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.
(# 0) on 03/26/2009 15:40
I'm too young for anything proper retro =/.
(# 1) on 03/26/2009 15:56
(# 2) on 03/26/2009 16:09
Dude, do you even read your comments?
(# 3) on 03/26/2009 16:10
(# 4) on 03/26/2009 16:37
My dementia is becoming more apparent.
(# 5) on 03/26/2009 16:42
(# 6) on 03/26/2009 16:51
(# 7) on 03/26/2009 17:01
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.
(# 8) on 03/26/2009 17:29
(# 9) on 03/26/2009 18:00
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
(# 10) on 03/26/2009 18:07
So... you can have the SD card in the wii and get extra pages of channel slots or something?
(# 11) on 03/26/2009 19:01
(# 12) on 03/26/2009 19:10
(# 13) on 03/26/2009 19:37
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.
(# 14) on 03/26/2009 19:41
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.
(# 15) on 03/26/2009 19:43
(# 16) on 03/26/2009 19:48
(# 17) on 03/26/2009 20:14
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.
(# 18) on 03/26/2009 20:29
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!
(# 19) on 03/26/2009 20:32
Thanks, now I'm chomping at the bit to play it too.
(# 20) on 03/26/2009 20:54
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.
(# 21) on 03/26/2009 20:58
(# 22) on 03/26/2009 20:59
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?")
(# 23) on 03/26/2009 21:04
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.
(# 24) on 03/26/2009 21:10
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.
(# 25) on 03/26/2009 21:50
Also, fucking awesome score on that NES.
(# 26) on 03/26/2009 23:40
(# 27) on 03/26/2009 23:50
Wait, WiiConnect24 can kill the Wii?
(# 28) on 03/27/2009 00:08
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!
(# 29) on 03/27/2009 00:18
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).
(# 30) on 03/27/2009 02:08
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.
(# 31) on 04/04/2009 09:12