WiiWare and SD cards...

eobet

I just found out that I bought a Nintendo Wii approved 2gb SD card for nothing.

They are completely useless!

Once you copy your WiiWare games to the SD card to free up the consoles internal data slots they disappear from the channel view.

Pure stupidity on Nintendo's behalf, especially with the small amount of internal memory they provide.

Surely they don't expect us to copy the games back and forth when we want to play them once WiiWare catches on so it becomes impossible to store all games internally?

I hope all of you who own a Wii and bought an SD card have mailed your complains to them:

http://www.nintendo.com/corp/contact.jsp

UncleSporky

eobet wrote: »

I just found out that I bought a Nintendo Wii approved 2gb SD card for nothing.

They are completely useless!

Once you copy your WiiWare games to the SD card to free up the consoles internal data slots they disappear from the channel view.

Pure stupidity on Nintendo's behalf, especially with the small amount of internal memory they provide.

Surely they don't expect us to copy the games back and forth when we want to play them once WiiWare catches on so it becomes impossible to store all games internally?

I hope all of you who own a Wii and bought an SD card have mailed your complains to them:

http://www.nintendo.com/corp/contact.jsp

I thought everyone knew about this. You can't play VC games off the card either, and I thought we even knew that since before launch.

How long did it take to copy that Wiiware game to the card? If your Wii is like mine then it took forever. How do you expect to have been able to load/play a game at that speed of data trasfer?

taliosfalcon

Most SD cards have read speeds of 10-20 MB/s (yes, megabytes), that coupled with the small size of wiiware and VC games means it would take under 4 seconds to load the entire game into RAM, even with a slow card, the speed has nothing to do with nintendos restrictions.

UncleSporky

taliosfalcon wrote: »

Most SD cards have read speeds of 10-20 MB/s (yes, megabytes), that coupled with the small size of wiiware and VC games means it would take under 4 seconds to load the entire game into RAM, even with a slow card, the speed has nothing to do with nintendos restrictions.

I understand that, but saying it is one thing and physically copying data on your Wii and measuring the amount of time is another matter. Either their architecture is horribly flawed or something else is going on like encrypting/zipping all the data so you can't play it on another Wii.

eobet

UncleSporky wrote: »

taliosfalcon wrote: »

Most SD cards have read speeds of 10-20 MB/s (yes, megabytes), that coupled with the small size of wiiware and VC games means it would take under 4 seconds to load the entire game into RAM, even with a slow card, the speed has nothing to do with nintendos restrictions.

I understand that, but saying it is one thing and physically copying data on your Wii and measuring the amount of time is another matter. Either their architecture is horribly flawed or something else is going on like encrypting/zipping all the data so you can't play it on another Wii.

It took about the same time to copy the game to the card as it took to download it.

If the game would have been downloaded to the card immediately, I wouldn't have noticed anything.

Also, I paid Nintendo zero attention before I received a Wii, so no, I did not know that they decided to be deliberately stupid and tell everyone about it, but they sure don't brag about it when they sell the card and they don't warn you either when you are copying.

Peewi

eobet wrote: »

UncleSporky wrote: »

taliosfalcon wrote: »

Most SD cards have read speeds of 10-20 MB/s (yes, megabytes), that coupled with the small size of wiiware and VC games means it would take under 4 seconds to load the entire game into RAM, even with a slow card, the speed has nothing to do with nintendos restrictions.

I understand that, but saying it is one thing and physically copying data on your Wii and measuring the amount of time is another matter. Either their architecture is horribly flawed or something else is going on like encrypting/zipping all the data so you can't play it on another Wii.

It took about the same time to copy the game to the card as it took to download it.

If the game would have been downloaded to the card immediately, I wouldn't have noticed anything.

Also, I paid Nintendo zero attention before I received a Wii, so no, I did not know that they decided to be deliberately stupid and tell everyone about it, but they sure don't brag about it when they sell the card and they don't warn you either when you are copying.

They never told you that you'd be able to run stuff directly off SD cards either.

Torso Boy

Yeah, this is kind of common knowledge. It does suck though.

What sucks more is that the Wii can't read SDHC cards, so 2gb is the largest you can go.

Also, by buying a "Wii-approved" SD card, you probably paid twice what you should have.

Lunker

eobet wrote: »

Also, I paid Nintendo zero attention before I received a Wii, so no, I did not know that they decided to be deliberately stupid and tell everyone about it, but they sure don't brag about it when they sell the card and they don't warn you either when you are copying.

Maybe you should have done some research beforehand, then? Just saying.

Copy the Channel(s) to an SD Card
Most Wii Channels, including Virtual Console or WiiWare games, you downloaded from the Wii Shop can be copied to a compatible SD Card. This gives you the ability to delete that channel, and then copy it back over from the SD Card to your Wii should you wish to use it again at a later time. Please keep in mind that any Virtual Console or WiiWare title you copy can only be played on the Wii console it was originally downloaded to from the Wii Shop Channel. (Be sure to copy the Wii Channel back over to the Wii when you wish to use it again; simply having the SD Card inserted with the channel on it will not allow it to be used.)

I agree it's pretty terrible, but your unpleasant surprise could have easily been avoidable with a few minutes of searching.

The Wolfman

I understand the allure and desire of having one's entire collection of software instantly at one's fingertips. We live in a world of instant gratification, and nobody wants to have to wait. But I have honestly never had a problem with the Wii and how it uses SD cards. Maybe because I'm always clearing space and evaluating game priority. For instance, after I finished Paper Mario, I found I wasn't really going to play it much anymore, so I copied it over and deleted it. I keep the games I play regularly on, and the ones I don't are stored. And if I want to play them again on a lark, I just copy them back. To use Paper Mario again as an example, it's 249 blocks. It took about 2 minutes to copy to the card, but it only took 42 seconds to copy back to the Wii. I can wait 42 bloody seconds to play a game.

Yes, I guess I wish there was a 200 gig hard drive in the Wii so that something archaic as a memory management screen would be obsolete. But I understand the system and made it easily work. Yet everybody else chooses to simply bemoan it.

*shrug* I don't know...

urahonky

eobet wrote: »

Also, I paid Nintendo zero attention before I received a Wii, so no, I did not know that they decided to be deliberately stupid and tell everyone about it, but they sure don't brag about it when they sell the card and they don't warn you either when you are copying.

Considering you lived an "8-bit childhood" I'm going to say you're lying here. :P

But seriously I honestly thought this was common knowledge and is why everyone's screaming for an external storage device.

eobet

Ok, I cared about the Gameboy, but we had Atari in our house. :P

But seriously, before I bought the SD card, I poked around in the Wii menus and saw the channel settings screen, with a BIG BLOODY HUGE TAB FOR CHANNELS ON THE SD CARD. So, the intuitive reaction was naturally that "wow, I can put all stuff on a roomy SD cards instead of the tight space on the Wii".

So, what do you think will happen first?

Nintendo produces a system update to display games from an SD card, or Nintendo releases an USB hard drive?

Lindsay Lohan

I would hope the ability to run games from the SD card will come soon. Frankly, there are plenty of people that run homebrew, emulators and classic games from the SD card and don't seem to complain about load times, so I don't see why Nintendo wouldn't allow it.

If there are piracy concerns for Wiiware/VC stuff it seems like that ship has sailed as their are already people able to run emulators for the 8/16 bit stuff and injectors that allow other games to be "inserted" into VC channels.

Of course at the same time they allow SD cards maybe they could fix the NES games to make their colors more vibrant or the TG16 to remove the slight blur to the graphics

Conan-san

eobet wrote: »

So, what do you think will happen first?

Nintendo produces a system update to display games from an SD card, or Nintendo releases an USB hard drive?

Number 3- Pigs will fly in frozen hell whilst Sega makes an excelent non handheld Sonic game that rivals the Genisis Trillogy and also Shenmue 3, backward and also also Nintendo will fix the European Virtual Console so it's not made of fail, 50htz and borders.

Lave II

I suspect that a big update that neuters homebrew will conicide with letting games run off an SD card. To encourage the update.

Conan-san

Lave II wrote: »

I suspect that a big update that neuters homebrew will conicide with letting games run off an SD card. To encourage the update.

Certainly didn't happen the first time they nuked it (a feeble attempt that lasted all of Six hours, according to all sources)

Lave II

Conan-san wrote: »

Lave II wrote: »

I suspect that a big update that neuters homebrew will conicide with letting games run off an SD card. To encourage the update.

Certainly didn't happen the first time they nuked it (a feeble attempt that lasted all of Six hours, according to all sources)

Oh totally, we're in for another pointless arms race.

mxmarks

Here's a question that kind of fits here -

I actually just got an SD card the other day specifically for the Wii. I copied over some of my game save data incase something happened to the Wii, so I wouldn't have to start over (stuff like my progress in WiiFit would be impossible to re-do), and then decided to save some VC games I rarely play.

It would not let me copy:
Mario Kart Wii Save Data
Smash Brothers Save Data

which I figured, maybe some Save files can't be copied for whatever reason. Then, it wouldn't let me copy:

Metroid
Punch-Out
Tecmo Bowl

but DID let me copy over Pokemon Snap.

Anyone know why I can't copy certian files? The SD card is just one I got off Woot, but I assume it's formatted correctly and everything as other stuff is transfered over fine.

And it has like 15000 blocks or something, according to the Wii, and I tried the smaller VC files before I tried the N64 VC file, so it cant be a space/size thing...

Peewi

mxmarks wrote: »

Here's a question that kind of fits here -

I actually just got an SD card the other day specifically for the Wii. I copied over some of my game save data incase something happened to the Wii, so I wouldn't have to start over (stuff like my progress in WiiFit would be impossible to re-do), and then decided to save some VC games I rarely play.

It would not let me copy:
Mario Kart Wii Save Data
Smash Brothers Save Data

which I figured, maybe some Save files can't be copied for whatever reason. Then, it wouldn't let me copy:

Metroid
Punch-Out
Tecmo Bowl

but DID let me copy over Pokemon Snap.

Anyone know why I can't copy certian files? The SD card is just one I got off Woot, but I assume it's formatted correctly and everything as other stuff is transfered over fine.

And it has like 15000 blocks or something, according to the Wii, and I tried the smaller VC files before I tried the N64 VC file, so it cant be a space/size thing...

You can't copy save data for games with online play. I don't know about the VC games, though.

mntorankusu

Any Wii games with online play features won't let you copy their save files. I don't know about VC games, though.

It's pretty easy to make the files copyable if you have the Homebrew Channel. You can extract the save file using a homebrew application, and then change a single bit in the banner file to disable the copy protection.

Edit: Beet.