For a machine that’s now just a few short weeks away from launch there’s still plenty that we don’t know about the Wii – like what are we going to do with the hundreds of Virtual Console games we’re doubtless going to download, how are they going to play and so on? Well, thanks to our red-hot line into the heart of Nintendo we’ve been able to obtain answers to at least a few such queries. Here’s a bit of clarity for you...:

• The Wii keeps an internal record of all your downloaded content – Virtual Console games included. This means that you can delete items and download them again at a later date, at no extra cost. In theory, then, you won’t need to worry about cluttering the Wii’s memory by downloading too many games.

• Virtual Console games can be stored on SD memory cards if needs be but are 'locked' to your console, meaning that you won’t be able to upload them or copy them to a mate’s machine. Well, that’s fair enough really.

• Virtual Console games will be speedy to download! On a decent 2 Meg broadband connection an average NES game should arrive in four seconds. Similarly an average Super NES game, in as much as there is such a thing, will take around 20 seconds. It’s two minutes or so for a typical 32 Meg N64 game. Obviously download times will vary depending on file size and speed of broadband connection.

• Virtual Console games come with a manual. Don’t get too excited, we doubt that this’ll be anything more than a few details about which buttons to press. Digitised versions of the original game manuals are not very likely, although that would be cool!

• Virtual console games are effectively true to their original format. They’re playable using the Wii Remote (sideways on) and classic controller, but you won’t be able to use analogue or motion sensitive controls for a game that was designed to work with a D-pad and vice versa. Similarly Gamecube games played in the Wii will only work with a Gamecube or wireless Wavebird controllers.

• The Opera internet browser is free, forever, for the first six months after Wii launch. After this time there’ll be a charge so download it while you can. Actually, we already knew that.

• A 2000 Wii Points card will retail for £14.99, available from pretty much anywhere that sells the console. Points can be bought online too, through the Wii Shop channel. Puzzlingly the console will only allow players to store a maximum of 10,000 points on their accounts at any one time. That should be up to us punters, surely?

So there you go – a few more details direct from the horses mouth. Don’t you just feel wiser and more, y’know, powerful now...?