Jamie Cheng from Klei Entertainment sent us his initial impression of the Wii. What does he think about the console? Does he love it? Find out after the break

I’m a huge fan of the Wii, and I bought both the DS and the Wii at launch. Interestingly, I’m also an Xbox 360 fan, having programmed and worked on the machine since before it was released. I grew up in Hong Kong with the Famicom, PC Engine, SNES, the N64, Playstation, and loved all of them (though, I actually liked the 64 the least). So, by no means am I eternally loyal to one company.

With that said, I absolutely adore the Wii. My entire household waits in line to play it. Yesterday, we logged more than 14 hours of play on the system. But I sure have my gripes. Here are some of my thoughts:

1. The Virtual Console is definitely underwhelming. The selection is really quite limited, and the pricing is way off. In response to some of the comments:

A. They won’t run out of classics by releasing more games. There are a crazy amount of games on the NES, SNES, PC Engine and Genesis combined, and they could be releasing games that not everybody considers classics, but lots of people love and remember. Kato & Ken (okay, that’s “JJ & Jeff” in the US, heavily censored)? Motoroader? Metal Warriors?

B. I’m sorry, but not every old SNES game is worth 8 bucks. I certainly find it hard to believe Altered Beast, as good as it is, is today worth more than Geometry Wars on XBLA. I really don’t have any qualms about intangible media – millions of people certainly don’t have any problems buying music online. But price is such a huge factor when you’re talking about impulse buys in the name of nostalgia. Will I buy the original Zelda for 5 bucks, when I know I’m not actually going to play through it? Nope. How about 2 bucks? Why, yes! I would pay 2 bucks just to show my fiancée what I grew up with. Not everyone thinks like a hardcore fan, and I think they’re missing a huge market here by pricing it so high.

C. I was really hoping for at least one original game for the VC. That’s such a huge opportunity – I was just *itching* to buy small wii minigames on the VC. In fact, I haven’t heard much about this recently – are they releasing original Wii games on the VC any time in the near future? How are they going to price this, considering old games are 5-10 bucks?

2. The Wii looks great. After reading reports online I was expecting my eyes to turn inside out when I turned on the Wii, but it looks just fine in 16:9 on my HDTV. Yes, I do miss 720p/1080i, but I still think TP looks and plays great. Still, I wish I could have bought component cables. I hope Nintendo is listening to all the complaints about this.

3. I wish the Wii Message Board came with options for security. I share the Wii with others in the household, and I’d love to be able to send messages without everyone able to read them. If I could tie them to my Mii with a pass code (e.g. directional movement code), that would be awesome. Which brings me to the play log, which I think is great and hilarious at the same time. Boy, would I hate to be a kid today. I think this feature should also have lock / unlock / reset features.

4. Twilight Princess is amazing. But everyone has already said this, so I’m going to stop now.

5. My fiancée never plays video games but is really enjoying the Wii. ‘nuff said.

6. I love the channel system, and I can’t wait to check the news and forecast on it.

7. The Mii’s are hilarious. I’m still quite confused about the Mii Parade, though I’m sure it’s because I haven’t played around with it enough or read the manual. But for a system that’s supposed to be instantly intuitive, this could have definitely been improved.

All in all, I’m really, incredibly happy with my purchase. The system is just so much fun. But the Virtual Console? So far it’s just a huge opportunity that they’re not taking advantage of. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to log more hours on Twilight Princess.