[...]... Merrill Lynch usually does its homework (and that’s no bull!) 4 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide What Makes the Wii Different? The Wii is a departure from all of Nintendo s other consoles in several respects: • The controllers are wireless and motion sensitive • Although it’s small and not based on cuttingedge technology, the Wii gets the absolute maximum out of what Nintendo gave it • The Wii has built-in... terms of where you attach them on the Wii and how you plug them into a power outlet or the inputs on a television AV multi-out plug RCA plugs: Video Left audio Right audio Figure 2.5 The Wii s AV cable DC plug AC plug Figure 2.6 The power cable included with the Wii What’s perhaps most impressive about the Wii is that it’s essentially a GameCube and a Wii all in one Flip up the cover on the top of the Wii, ... the Wii by a wire Included software: Wii Sports Besides the operating system that is built into the device, the Wii comes with Wii Sports, an ingenious collection of sports games that takes advantage of the wireless Wii Remote and provides instant enjoyment The Wii Sports disc includes these games: • Tennis For new Wii users, Tennis seems to be the most difficult game to get the hang of • Golf The Wii s... and other documentation 22 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide The Ins and Outs of the Wii The Wii console contains a series of buttons as well as two doors that give you access to the GameCube portion of the Wii and the SD Memory Card access slot for the Wii Figure 2.2, Figure 2.3, and Figure 2.4 also show where the power adapter, the AV adapter, the sensor bar, and the USB connectors are located Power button... Front view of the Wii Chapter 2: Wii: Out of the Box Figure 2.3 Back view of the Wii USB connectors Air vent Sensor bar connector AV multi-out cable connector Power adapter connector GameCube memory-card slots A Figure 2.4 Top view of the Wii B GameCube controller sockets 4 3 2 1 23 24 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide Cables and spaces The basic AV cable (Figure 2.5) and the AC power cable for the Wii (Figure... decide whether you need to purchase anything to go with your first Wii, this chapter looks at what’s inside each Wii box, examining the features and the guts of the Wii so that you can see what this machine can do Then I’ll show you how to set it up and how to connect to the Internet in the quickest, most efficient manner 20 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide note I use the word appliance because the Wii is... connectivity • The Wii is backward compatible with GameCube games, giving GameCube owners an incentive to upgrade to the Wii The following sections cover some of the features that make the Wii stand out in the crowd The controllers Control of the Wii goes through one device: the Wii Remote When it comes to Wii- specific software and games, you must have a Wii Remote as a starting point; otherwise, you... avatars that represent what they actually look like; others choose avatars that are what they want to look like Either way, avatars are very popular ways for people to express themselves in online communities 14 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide A Tour of the Wii Interface Chapter 3 examines the Wii s interface in detail, but because the interface is part of what makes the Wii so compelling and useful,... The main interface of the Wii is a panel of screens— 12 screens in one panel—that individually look like miniature TV screens These small screens are called channels, with each channel offering either a set of services or a particular game or piece of software (Figure 1.9) Figure 1.9 Each little “TV screen” represents a game or a specific area of the Wii universe The channel in the top-left corner of. .. LEDs 26 The Nintendo Wii Pocket Guide The Nunchuk (Figure 2.8) is reserved for gaming applications, but because it’s required for Wii Boxing (included in Wii Sports), the folks at Nintendo made sure that it’s part of the basic Wii kit Although it too contains such things as accelerometers, the Nunchuk works only when hooked to a Wii Remote via the connector at the base of the device Figure 2.8 The Nunchuk .