I heard that you can play a lot of older nintendo games on the Wii, such as the N64 games, and Gamecube, etc?

You’re right that you can play a lot of older games on the Wii. But I’m afraid that the Wii only takes Wii and GameCube discs. So you’ll have to re-purchase and download any N64 or older games you might have.

But at least they won't be as expensive as the cartridges originally were, and you won't have to worry about the internal cartridge batteries dying. You can purchase the games (including many N64 games) by downloading them from Nintendo’s Virtual Console using Wii points. You can buy the points using Wii point cards which you can buy in stores, or buy the points directly online with your Wii, using a credit card.

They cost one dollar per 100 points, and are sold in units of $10. You don’t get a discount for larger purchases. Of course your Wii has to be online to buy points, but that’s relatively simple to set up.

If you have a wireless network already set up, connecting the Wii to it is pretty easy. If not, Nintendo sells a wireless attachment for the Wii; actually, it’s for your computer. You plug it in to the USB port of an internet-connected computer, and you’re ready to go.

We’ve downloaded Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64, and we’ll probably download Star Fox 64 eventually. These don’t work well (or at all) with the Wii controller, but you can buy "Classic Controllers" for the Wii. And so far we’ve been using both wired and wireless GameCube controllers with the Wii, and they work perfectly.

However, I should note that old N64 controllers do NOT work with the Wii. Only GameCube-compatible and Wii controllers can be used (including the Classic Controller). The N64 games are the original versions, right down to the odd little bugs and glitches.

The Super Mario 64 is NOT the version that was rejiggered for the DS, in which you can switch between different characters; it’s the original version all the way. I haven’t yet downloaded an N64 game that used the rumble pack, so I don’t know if that works (and of course it would have to use the rumble feature in the GameCube controller). I've heard that it doesn't, though.

The games also don’t work with N64 memory cards (there’s no way to plug them in anyway), so you can’t save ghost data for Mario Kart 64, for example. But you can use your GameCube memory cards in the Wii. In fact, you pretty much have to; you can’t save GameCube game states on Wii cards.

The good news is that saved GameCube games do come over to the Wii flawlessly. So far N64 games have all cost $10 (US), as I recall, although there might be one or two that are $8. There are also a lot of other, older games available - not all of them for Nintendo systems.

The neglected but awesome TurboGrafx-16 is heavily represented, with some of their best titles: Bonk’s Adventure, Military Madness, Bomberman ’93, Alien Crush, Dungeon Explorer, etc.. Most of them are $4 - $6, I think. GameCube controllers work fine with those games. In fact, I have yet to download a game that doesn’t work perfectly with the GC controllers.

As for other games, I was disappointed by Donkey Kong. It’s not the arcade version, but instead the much lamer console version, with only three levels and much less complexity. I’m hoping they’ll release the arcade version eventually.