Tips for Getting the Most out of your Wii U - Christmas 2014

If I had a penny for every time I heard a guy going into a store to buy a little tv for his man cave because the kids are always using the livingroom set.....

Well, with the Wii U you can play games without a Television. It comes as standard with a large handheld screen upon which you can play all of your games. You can even turn off the TV or switch the channel to the football while continuing to play on the handheld gamepad.

The gamepad can also be used to watch Netflix, Hulu and other apps as well as surfing the net. It also has a headphone input. But more on that below.

Did you ever want to play 2 player video games on 2 TV's at once? Or how about just playing your games console and watching sports at the same time. Well now you can. The Wii U allows for one person to play on the TV while the other plays on the gamepad against them meaning that split screen isn't needed and your enemy can't see what you are up to. The best example of this would be in Call of Duty Black Ops 2. It also allows for you to switch from the game your playing to the football game your watching and watch both at the same time. And did I mention that this isn't possible with any other console?

The Wii, the predecessor to the Wii U had many great games and accessories. Rather than letting them fall by the wayside, you can use them on the Wii U. Backwards compatibility really is sweet!!

Not only is the web browser on the Wii U amazing, but it allows you to play free games online such as Free Civ or cut the rope due to the fact that it is HTML5 compatible. You can even pause a Wii U game in the middle of the action and browse the internet. This browser is the best I have seen on any game console to date.

This feauture, Tvii, was underutilized at first but now that people have the hang of it, it's really cool. Not only can you use Netflix and Hulu on the Wii U, but you can use the Tvii app to combine these other apps and tell you what is available on each of them. So netflix, hulu, and amazon prime all in one place? Yes please.

The game pad has a button that will bring up a tv remote on screen. I find this to be extremely handy when you don't want to keep putting down the game pad and picking up the remote. This is also great when incorporated with Tvii.

The gamepad allows you to plug your headphones directly into it. So if you fancy watching movies or playing games on the gamepad or TV, you can plug your headphones straight into the gamepad that can be right beside you or in your hands and as a result, you won't be waking up the kids/ bothering your parents/ bothering your wife studying. It's also nice to listen to pandora through the gamepad while chilling out.

To achieve this, simply go to the web browser on your Wii U and enter your computers IP address. This also allows you to beam the movies to your gamepad, although having them up on the TV through the Wii U seems to be the more fascinating options (beaming from one small portable device to another less practical). This will only work with MP4 files though and not with less common file types.