It can be hard to describe actually using the Nintendo Wii controller, almost like trying to tell someone who's never used a mouse and keyboard setup how to do so in a PC first-person shooter. But Nintendo, in all its infinite gameplay wisdom, has created a series of games that make describing the Wii controller a breeze. This collection of games, called Wii Sports, includes a handful of sports games that use the controller exactly as you'd use the sporting equipment in real life, making for both an easy-to-describe gameplay mechanic and an all-too-natural gameplay experience.

The first game in the Wii Sports lineup at E3 was Wii Sports: Tennis. With the Wii's quarter-inch-tall sensor on top of the TV, we simply held the Wii controller in one hand and moved around in the "living room" cubicle as if we were actually playing tennis. Moving in front of the TV, be it raising our arms in a serving motion or making a backhand movement to return the ball, felt completely natural, almost as if we were actually out on the court. Depending on your player's position on the court, there was also a forehand motion, overhead smash and, for the truly advanced, an ability to give the ball top spin by rotating your wrist realistically as you swung the racket, er, remote.

The only downfall to Wii Sports: Tennis, and one that might befall gamers with small living rooms, was the confining demonstration space. You see, in addition to the sensor detecting arm movements, Wii Sports; Tennis also seemed to use real-life player movements to at least partially direct the on-screen character. Nintendo says the game moves on-screen sprites into position automatically, but we found that not to be true (and if it was, then Nintendo still has some serious work to do). Our on-screen players would frequently not get to the ball in time, so we felt the need to help our player along by moving our bodies into position. The problem was, with the small space at E3, we often ran into our doubles partner or, worse yet, our opponent. As a result, it was far too easy to miss the ball simply because we couldn't reach it. Again, the auto-positioning may be something Nintendo is still working on, but if it remains as questionable as it was in our time with the game at E3, Nintendo may want to look at using the nunchuk attachment along with the Wii controller to use the thumbstick to move on-screen characters.

The next two Wii Sports games were equally intuitive in the control department and much less questionable when it came to player movements. The single-player Wii Sports: Golf, for instance, has players making full swings when teeing off and miniscule putting motions when on the green. This mechanic is infinitely more gratifying than pulling back on a thumbstick, and it obviously feels much more natural in the context of a golf game. It does, however, give players less opportunity to make excuses about thumbstick errors, which will be a real eye-opener to Tiger Woods PGA Tour ringers who think they can actually perform that well in real life.

Wii Sports: Baseball, the third game on our Wii Sports tour, is more like a homerun derby for up to two players than an actual full-featured baseball game. Players grip the controller like a bat and swing at the baseball as it approaches the plate. The harder you swing, the farther the ball travels, and as in real-life hardball, the timing of your swing determines the angle in which the ball will travel. In a cool nod to individual swing stances, the game also picks up small circling motions as you're in the batter's box, so if you twirl your bat in real life as you wait for a pitch, you'll see that translate to the TV too.

Wii Sports may sound at first more like a proof of concept than an actual game, but it's definitely geared toward the multiplayer experience. More important, perhaps, is that it shows people exactly what using the Wii controller is like from a gameplay standpoint. It was also the most intuitive game at E3, not just for the Wii, and it showed better than any other game the range of sensitivity and functionality of the Wii controller. Like opening the door in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, the mechanics in Wii Sports immersed us in a game in a way we haven't before experienced. With just a bit more polish, chalk this one up as all dressed up and ready to go, coach.

-- Jonas Allen

The Wii's strong showing at the 2006 expo earlier this month, combined with Sony's announcement of two PS3 models for the mind-blowingly high prices of $499 and $599, has prompted many of the same analysts who dismissed Nintendo to predict its continued resurgence. "Not only will fan boys buy it, but it will also be the second console of choice" for PS3 or Xbox 360 owners, says analyst Michael Pachter of the U.S. research firm Wedbush Morgan. In Japan, publishers like Konami are even more bullish. "I would use the dominance of the DS in Japan to predict the future for Wii, since the vision for Wii is similar," says Michihiro Ishizuka, president of the company's game division. Okasan Securities analyst Masashi Morita believes that in addition to capturing nongamers, Nintendo can even win back some of its lapsed fans with the Wii's built-in support for the company's vast library of classics. And though Nintendo has yet to announce the Wii's price or release date, it's expected to be cheaper than its competitors, leaving Sony and Microsoft to duke it out for the graphics-guns-and-gore crowd. If the console war is indeed hell, Nintendo, it seems, would rather give peace a chance.

By now you may have heard about the speculation surrounding Nintendo's Wii showing at E3. Some sneaky photojournalists managed to snap pictures showing GameCubes, not Wii consoles. We've got the scoop, straight from Nintendo, on just what exactly was shown at E3.

In the days following this year's E3, photos began to surface from the Nintendo media briefing and the Wii booth, suggesting that what gamers were actually playing were not Wii consoles, but in fact black GameCubes. "How could this be? Was Nintendo playing a trick on us?" people asked. Obviously, Nintendo isn't "tricking" anyone. GameDaily BIZ got the official word today from Nintendo of America on exactly what was being used to demonstrate the Wii games.

Nintendo confirmed that they did indeed use GameCube housing, but that the "guts" or internal architecture was certainly from the Wii. "The Wii hardware we exhibited at E3 2006 was made specifically for the E3 show and is not the final mass-production version. Some of this hardware was cased in Nintendo GameCube housing," the company explained.

So if the hardware that was used was not representative of the final mass-production version, does that mean that the Wii graphics we all witnessed could be improved by the time the console launches? "For some of the games that you've seen, the focus for them was not graphics at all, and so by design they were made to have a very broad appeal to them -- something that even your non-gamers can understand," Nintendo of America PR Manager Matt Atwood told us. "It isn't the final hardware, so at this point anything could happen, but this is very typical of what happens at E3; this is something I've seen with every other publisher and Nintendo in the past."

He continued, "So will the system specs change? The answer is they're still finalizing it. But as far as what you saw at E3 we think that was very indicative of the experience Wii will offer... It was Wii hardware."

We know the name, we know about the controller speaker, about the motion detection, about the pointer control, but apparently that's not enough. Now fans have latched onto a little flap on the petite Wii and have become convinced that it hides the secret to eternal life, or perhaps a 3D hologram projector. Another, just as credible idea, is that the flap covers up a slot where you can plug in DS games. What about, I don't know, a place to stick memory cards. Nintendo fans sure do love their conspiracies.

According to Patrik Johansson at Nintendo's Swedish general agency, the price for a Wii-console will be between 2500-3000 kronor, a few thousand kronor less than the competitors consoles. Wii will be launched globally at the end of 2006.

The Nintendo "Wii" games were all actually running on Gamecubes at E3? That's what Nintendo fans are suggesting with some behind the scenes photos (thanks Penny Arcade). Imagine if the 360 games were running on an old Xbox at E3, or the PS3 games were running off of PS2s? I've heard of backwards compatability, but forward compatablity is a new one to me