E3 Early Access Media passes don't mean squat in 2006 when pretty much everyone waiting to get through the doors at 9 am is planning to run straight for the Nintendo booth to try the Wii out for the first time, just like you are. Wait time to get into the Wii area was over an hour, but we passed the time playing pickup games of Tetris DS and trash talking about the skillz or lack thereof of our fellow members of the press. After checking out the periperals on display (including the Wii Zapper, which wasn't in use on the floor but got us hot and bothered nonetheless), we elbowed our way through the crowd to try out two Wii games for the first time: Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess. Both games are played Nunchuk Style: the nunchuk attachment in your left hand controls your forward and backward motion, the remote in your right hand's used for pointing to objects on the screen. More on our hands on impressions and some photos from the floor after the jump.

Super Mario Galaxy was the first game we played on the Wii, the first time we got to actually hold any of the Wii peripherals in our hands. They were surprisingly light and ergonomic—from the photos we'd seen previously, we were worried the remote especially would be too small or just awkward to hold and press multiple buttons on, but it took us less than 30 seconds to get used to the way both controllers felt in our hands. The controls were also incredibly intuitive, as it took us just over a minute to learn the controls (mostly jumping and using objects in the environment) and just get around to playing through the demo stage.

The Twilight Princess controls proved much harder to pick up, mainly because there were just so many more things to learn right away than in Super Mario Galaxy. The + (on the remote) controls both switching through your item inventory and using selected items. For example, the down button selects the bow and arrow; holding it down and moving the remote around lets you aim the bow at an enemy, and then you release the button to fire. We found the remote to be far more sensitive and therefore much harder to properly utilize with Twilight Princess than it was with Super Mario Galaxy, giving Twilight Princess a higher barrier to entry. The first Nintendo representative we talked to about this confirmed that remote sensitivity is not player adjustable, each game has its own setting; the second told us said "Miyamoto decided [the use of the Twilight Princess remote] should be harder, to make it more realistic."

We'll have video of Super Mario Galaxy and Twilight Princess gameplay up soon, stay tuned.