Remember the original Wii? Pretty neat little system in which developers probably overused the remote's waggle at times (I'm looking at you, Twilight Princess!). It was also Nintendo's first proper foray into downloadable games off the internet. First came the Virtual Console, which included games from various consoles from Nintendo and others. And then came WiiWare, which brought us original titles made specifically for the Wii.
It's been almost 12 years since the release of the original Wii, and
last September Nintendo announced they would be closing down the Wii Shop. People have until January 30th, 2019 to spend any Wii points they have left on their system. Seems like plenty of time to get any stray games you want, but the cutoff for adding actual Wii Points to your system is
this month!
March 26th, 2018 at 1 PM PST is the time they've given for cutting off the ability to add Wii Points, so you've got about 2 weeks from the date of this post!
I suspect there aren't many people here who still have an original Wii system hooked up. I still do, though, because I never did move on to the Wii U or the Switch. And I've been picking out games on WiiWare and VC that I want to get before this service closes down. I actually have a lot of fond memories of the Virtual Console stuff because they made available games that had never been released in the US, or were super rare. It's one of two systems you can get the PC-Engine CD-ROM Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which many consider to be the best of the classic Castlevania titles.
I'm planning on picking up the two Konami ReBirth titles that I didn't buy after picking up Castlevania The Adventure ReBirth, the first being Contra ReBirth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U49UhpwZBgI
And the other being Gradius ReBirth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaXuzLg1o40
One game I
cannot recommend is Blaster Master: Overdrive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbslfm3aoE
For some reason, they did not allow Classic Controller support in this game, but still required the use of every button on the Wiimote, including using the B trigger to strafe. I bought the game not long after it came out and played it a little bit, but shelved it until last month. When I came back to it, I realized I just wasn't having fun with it. It sounds like the remake on the Switch is the way to go rather than this one.
Anyway, this thread is mainly to discuss good Wiiware games and Virtual Console titles. Retronauts actually published two articles last year about
some of the best Virtual Console and
WiiWare games, so be sure to check those out.
RIP to this neat (but flawed) online store.
Posts
DK3, Faxanadu, and the Ghosts n Goblins games are mostly nostalgia for me, so I could see myself removing them.
Also, I just know that my system will crap out once I actually get them all.
My Backloggery
So the only game I added to this list was Super Air Zonk. Today I made the leap and bought 10,000 Wii points so I could buy all of this stuff.
And I realized by the time I bought Faxanadu that I had miscalculated and I was running out of points sooner than expected. I went back to look at my recent purchase history, and it turns out the arcade version of Ghosts 'n Goblins was actually 800 points. All this has meant so far is that I'm not buying Super Air Zonk, but I definitely want to pick out a game worth 500 points first.
Also, Space Invaders Get Even is 500 points initially, and you have to purchase the rest of the game's levels from within the game. Unfortunately, these levels can only be stored on the Wii's internal memory if you want them playable. I barely had any room on there, so I had to move a bunch more VC stuff to my SD card. That was pretty dumb, but not terribly surprising.
My Backloggery
My Backloggery
Retronauts has a list of must haves. I bought some of those a week ago.
Then I added 1000 more points and got Ogre Battle 64, despite not having played the SNES game which I bought last week.
I’m pretty happy to have my Wii points total down to zero, though. I do not miss the days of fake currency and not being able to spend it all.
My Backloggery
Though I did learn that buying Wii Points with my credit card is an absolute pain.
Steam: pazython
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avMLHvLwRQ
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Noted and added!
I think a lot of the Bit.Trip games on WiiWare are 800 points, but they can all be obtained on Steam now (although apparently some of the later ones suffer from being bad ports).
ActRaiser is another fine SNES game that's 800 points.
Yeah, it's so weird! Why do they need my county?
to Rondo of Blood. Such a great game.
My Backloggery
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen is the main one I would recommend to people (and Ogre Battle 64, too, if you don't have a Wii U). I'll never stop holding a torch for that series; there's really nothing else quite like it.
Do we know when or if we'll lose the Wii U VC discounts for already owning a game on the Wii VC? There are a couple I'll probably want to take advantage of sooner or later.
Can’t think off hand of any other wii-ware of note I’ll miss.
My Backloggery
King was a pretty unique and great game though.
And 600 points of My Life as a King DLC to buy...
Curse you minimum 1000 point purchase!
I think we're supposed to be able to add Wii points for another hour and a half or so, but yeah, I think I am done. Not going to bother with My Life As A King/Darklord.
My Backloggery
I thought of getting those two games too, but I don't think I can do it if it means Wii points being scarce now. I gotta spend them wisely.