Thursday, January 21, 2010

Rock Band? Wii?

I've started doing our taxes, and it's apparent that having a kid while making very little money results in huge tax returns.
We've been a bit short on cash the past couple of months, and our spending has gone down--our credit card bill this month is the smallest it's been in a long time. We want to keep it that way--but we also want to do something fun when we get our tax return.
What I want: Rock Band (and possibly Dragon Age).
What April wants: Wii.
We do not have a game system (outside of our PC, which should be able to handle Dragon Age).
I looked up info on Rock Band on Wii, and it appears as if Wii users can't purchase additional tracks or CDs past the basic ones. That option is a necessity for me. (For example, I'd absolutely need to have Boston's full first album).
So, my questions:
1. What are the best Wii games? (Primarily for April).
2. What game system is best with Rock Band? I'm looking at both the ability to download additional songs as well as price.
3. How do you hook a game system up so that you can download new songs? Does it require a certain kind of internet access? I've never actually owned a game system, so...
4. How do game systems hook up to a monitor? (We have an extra flat-screen computer monitor--can you connect a game system to those? Or do you need a TV with the proper connective abilities?)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I can answer number 4, under the assumption that your monitor only has VGA and DVI inputs.

The PS3 and all but the oldest model of the Xbox 360 can output to HDMI, so you'd just need to buy a cable and an adapter to convert to DVI for your monitor, both of which are pretty cheap. Go to monoprice.com for these.

With the Wii, I think you'd have to output to component video and then try to find a converter from component video to VGA, if such a thing exists.

Tim said...

Thanks.
Looks like the monitor actually has HDMI (but no DVI).

Tim said...

It looks like you can buy $20 additions to Rock Band on Wii--including one Classic Rock addition with a lot of good songs. Not as good as the huge list available with a PS3 or Xbox, but I'm not sure I'm willing to pay $300 for one of those either (especially since I'd just use it for Rock Band). I might just go with the Wii version. That way both April and I can be happy--she gets Wii and I get Rock Band.
Now to figure out if I can hook Wii up to our monitor...