Nintendo Wii Review

Let's get this out of the way first: the Wii's graphics look terrible compared with the competition. But within about a half hour of playing games on Nintendo's revolutionary Wii, you won't care!

The Wii includes parental controls, although they're not nearly as sophisticated as the user-based scheme found on the PlayStation 3. Parents can lock down the system based on ESRB ratings, restricting games above the selected level. A four-digit password is used to control access; the password also keeps users from inadvertently changing Internet and other system settings. Nintendo has extended the parental controls to cover the optional, downloadable Opera browser, Wii messages, and the News and Internet channels, but I was unable to test these features. Parental controls don't restrict GameCube games, however—a serious shortcoming.

The Wii includes full support for GameCube games: Four GameCube game controller ports sit on top of the unit, and two memory card slots let you use and save games to your existing memory cards. The GameCube emulator seems to sit completely separate from the Wii, since you cannot use the GameCube controllers with Wii games, and features such as parental controls do not work with them. I tested a variety of older GameCube games, from the launch title, Luigi's Mansion, to ports of N64 Zelda titles Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and third-party titles, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Looney Tunes. All worked exactly as if they were being played on a GameCube.