A year and a half ago I was very, very pleased with my Nintendo Wii. It was definitely my console of choice at that point in time. I've always been a retro gamer at heart (except when it was called modern gaming, but that was 20+ years ago), and the Wii never bored me. I always had something to play. I don't mean from the Wii's underwhelming library of games. For those who don't feel like the Wii has many good games going for it now, look back 18 months ago.
It was the Virtual Console that kept me coming back to the Wii in it's one year life-span, while I let my roommate's 360 collect the dust. That was at the peak of my Wii-love. It was then that I had ordered adapters to use my original controllers from all of Nintendo's systems. Now I could play the games I loved exactly how I remembered them. I was in heaven.
For about a month.
I bought so many new games on the Virtual Console in those weeks that I ran out of room on Wii's system memory. I tried to make things work for a while after that. I really did. I deleted a few games that I wouldn't play all that much whenever a "Best Week Ever" hit. Then came Wii Ware and Lost Winds. I had to delete a bunch of games for that. Like Sophie, I agonized as I had to decide which of my 8 through 64-bit children had to die (NOOOOOOOooooooo! Not ExciteBike!).
Finally I'd had enough. To buy a NES game would be a 20 minute process of debate, then backup, then delete, then download. "Fuck you, Nintendo," I yelled. If they didn't want to take my money (pure profit) for games that had already been developed up to two decades ago, then the hell with them.
Soon after, I set out to regain the lost video game library that was handed down to my little brothers and ultimately given away for good. Weeks of scouring eBay paid off when I came across an NES that had never been taken out of its box. I traded a $50 bottle of Japanese whiskey with one of my best friends, and netted a near-mint, barely used Sega Genesis in return. They joined my SNES and other consoles that were mine outright and never given away. Now I could play Metroid and Granada (it's awesome. Look it up), without any kind of extended hassle.
Who needs Nintendo anyway? They didn't want me or my money. And as time went on they even went about
insulting me directly. My next step was to buy a PS3. I then got re-addicted to real modern gaming. One price drop later and I could finally play Lost Odyssey on my new Red-Ring in training. Finally the Wii was picking up the hobby of dust collecting ("This particle here goes back to the Revolutionary War!").
Well, Nintendo seems to have finally learned their lesson. This week they released firmware version 4.0. I can now pull games directly from my SD card. It's not the harddrive that we were waiting for. In actuality, it was a week's worth of program development, tops, that took them years. But I'm a man of my word. You gave me a storage solution. So, I'm giving you money. I downloaded nearly $50 worth of games from the Virtual Console this morning. I played them and my other games for hours. I now look at my Wii in a positive light.
Wait a second. Don't be so quick there, Nintendo. All is not forgiven. When a long-term friendship falls apart in such a way, it can take a long time to rebuild. But this is a good start. You know what, though? The trailer for Punch-Out looks exactly how I always wished a modern sequel to one of my top five games would look and play. A sequel to The Phantom Hourglass, one of my favorite games in my all-time favorite franchise, looks really promising. That's all going to go a long way.
Okay, Nintendo. I guess that we can be friends again.
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*Mega Drive.
I'm too young for anything proper retro =/.
Tell me you got Zack & Wiki for your Wii dude.
@Yojimbo,
Dude, do you even read your comments?
Also, hellz yeah! That shizzle be off da hook!
@Haxan
My dementia is becoming more apparent.
Good. Maybe I'll finally be able to kick your ass in Street Fighter...
A NES that was never taken out of the box? That's the shit only time travelers can brag about, nice find.
@BrainDerailment,
Yep. And I immediately pulled it out of the box (dropping it's value to roughly 15% of it's value), plugged it into my projector and beat The Legend of Zelda in one sitting.
The funny thing was that when it arrived via UPS, I took the package from the driver and handed her my roommate's RROD'd 360. I'd say I made out nicely in that exchange.
Yeah...Punch-Out is a first day purchase for me, so is Link's Magic Choo-Choo or whatever its called. So Nintendo is partially back in my good graces. I'd be a lot happier if we got a Kid Icarus announcement and some other first party titles instead of this "new play control" B.S. I'd also like to see some decent 3rd party support for Wii but that ain't happening.
Yes, I, too, am beginning to become friends with Wii again...
With Madworld, Onechanbara and House of the Dead:Overkill out and the upcoming Punch Out!!, the future looks bright.
So bright, I gotta wear shades, man!
=P
MAGIC CHOO CHOO FOR THE WIN!!
So... you can have the SD card in the wii and get extra pages of channel slots or something?
lol
A mint-condition NES for a broken 360 sounds like a good deal to me.
I have to admit that I'm surprised to see all the positive reactions that the new DS Zelda, Wii Punch-Out!!, semi-solution to the Wii's storage problem have received.
Personally, I was a little let down with Nintendo's GDC showing, but that's because my hopes were too high. I really thought we'd get an announcement of Trace Memory 2 or Fatal Frame IV coming to the states. I'll be really bummed if those games never come here, especially Fatal Frame.
Darn you, Nintendo of America! Darn you to heck!
That said, the free Pikmin hat DLC in Animal Crossing just made me giggle like a school girl.
@Holmes
I understand why you're let down, but I also don't understand at all why you were expecting anything out of the at GDC. It's a Game Developers Conference, not an industry event. It's cool that they announced something but they're in the minority there.
Don't worry, they'll do something to piss you again, they always do, and you'll go right back to them when they do something you're happy about and thus the cycle will continue.
These are actually a couple of the reasons I'm considering finally buying a Wii.
@ Bwark-Kupo- Yeah, I don't understand me either.
Nintendo certainly did more at GDC than they had to, but when I heard that Iwata was going to announce games that GDC, I was all a flutter that I'd finally get to play Fatal Frame IV in English.
I want it real bad, if not just for the sexy, Luigi and Zero Suit Samus extras.
I flux between what console I care about all the time too. The Xbox has been neglected for about a month now while the PS3 took center stage, but the update is swinging me towards the Wii again. The gaming potential I have in front of me right now is almost as difficult to take in as the analogies I used in that last sentence..
And if I just used the word analogy in the wrong context, heck with it. Its 1am here right now and I cant be bothered to think properly.
Glad it wasn't an external hard drive they used for the problem though, as that'd just be more money on top of it. A free update that opens up all this VC potential is much more favourable in my eyes!
@Jonathon Holmes
Thanks, now I'm chomping at the bit to play it too.
Fatal Frame stopped being scary for me towards the end of the second game though, so I don't see myself getting pumped for IV unless it proves itself to be completely terrifying.
And the Wii is still good to me, if only for the fact that I haven't beaten 80% of the games I own. Besides Brawl, Mario Galaxy and MP3, I have Zack and Wiki, Endless Ocean, No More Heroes, Okami, Super Metroid, Paper Mario, Sin and Punishment and SMB3 to finish up.
But I still love the idea of the Wii, and probably look more forward to a more powerful Wii so the pointing controls won't lag as much as they do in some games.
After the update, can you still play Tatsunoko vs Capcom?
@Jonathan,
Did you and I just both do a 180 degree spins? It's like we'll never be on the same side of the fence.
That or we're dancing. ("Say... Do any of you know how to Madison?")
@Haxan,
Get your damn Rocky Horror Picture Show references out of my blog..
@Nilcam,
Yep. So long as it's already installed you're safe. Just don't try moving it off of yoursystem memory, you won't be able to get it back on until the haxorz do their magic funky. Sadly I had to take mine out. I've got to send my Wii in to get it fixed at some point. It turns out that the Wii has an equivalent to the red-ring and I have it. But that's another blog.
Pro-tip: Turn WiiConnect24 off right this instant.
@ Haxan- I think we're on the same side of the fence, just with slightly different perspectives from said fence. I'm also quite pleased with being able to play games from SD card. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd play Onslaucht, Snowboard Riot, Sin and Punishment, Star Fox 64, and Bit.Trip Beat all in the same hour.
Pretty awesome stuff!
@ Nilcam- As long as you already have the Homebrew Channel and Gecko OS on your Wii, and you never attempt to remove them, you should be fine.
Pedrovay2003 taught me that.
I'm kind of used to that abusive relationship by now. But now I wanna get some more virtual games.
Also, fucking awesome score on that NES.
I try to be a good teacher. :D
@Haxan
Wait, WiiConnect24 can kill the Wii?
@Pedro,
Not quite kill it, but make it not look so pretty (or prettier, depending on how you like your dancing pixels). I'm going to call up NoA tomorrow and get my Wii sorted out and ask for comments. I'll have a blog up come Saturday with my results.
Until then, turn off WiiConnect24 just to be on the safe side!
Holy crap, that sucks... I just turned it off. Thanks for the heads-up.
I really hope they don't give you crap about what's going on... If you need to, use the Save Extractor and Save Restorer things in Homebrew to back your saves up (like Smash and whatnot, the ones that can't be backed up).
Yes...! Nintendo has made accommodations what fans and gamers have wanted for a long time now. And, I'm playing the Wii again!
The system update, in addition to the arcade games has helped alot. But, I must give Sega some of the credit for putting some really good games out lately too.
The Wii was also my fave console for a while, but it still hasn't won me back yet. I'm too much of a trophy/achievement whore lately. So when I'm not catching up on PS2 games, I'm doing anything for trophies/achievements. They're so addictive!