your Wii , Disconnect the Green RCA than proceed to connect the Cable to the monitor , you will need a male to male VGA connector/Wire to complete this action, After that you should be all set on Connecting up to your monitor.

As far as quality goes , the cable kicks ass.

it removed every problem you would have with a TV card and basically gives you the same response as you would get on a TV screen. with the added bonus of You can turn off your PC to play the console if you run your Console like i do.

Console gaming and movie watching… When you dont have a TV.. Wait what?

Posted on by Forge77

When I got my Wii, it was a thought to exactly how i’d play the console since i don’t have a TV so to speak. Eventually I just ended up going to most efficient route for myself. I connect the Wii to my PC via an analog TV Card, it works fine for me. but there are little things you do notice between having the Wii connected to a TV vs connected to a PC through a TV card.

Personally i use my PC as my center for media, Watching movies, playing games(PC), and playing the Wii. I don’t need a super huge screen, having one would be nice but eh… what can you do. I don’t watch enough TV to validate the idea of getting cable or anything, the way channels are these days its just all rehash of programs anyways… what are we on now “survivor 923 – Night with the power out” edition? About the only thing I tend to watch is mythbusters.

The only thing about having the wii through an analog tv card though is that the screen looks a bit fuzzy and lagged a bit. I’ve tried out many digital Tuner cards with no luck whatsoever, Either I have some sort of weird problem or perhaps my pc is getting a bit aged.

I have tried –

  • WinTV-HVR-1600 – This card is ok, If you have an Via Chipset/Nvidia Video card you will run into an overlay problem, easily fixed but …. the Crashes are not, generally HD channels look spectacular but on occasion the software would crash on channels with a low signal or format difference. Using it to play a console through was worthless, Trying to play the wii on this was like trying to play the Wii underwater , You would move the cursor, and the screen would always be half a second behind becoming extremely annoying fast.
  • Pinnacle PCTV HD Card – out of the box the card was purely annoying… the install software DEMANDED to have WinXP Service pack 2 installed, Nothing would progress unless you did that. as far as channels it did not have the problems that the HVR1600 had, but there was a noticeable unsynchronized Audio, For having the Wii hooked up , Again Display lag issues made this card useless.
  • Visiontek TV wonder 600 – based off the ATI TV wonder 600, installation was painless, Installation of software was relatively painless, Operation was terrible. Trying to pull in any sort of digital channels was totally out of the question no matter the position of the antenna NO channels were received. I even Put the antenna outside the window in hopes of seeing some sort of life from the tuner itself, For the Input part of the card for the Wii, This card got the Worst of the ratings – Display lag was far greater than the other cards, Up to 1.5 seconds of display lag which made any sort of console gaming Completely out of the question.

These card were all tried through about a years time, and Likely in the future possibly there will be a Digital HD TV card that will serve my purposes for both a TV Card and a Console hookup. but I have discovered theres a 4th option that would remove the PC completely from the math , which hopefully will remove all my percieved points that i dont like about running my Wii to Tv Card to PC output. while its the cheapest of the options I’ve only heard and seen very limited reviews on this I’ve ordered the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable . This will skip having the PC as an intermediary and plug directly into my monitor , which thankfully has 2 VGA inputs and 1 DVI input.

My hope is this will solve all my complaints about having the setup i do and having a more direct setup which eliminates a device which the console Passes through

Super Smash Brothers Brawl, post Solo Subspace.

Posted on by Forge77

had a short post up yesterday but got rid of it in order to put up a better post.

I’ve so far played out the subspace emissary through to the end, To be honest the way the story is told is kinda of amazing in one respect since not one word of dialog is used. that mode alone takes about 8 to 10 hours to complete and for the ability of having a second player join you is really a nice add-on. Also as far as the subspace emisary the stages age agravating but the good agravating where you dont want to eat your controller

So far my online experience with brawl is limited to a few sessions but they are rather enjoyable. Missing from that is chat but thats a double edged sword right there. If you have played any “on-line” game dealing with the never ending stupidity of certain types of people wear on you after awhile. you are limited to a few different statements you can put in while your playing but nothing huge. as for the lack of a full chat – i don’t mind it since its a console. Sure the Wii has keyboard support but it is very limited at this time.

Plus a full chat client would be worse than a cell phone text conversation. “how r u” “am gd” ect ect text shorthand has its places but it gets annoying after awhile.

Until i play out smash brothers brawl online I’m not inclined to make a total decision on how good this game is. really from a single player point of view i find that Nintendo made a really good effort to appeal to many different players in this game.

As far as the hype that brawl had when it was announce for the Wii I intentionally mostly stayed away from sites hyping it up so i could have an as unbiased opinion as possible with brawl, too which in the end i am in glad I took that road. What really surprised me was the use of the Havok physics engine thats used in half life 2. Playing through you can see the physics at work with items and knocking things around which made me quite happy.

As far as this post is concerned though its relatively a beginning post because later.

My Wii has ED … wait.. what?

Posted on by Forge77

Around Feb 2’nd my Wii started acting Strangely with vertical bars up the screen with green pixels, So my wii had ED (electronic dysfunction) .

Wii ED
I sent it off to nintendo that week and amazingly the repair took next to no time at all, It was back at my house as of Feb 15th. after i had sent it out around the 8th or so . it amazes me how fast the system was returned to me, they replaced the entire system with a new system and new serial number. As far as getting everything re-setup all i had to do was redownload my Virtual console games and resync the controllers.

whao. i think i need to update a bit more often .

Posted on by Forge77

its been quiet and thankfully good , for the most part capital one issue has been solved but still ongoing. in the end my own bank ended up refunding me all the fees , but capital one 4 days later screwed up and refunded me twice more, my main objective is to get that crap payed off and get rid of credit cards… who needs em.. they suck.

Picked up madden 08 for the Wii, although when it comes to games from EA i am extremely wary of EA due to there quality , 9 times out of 10 they have some stupid "Show stopping" bug that either pisses you off to no end or you have to do some thing to get passed that part. the last game i suffered through like that was Command and conquer III, every time you got to the 3rd of 4th level of that game you were greeted with a HARD lock of your PC, i had tried it out on my other PC and same thing happened. Anyways getting to the Madden thing.. about the 3rd game in if you "sim" the games leading up to the game your about to play from the Team scedule it locks the wii in a hard lock which you have to shut it down and restart , If you go from the menu that shows all games every team is playing schedule, it does not lock up. plus if you haven’t saved your screwed. you loose all progress till the last time you saved (did you remember to save)

Wii would like to play..

Posted on by Forge77

I posted a really short comment. In October about me ending up getting a Wii, Now, i had been Debating on a console system for months and was fairly decided but money was an issues and finding one was also an issue. Around the holidays which are here now. Finding a Wii is about as likely finding bigfoot.

I managed to get extremely lucky when i had got mine last month at the begining of october. I had been in best buy for another reason and just for the hell of it i asked the blue shirt with the expected answer of "we don’t have one". I figured I’d go up the road to Target and when i was walking down the isle i noticed 3 boxes and i thought they may of been displays. I Had to ask twice, And they were indeed real, Knowing that how hard it is to acquire I ended up borrowing some money to get it. Since then I’ve not seen one for sale since.

As far as fun the system kicks ass, and my major complaint about gaming in the last couple of years is that, the focus on gaming has been on making a pretty picture with basicly no controls. all graphics No fun. I’ve seen the other systems and the expense to me just doesnt make sense when i have a PC. my Main complaints for consoles are

1. most are insanely expensive

PS3 = 400$ (no games inc. accessories you have to pay even more for. Lack of games.

Xbox360 = 300$ to 400$ +35$ for online play (Not to sure how it works out with other stuff, but most games are eventaully ported over to the PC from this system so pointless to buy into)

Wii = $249 the Cheapest and most fun i’ve had with console gaming in a very long time.

2. Games

Ps3 = lack of games, Lack Of interesting games + Used to Have backwards compatibility but removed.

Xbox360 = since most games come to the PC – no real need to have since 90% of the games come over to the PC , and really Halo Does not appeal to me since its just a slowed down version of Unreal tournament (Halo doesnt even come close to the fun of unreal tournament)

Wii = ALot of games whole game cube library + Wii games availible , nintendo normally has different games than the above two systems so its a more unique experence.

 

*All systems = Fuck Guitar hero with a baseball bat. its retarded, ITs a guitar simulator simulator , wow You simulate someone whos simulating a guitar… Pick up a real instrument you sissy. if you want something more interesting and to actaully learn music rather than playing dance dance revolution for your fingers try "Jam Sessions" for the nintendo DS.

3. Controls

Ps3 = Tried and true controller setup, only exception was when nintendo announced the wii controls and they delayed there controller to attempt a motion control setup themselves. SUXAXIS was put on after the fact removing the Dual shock- which was quoted from sony that both could not be on the controller or some silly shit.

Xbox = appears like the older gravis control pads. I’ve not personally tried to out the xbox controls but im sure its works.

Wii = Completely Unique system of control, brings very interesting gameplay and adaptions to gameplay.. gesture based system does make some really fun games. I could go on and on how actaully interacting with the game rather than Inputing actions into the game and reacting makes a huge difference.

 

4. Graphics

PS3 – some really nice visuals at times but really most of the time games are not much better than the 360

Xbox360 – same as above but reverse the comment. both systems are pretty much equals to each other.

Wii – I’ve not seen many games I could compare to the other systems but It gets down to my Final comment. Graphically it has lesser than the above two systems but in the same comment the games are more involving . Less eye candy more dimension.

5. Fun

Im not going to compare each system down. Reasoning is it would just be a flogging of epic proportions, theres only so far that PS3/xboxs dated controls can go , and there basically running on running on a control set thats 20 years old. To me graphics do not mean Everything. Sure you can make it look "pretty" but 90% of the time you know when something looks "good" as far as a game you know it controls like ass. there are notable exceptions to that.

Gamewise you get more involved , You dont get bored off your ass watching someone else play. Even thinking sporting games golf is like golf on the wii , bowling is like bowling. First person shooters even have a strangely appealing system of use on the wii. by Far the system thats the most interactive and Fun in the same sentence I’d say is the Wii .

I’ve picked up only a few games so far but I forsee myself picking up other games as well as they come out. I’ve Really liked how the system works as you can see above and the future will see more responce out of me.

 

Wii!

Posted on by Forge77

Random thought came to mind, I was wandering around at the begining of the month and i had been passively tracking the wii. ended up getting one of those.