Episode: 113
Title: HPR0113: Nintendo Wii Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0113/hpr0113.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 11:36:15

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Hello and welcome to another episode of how to pop the video.
I am your host Asplexi and I'm going to give a review of Nintendo Wii.
It is indeed quite nifty.
The game itself comes with a sports pack which contains tennis, baseball, golf, bowling
and boxing.
All these games make use of the sensor bar and are sensitive to the remote movement.
You can play tennis and baseball and boxing while sitting down, but it's harder to play
golf and bowling unless you're standing up because you need more space for the arm movement.
For the most part you play the game like you played in real life, except for minor differences.
Oh, and the Wii arm is so true.
My right arm is usually very sore after I play tennis for too long.
The control is through the wireless Wii remote and it's annexed that is called the non-chuck.
The non-chuck is attached to the remote through a wire.
There are wireless non-chucks that you can buy, but I don't see the need since the thing
really allows plenty of room for the game's first pieces.
In boxing you attach the non-chuck to the remote and practically forget there and just do regular
boxing moves so you're just hitting in the air.
The characters and Wii sports are basic.
Some of them like arms or legs.
For instance in bowling, only the player has legs.
The bystanders in the game are floating with no arms or legs.
And boxing, for instance, the gloves, the boxing gloves are like floating in the air.
So when you hit him, the glove actually flies away.
Another game I got which actually came with the secondary mode I bought is the Wii Play.
The cool games in Wii Play are air hockey, bowling and the ball race game.
It also contains ping pong, but it fails miserably.
It doesn't even resemble real ping pong.
So you're barely moving the racket around.
Actually the Wii Sport tennis is more like real life ping pong.
The other games are appropriate for different age groups.
For instance, matching shape and direction.
Like you have to match the me character in shape and direction with a prototype that's
in a ball.
That's more fun for younger users.
And find the me or using is probably more fun for older users who don't want to put too
much physical effort into it.
It's the Wii Play is probably just an effort to have a family kind of game.
I also bought Mortal Kombat for Wii.
That's very cool to play with on the Wii, however that could also be because Mortal Kombat
is awesome enough in and of itself.
For the first week or so, Enigma and I played it thinking that it didn't make use of the
sensor because all of the basic actions are keys that you press or like you move the
joystick on the nunchuck.
Eventually we RTFM and found out that all the special moves require movement like throwing
fire or that kind of stuff require movement of the remote.
So you press B which is the button on the back of the remote and you move up or left or
right, etc.
And it does the coolest things like it shoots fire.
It does all the tricks that the characters have like for instance sub zero can freeze
someone, etc.
Mortal Kombat also has a motor combat sub game which is also motion sensitive but the
motion sensitivity can be replaced by the nunchuck.
The next thing about motor combat is that it contains a lot of visuals and that distinguishes
it from the bull race which has the same basic premise.
You move forward, you move the we motor round for going left and right.
Maybe the bull race and we play has a bit more of a sensitivity thing because you tilt
the thing forward and backwards for acceleration whereas you don't have that in motor combat.
But anyway, the motor combat is cooler because you have the blood everywhere and you
can smash the wall and get a fatality and you can fall into the water, etc.
Motor combat is less family oriented than the bull race and we play.
I also bought the B movie game.
It was a bit of a disappointment.
Most of the game is blocked when you start playing.
You can't really explore through it to find something you like because you have to do
some really lame stuff before you find out what the cool stuff is if there is any cool
stuff since I didn't really bother.
The story mode is a bit slow.
You get to try all different jobs in the whole next company but there's a lot of stopping
and loading so the whole thing stops for like three seconds and it's loading every now
and then every time you change job or something like that you're loading for five seconds
and it's like it gets boring eventually.
I think the point of it is it loads while it tells you the story but if you already
know the story it's kind of like dude you get to fly out of the hive but it's basically
the same stuff.
You drive your car around, you pick people up and drop them off, etc.
You have all kinds of jobs.
The CD also has a multiplayer option which is mostly blocked for new users except for
like the drone gallery and the arcade.
The drone gallery has three almost identical games where you're supposed to shoot at another
species of flying insects and reload by vibrating your nunchuck which is basically okay but
it's not that exciting.
The other one is a pollination game like the one in the story mode, in the story mode when
you get out of the hive you can pollinate and it's a 3D thing where you actually fly
out and land on flowers etc.
The one in the arcade is very different.
It's like a 2D, Vermonessent of Atari game, all the Atari games, you're like involuntarily
moving upwards and you have to avoid bad things like wasps, frogs, cacti etc.
And you try to fly through good things like flowers.
I can't remember the name of the Atari game but I used to play it all the time when I was
like 6 and that was a long time ago.
Yeah, anyway so that's basically my review of the Wii.
I couldn't find Mario Kart anywhere, we've been looking everywhere but I still want to
try it.
The Wii is definitely worth having if you can't afford it.
The sports back can be your excuse to say it's good for your health.
Oh, another thing about the Wii, you can train in the Wii sports back.
You can train and it opens up new levels and stuff and it's pretty cool.
And you can have a Wii fitness testing that's also an option and it gives you an age.
I actually tested 59 years old and I'm so not.
But then again someone else who was also playing tested like 80s so yeah, the best age
you can be is 20.
And since it's not designed for kids, it doesn't really
reflect very well since it probably will give older ages.
The Wii fitness allows you to see your progress so you can test today and then you can test
next week, etc.
And then you can compare your progress or your decline maybe.
Anyway, that's all for today, thank you very much for listening, bye bye.
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