Matt Legend Gemmell – Nintendo Wii has arrived

Favorites for iPhone
Speed-dial with style.

Other Pages

Nintendo Wii has arrived

We got one. Note how I said “we” and not “wii”. Just cut that shit out.

First up, my Wii Number: 3641 4936 7268 5117. My Mii is set to mingle, so knock yourself out.

Second, a big thank-you to Amazon for dispatching my pre-order yesterday; much appreciated. A big no-thank-you to the courier company (City Link) who managed to send it to Glasgow instead of Edinburgh, thus greatly inconveniencing me as I had to collect it before 3pm or else it would be delivered on Monday. City Link, nice going. I hear far too many stories about such incompetence on your part (my significant other working for one of your major customers and all).

Third, well, the Wii. Amazing. Just amazing. Zelda is the game I’ve been waiting for since Ocarina, without a doubt. Though slower to start, it’s even better designed and is nothing short of a love letter its N64 predecessor. I haven’t even put my Wii Sports disc into the console yet. That’s no lie.

Stuff I didn’t know about the machine:

You get an @wii.com email address with your machine (albeit a hideous numerical one, so you can communicate with people who don’t have a Wii yet)
You can back up your saves etc to SD cards
You can buy stuff on the Wii Shop Channel using a credit card; you don’t need those silly Points cards at all
The Wii Shop Channel has perhaps the most brain-infecting music ever written
For reference, the original Legend of Zelda on the NES is 500 Wii points, and Mario 64 is 1000 (1000 points is £7)

And… actually, the hell with writing the rest of this. I’m going back to the Wii.

Update: I managed to pick up a copy of Wii Play (in the Princes St GameStation) and an extra nunchuk (in the Leith Walk Woolworths), so we now have a Wii, 2 remotes, 2 nunchucks, Wii Sports, Wii Play and Zelda. We also have a pink cover (for Lauren’s remote; best place to get it is Game, where it’s a fiver cheaper than in Virgin), and an extra copy of Zelda which arrived today (I actually had a third copy for a brief time before I cancelled it).

Wii Play is excellent; Lauren and I have been having a great time playing against each other. My favourite minigame is probably billiards at the moment. But soon, back to Zelda! Still not played Wii Sports. I’ve registered Lauren on the machine and she has a Mii too. I love the blue glow when you’ve got a new email or whatever; sweet. We also played with the Photo Channel briefly; the sound-effects when you apply the “moods” (i.e. filters) are rather amusing. I also think that Photoshop’s Revert command should follow the Wii’s example and have a rocketship erasing all your edits.

Now I just need to find out when my second Wii is arriving…

18 Comments

Mike Zornek
9 December 2006 @ 12am

Awesome. Congratulations.

marc
10 December 2006 @ 5am

Hey Matt, we got our Wii on the Thus Oz launch… grabbed Zelda but have to admit we’ve actually been stuck in WiiPlay, Tennis really is a lot of fun! :)

Some of the WiiPlay minigames ARE fun.

They’re really onto something with the Mii concept — straight-outta Animal Crossing of course — it’s a great way to engrain the Wii into the user’s life, and enable user cretivity, it’s fun to see your friends in your baseball team, and oods-on we’ll be seeing mini-celebs roaming around the world! :)

The cottage industry for creating Mii’s is just around the corner, if not already here. : )

Tom Cruise and Oprah boxing perhaps?

…anyway, I’ve added your Wii code, if you want, ours is 8587-0792-9123-4817. :)

Kevin Ballard
10 December 2006 @ 6am

I picked up a Wii at launch here in the US, and let me tell you, Wii Sports is fantastically fun. You gotta try it!

My Wii number is 7932 4885 2650 7927

Unfortunately, for the time being my Wii is offline (though when I go home for winter break in a week I’ll be able to put it online).

Oh, and I’m jealous. Here in the US we’re not going to get Wii Play until, if memory serves, about halfway through January.

Drarok
10 December 2006 @ 3pm

Man, I hope they’ve come up with a good way of entering those codes!

Unwieldy at best! Why they’ve gone for that option instead of usernames, I don’t know. Can’t wait for mine to arrive around the 12th - Matt, can you check on my delivery status? ;)

And yes, City Link are absolutely shocking. Having worked in logistics myself (as a programmer of the pricing / routing software), I know how things can be done, and how City Link decide they’ll do things.
Shame they’re not the same thing. I really don’t like CL.

On the bright side, I’ve had my Wii shipped to my work address, so I should be able to nose around the box as soon as it arrives! :D

Matt
10 December 2006 @ 5pm

Hey all,

Marc and Kevin: I’ve added you both (Marc and Cass already know that; I like the Woz Mii, by the way, and as for Manny - is that the character from Black Books?). I’ll get to Wii Sports soon enough; can’t quite bear to remove Zelda just yet.

Drarok, there’s a numeric keypad-like UI for entering codes, via point and click. It’s actually faster than it sounds. The Wii box is kind of cool too; all white and blue (they have 4x larger empty promo versions of that box in our local GameStation; I kind of want one). You’ll enjoy unpacking it; the inside is extremely Apple-like, with two blue trays, white icons and the Wii logo showing through one of the finger-holes. You can probably find a geek porn unboxing video on the cybernet somewhere I daresay.

In other news, what is it with games stores selling ludicrously overpriced SD cards for the Wii? I saw a 256Mb(!) one in Virgin today for £25. I mean, twenty-five quid. You can get a 1Gb card on Amazon for less than £8. Just get your SD cards online someplace, folks - the stores are charging silly money for them. Virgin are also charged twenty quid for a 2000 Wii Points card (the same thing that costs 14 quid in the Shop Channel). Even Game are marking up the price by a pound. The only place which (1) sells Wii Points at the same rate as the Shop Channel and (2) has a good stock of nunchucks is our local Woolworths (but then they charge just under thirty quid for a 1Gb SD card). You really do need to shop around for this Wii stuff until general prices stabilise; even the pink remote-cover I got for Lauren varies in price from £5 to £20 as you walk along Princes St. Sickening.

Also, why is it that the weekend I get my Wii, I have to carry a lot of heavy stuff around? Yesterday it was the kilt etc for the Amazon Christmas party last night (decent night, black-tie do in the penthouse of the Point Hotel where we were racing remote-controlled cars around the dining room during dinner), and today I carried our 6.5ft Christmas tree back to the flat. Hence, my forearms are shaking right now and I can’t aim the Wii remote worth a damn. Curses!

Final note: the GameStation on Princes St has a life-size sculpture of Link (complete with Hylian Shield and the Master Sword) standing on top of a rock bearing the Twilight Princess logo. It’s on the upstairs level, and it’s pretty solid (I knocked on his head to test). I quite fancy stealing it. Anyone who wants to help plan the caper, drop me a line.

marc
10 December 2006 @ 6pm

Hi again :)

Re the Mii’s; hehe I liked Woz too, and yep, that’s Bill Bailey… we played around and created a few, but I didn’t want to flood you. :)

You’re right about the packaging, I was impressed by the numbered drawers and general simplicity — very well done, and ‘Apple-like’ (aka ‘good’) — 3 cables, position the sensor and you’re done.

As for Zelda, tonight we put it in to ‘have a quick look’, and now over 4 hours later we’re crawling into bed… yep, it looks like a real time sink.

btw — have you had a ‘look’ at the MacSaber hack for the remote;WiiSaber?

I guess with an iSight you could BE the StarWars kid. :)

Alex Gordon
10 December 2006 @ 11pm

If wii had games I liked then I’d buy one. But IMHO there is nothing better than a bog standard PC for gaming.

Funny that citylink was so crap. They are usually really good for me. Then always deliver on time - and normally a few hours earlier.

Defmech
11 December 2006 @ 12am

Hey, have you seen WiiSaber? Same system as MacSaber but you use your Wii remote as the lightsaber , not your MacBook. Awesome.

Neil
11 December 2006 @ 1am

Dude, I am loving this shit! First console I’ve ever owned and I am not disappointed!

Friend code is 5013 7233 7564 6093

Been Zelda’ing it up most of tonight with a gentle game of tennis thrown in just there!

Tomorrow I’m off to hunt down a Wii-Play pack and try to get hold of the Component input… Zelda just doesn’t look quite right with the standard composite output.

Drarok
11 December 2006 @ 11am

OMG!
I’ve just checked the amazon site, and what do I find?
11-12-2006 04:03 Birmingham South Depot Out for delivery

Now I’m going to be really unproductive all day, rushing downstairs as soon as the door goes. Curses!

Jimbo
12 December 2006 @ 1pm

No photos??

Peykan
13 December 2006 @ 8pm

Here’s my (correct) Wii number. If it matters, I live in the United States, and hope that my Miis can swim across the ocean easily.

2887 2473 5227 8836

I just got S-video cables for my Wii and a surround sound system. Zelda looks nicer. Makes me wish I had been able to find them before finishing the game.

Would love to have Zelda discussions with anyone else who has finished the game for their impressions.

Joe
14 January 2007 @ 3am

i added everyone on this page who posted a wii number so add me too!

wii number: 4435 4064 3193 2170

R-MAC
18 February 2007 @ 9pm

I added all of your numbers, this is mine: 8939-5910-1375-2413
oh yea do any of you play that red steel it is sick! i thank zelda is way more better though.

peace ☆

Johnny
13 March 2007 @ 11am

Was mad to make a decision: Xbox360 or Wii?
Finally bought a Wii within IC WiiKey. ;)
Having over 20 games now.
My number is 7433-2624-6406-2169.
Going 2 add all ur numbers.

j@me$
18 April 2007 @ 9pm

hey i added u
here is mine
8919 9007 3613 2376

bean
4 May 2007 @ 6pm

my wii number is 0378-2118-8092-3071 hope 2 make new mates

martin
19 May 2007 @ 9am

hi i have added all of your numbers can u add me (3925-8768-7904-2266)

← Nintendo Wii Wii Number →

About the Author

I'm a Cocoa developer you can hire for your Mac OS X development projects.

I also have a collection of Cocoa source code you can download and use.

Recent Archives