Features// Day Two in the Wii House: Wii Play

On our first jaunt to Nintendo’s Wii house – see the full picture tour here – SPOnG had a good old two-player session with our trusty snapper, Stuart on Wii Play, the collection of crazy/wacky/zany mini-games which, for £40, comes bundled with a free Wii-Mote to complement your Wii set-up.

Each additional Wii-Mote is going to set you back around £29 and each additional Nunchuck will cost £14. You are going to have to buy at least an extra one of each in order to get full multi-player enjoyment out of the console, especially with the fun-for-all-the-family games which feature in Wii Sports and Wii Play.

“Hang on, so after buying the console, Nintendo then expects you to go out and spend another 40-odd quid on buying an extra remote?” our non-plussed photographer asks us.

“Errr, yes,” we reply, adding,“but the console is priced pretty well at £179, plus it comes with a free game so for just over two hundred quid you get two controllers, which isn’t that bad is it?”

“Hmmmm”, says Stuart the snapper. Still to be convinced. Although by this time he is eyeing-up the Wii Play mini-games with some interest.



As a SPOnG reader, you are already fully versed in Wii Sports, which comes bundled with the console and which SPOnG previewed back in the summer. We’ll be taking a more in-depth look at Wii Sports, including the various Wii-Mii and multiplayer features, later this week.

SPOnG’s advice, if you can afford it, would be to shell out for four Wii-Motes so that you are not constantly chopping and changing them between players in multiplayer sessions with four other mates or family-members. Plus, remember that your personally designed Wii-Mii character can be assigned to each specific Wii-Mote. So, having to share the controllers with sweaty-palmed mates will soon become a bore.

Additionally, before we go on to detail all of the mini-game fun of Wii Play, the minute you finally get your hands on the console, you are also going to have to buy at least two ‘proper’ games (RRP between £34-£39). SPOnG will be snapping up Zelda: The Twilight Princess and Sega’s Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz on day of launch. Watch out for our full hands-on previews of both these top titles and all other launch titles in the coming weeks.

This means that you are going to have to budget for a minimum of £368 in order to get anywhere near the full Wii experience this coming Christmas (console, 4 Wii-Motes, 2 Nunchucks, 2 'proper' games). Which might seem quite a whack to part with, but having experienced the house of Wii fun, SPOnG can vouchsafe that it’s a decent pleasure-investment.

Plus, we could go on to detail what a PS3 plus two games and three extra controllers will set you back on launch… next March. Oh, okay then! Let’s compare! A 60GB HDD PS3 model, plus three extra Sixaxis controllers, plus two games is going to set you back nigh on £700.