The Must Have Accessories for the Nintendo Wii

The Nintendo Wii is already very popular, and a it can do quite a lot right out of the box, but there are some things that go with it that can make the console much more fun and convenient at the same time.

The first and most important recommendation is solving the battery situation. It has already been widely reported that the Wii remotes use a lot of battery power fairly steadily, and for that reason, a lot of early Nintendo owners are recommending either a steady early supply of remote batteries or investing in a rechargeable system along with good quality rechargeable batteries to limit the cost of a constant supply of remote batteries.

Second on the list are extra remotes. As has already been pointed out several times, the Nintendo Wii is a social gaming platform, and there are a variety of games already available, with a large number on the way no doubt, which take advantage of both the social aspect and the multiplayer aspect of the Wii platform to a significant degree. However, with limited remotes comes limited multi-player and limited social gaming, so a lot of Wii owners are recommending at least a second remote, if not a third or a fourth.

There are a few things about the remotes that should be pointed out (ha!). One is that extra remotes, especially in large quantity, might get a little pricey, so this should be taken into consideration so it doesn't deplete the game budget too quickly. The other is that the nunchuk attachment for extra remotes is also an extra cost of about half the cost of the remote itself. The nunchuk attachment seems to be extraordinarily important for some games, Zelda prominent among them, so if extra remotes are on the wish list, just be sure Link doesn't get caught in the dragon cave and can't move because he's only got half a controller on his side.

Then, for owners of high-definition displays such as HDTV, it should be noted that out of the box, the Nintendo Wii only has composite cables which do not support the Wii's maximum resolution of 480p. Fortunately, there are component cables available which allow the Wii to connect to high-definition displays and which do support the higher resolution.

Then there's the Internet Channel. The Nintendo Wii's Internet Channel runs on the Opera Web Browser, which allows the Wii to operate as more or less an Internet-connected computer. However, it has already been announced that the free nature of the Internet Channel is temporary, and use of the Opera-enabled Internet channel feature in the future will require a purchase through the Wii Store in order to enable Opera's functionality. For users who already have a computer with Internet access, this may not be an issue, but having Internet access on the Wii seems like a convenient feature, so it may be a good idea to set aside a little for the browser as well.

As more accessories become available, and there will no doubt be many, the Nintendo Wii series will include them in future articles.