It's been a couple of days since the Wii graced our offices here at IGN AU and we've got to tell you, it's like having a newborn baby in our midst. As soon as we finished setting it up in our somewhat-temporary gaming space at the back of the room, the crowds started to mass, vying for a gander, a loving squeeze, and shake of the remote. Watching traditionally straight-laced, non-gamers' faces light up in delight after their first encounter harkens back to the glory days of the mid-80s NES era. We're not kidding. It speaks volumes about Nintendo's success in recapturing the public interest.

From the moment you remove the soft protective plastic bag from the outside of the Wii console itself, you know this isn't going to be a traditional experience. The unit is surprisingly small and light - roughly three DVD cases wide, deep and just a tad longer. The silver base is plastic, also surprisingly light, and comes with a clear circular platform, called the Wii Stand Plate, that you can attach to its base - in effect, giving the base even more stability without detracting from the form.

The wiimote and nunchuk are very ergonomic and well-sized. From the pictures, it's hard to express how well having a single main A button and a B trigger as your primary inputs works. Your finger and thumb line up nicely above and below each other, allowing you to 'pinch' the controller with one hand. This is a technique that several games, including Zelda and Wii Sports ask you to do in order to effectively press start and enter the game. It also allows you to grasp your Mii character in the Mii channel, for instance.

Fun in practice

The wiimote's rumble isn't as strong as we'd like - likely due to a single small motor, instead of the 360 and PS2's two. The GameCube only had one as well, but it definitely felt a little stronger than this. As it is, you'll feel a slight bump as the wiimote's cursor passes over buttons and boxes on the start-up menu. It's subtle, but adds a little tangibility to an otherwise entirely separate and new way of controlling things.

The speaker, built into the wiimote's midsection, is another unique feature. This is really just an icing-on-the-cake kind of addition. In practice, the cheap quality of the speaker is given away by the slight crackle to the sound effects in games like Zelda. The real solution to this, we've found, is to turn the volume down to three bars or so from the lowest setting. Anything much beyond this and the quality really begins to tank. Putting it up to full blast is a tinny, shrill assault on your ears.

Still, in a game like Wii Sports Tennis, hearing the gentle 'thock!' of the tennis ball colliding with your racquet's netting creates a cute little thrill the first time you hear it. Rolling into a wall or tree in Zelda causes a harsh 'thud!' sound.

And that's the wiimote's speaker for you. Not earth-shattering, but we're not ones to look a gift horse (or Wii) in the mouth.

The menu system is very clean and simple to follow. Each channel is given its own box - simply guide the little hand cursor over to select it, hit A, and a new screen will pop up. If you select the Mii Channel, for instance, it brings up a Mii Channel front page, where you can decide to start a session or return to the main menu.

On the subject of Miis, this is almost the Wii's answer to a GamerTag on Xbox Live. A Mii is your persistent digital interpretation of yourself. It is created in a specially-designed backend program that looks more like a simple art tool than anything else. With it, you can create some incredibly freakish beings, too. You have freedom to choose the sex, height and weight initially. From here, you can personalise the faces to a great degree - add some crazy eyebrows, drag them right down to nose height and turn them into some kind of mutant moustache. Give yourself some pleasant almond-shaped eyes on your lumpy or pointy skull, and then enlarge them to ridiculous anime sizes.

Once you've created a decent likeness of yourself or something resembling a creature from the island of Dr. Moreau, your Mii is deposited into a Mii waiting room of sorts - a plaza where your Miis and the Miis of your added friends will mingle. You can sore up to 100 of these in your system memory.

The Photo Channel is fairly self-explanatory on the surface - images can be stored on the Wii's meagre 512mb internal memory after being transferred from an SD card or from the Wii Message Board. Once you've transferred them across, you can resize, edit and otherwise manipulate them to your heart's content. You can create simple slide-shows set to some midi-music if you want to show off your latest creations to your mates.

Nintendo has bowed out from the graphics race, sure. But what does that mean in real terms? Well, if the latest graphical glitz is the only thing that counts in your books, prepare to be wildly disappointed. The hardware is very clearly based on that of the GameCube's, with minimal improvements to texture ability, and a slight boost in horsepower to compensate for widescreen as standard on many Wii titles. The resolution of the console is set at 50hz 576i (PAL) by default, using the supplied Wii AV composite cables. However, we'd wholly recommend forking out for the component cables (due several days after launch) for a much cleaner, 480p image. The console can also be run at 60hz 480i - however neither the 480p or 60hz 480i modes are compatible with the GameCube software. The system will automatically revert to 576i - which is a bit of a shame.

Using the Wiimote to aim works flawlessly - if you have issues, be sure to adjust your sensor bar settings in the game, as well as in the Wii menu.

At this stage, there is no sign of Nintendo upping the possible resolution of the Wii software. The processing power required to process the images at a higher resolution may well be too much for the system to handle. Of course, we'd love to be proven wrong on this one!

All up, however, the games still look remarkably fetching - Wii Sports uses some lovely reflections, depth-of-field and light blooming effects, and although Zelda's engine looks a little dated, the artistry of the world and character animations is beholden to the talent at Nintendo, more than a good indicator of the Wii's potential. The game plays very nearly flawlessly. Controlling link is a throwback to the glory days of Ocarina - with adjustments made for Wii-specific motion controls and glorious widescreen. The game, thankfully, accurately translates swipes and thrusts with the wiimote into sword slashes, and no dramatic swishing is required to get link to attack. Little movements will do just fine, and we're pleases about this.

The music is wonderfully composed midi-orchestral, with plenty of ethereal harmonising, epic horns and strings. If you're a fan of the past games, you'll appreciate the subtle changes made to the classic over-world theme, store theme and village themes. But enough about Zelda - for now. We're engrossed in the game and are playing through it now for a review early next week. Stay tuned for that one.

Our one minor gripe about the system itself - and it is very minor - where is all the cool, blue glowing effects? As it is, the only time the disc drive slot lights up is when you insert or eject a disc, power up the system, or receive an update or message via WiiConnect 24. Even then, it lasts for literally about 1 second. With such an iconic vanity feature included, why can't we choose to keep in on? Or feature it more prominently.

Still, it is early days. After 48 hours with the system, we are satisfied that Nintendo has delivered a fresh way of approaching our favourite pastime. We still have yet to test out the Virtual Console, online channels or the WiiConnect 24 auto-update features, too. These will have to wait until the console's Australian public release. Until then however, keep it glued to IGN for more updates, impressions and reviews leading up to the Wii's release on December 7.