The dreamGEAR 8-in-1 Goodie Bag for Nintendo Wii contains a bag to transport your Wii in, “Jeli Grips” for two Wii remotes and two Nunchuks, one Wii remote charging dock and rechargeable battery pack and a set of extensions to the Wii remote for Wii Sports – one for tennis, one for golf and one for baseball.

Goodie Bag

The bag is well made and attractively coloured in light grey, light blue and white. It has a padded pouch inside it for the console itself, and also has padding in all its material so it should protect your Wii from the knocks of travelling (although I still wouldn’t trust it to protect it on a flight). It’s of a size that snugly fits the console, its stand and cables, a couple Wii remotes and Nunchuks and some games, so it’s perfect for taking on a short visit to friends or family. If you want to take a few more games, Mario Kart wheels, or even the Sports extensions in this pack you will need to put those in another bag.

The Jeli Grips are not entirely necessary if you have the Nintendo supplied remote covers, but do sport a more funky design, also cover your Nunchuks, and allow you to differentiate one remote from the other by colour – one set is an attractive blue (similar to the blue in the Wii Sports logo) and the other is black. This also means you can tell your remotes from your friends’ when you take them along to play some four player games. Of course you have to take them off when you use the Wii Zapper or the Mario Kart Wii steering wheel (trust me on that one…). You also have to take them off to charge your Wii remotes with the charging dock, which makes them a little less useful.

Charging Dock

The Wii remote charging dock and rechargeable battery pack is an essential Wii accessory, so if you don’t have one I highly recommend this one. The charging dock plugs into one of your Wii’s USB sockets and the rechargeable battery pack replaces the back cover of one of your Wii remotes, so you can simply slip the modified Wii remote into the charging dock when you need to charge the remote. One note though: the Wii has to be on for the charger to work as the USB sockets are only powered when the system is on. You also can’t use the Jeli Grips along with this dock as the metal contacts that do the charging can’t meet the contacts on the Wii remote’s with the covers on. The rechargeable battery pack cover is a little tough to get on, but with a bit of brute force I was able to do it without damaging the remote. Fortunately dreamGEAR have paid good attention to detail here as a hole is provided through which you can press the Sync button – taking that pack on and off whenever you want to sync would be annoying.

Wii Sports Extensions

Finally we come to the Wii Sports extensions. To support the extensions dreamGEAR supply a sort of dock for the Wii Remote to slip into, and into which the extensions clip. The extensions have a plastic base which clips satisfyingly into the remote dock, but the rest of them is made from “child-safe soft foam,” and I would agree with that – the foam is firm but soft and couldn’t possibly damage anyone. The dock itself increases the girth of the Wii Remote in your hand which I found a little uncomfortable after playing for a while – and for smaller children I can imagine it being a little big to hold easily.

The baseball bat extension is cut like a baseball bat that is 25cm long, adding a little realism to your baseball swing. I quite liked the feeling of swinging something rather than nothing. The only problem is that during the innings change-over you have to quickly unclip or re-clip the extension since you don’t want to use it when you’re pitching, and Wii Sports doesn’t wait for you while you do this.

The tennis racquet extension is also of a rational size, this time only about 15cms long – a bigger head would have meant much more wind resistance since it doesn’t have strings to let the air through. This extension also supplies a little more realism (along with a little discomfort while you get used to it) to your tennis swing, but doesn’t benefit the game very much in terms of fun or help for your swing.

The golf club extension is, in my opinion, the best one. It’s also about 15cm long and shaped like a golf club with a flat face (like a putter). The reason I like it is that it forces you to hold the Wii Remote correctly – I’ve seen many people try to play Wii Sports golf holding the remote sideways or at the wrong angle and get very frustrated at the response from the game. With this in place it’s not possible to do this – you can easily make sure that the face of the club is in the right place and is pointing in the right direction. Now people who have not played golf in real life don’t have to imagine a golf club in their hands (a difficult prospect if you’ve not held a real one), they actually have one in their hands.

Usually in packs like this there are few very useful items and a few that are not useful at all. I can honestly say that just about all the items included in this pack I would use regularly with my Wii – the grips, the bag, the charging dock (I’m so tired of replacing batteries!), and at least the golf and baseball extensions really do add a little something to your Wii experience. I would recommend it for Wii Sports enthusiasts but others might look for a separate charging dock.

The dreamGEAR range is available at various retail outlets including Budget Tech, Incredible Connection, Look ‘n Listen, Pick ‘n Pay, Dion Wired, Kalahari, E-Dream, Digital Planet and CNA. The 8-in-1 Goodie Bag has an estimated retail price of R799, including VAT.

Our thanks to TCM Warehouse for the review sample.