A fond farewell to the Wii Shop Channel

[alienjesus]

As has been mentioned elsewhere around these forums, the Wii Shop channel has been officially announced to be closing soon.

- No more Wii points can be added to the Wii shop: Monday 26th March 2018 at 21:00 UK time
- No more purchase and download of Virtual Console titles, WiiWare and Wii channels (including free ones): Thursday, 31st January 2019 at 06:00 UK time
- Full closure of the Wii Shop Channel, including the ability to redownload previously purchased games: TBA 2019.

This is a thread to talk about the Wii shop and the memories you have associated with it and it's games. It's also a place to talk about great WiiWare exclusives, cheap Virtual Console deals and more whilst the channel is still available to make the most of it!

And just for fun, here's a fun rendition of the Wii Shop theme for you to enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ruNfajgUr0


P.S Please do not use this thread to discuss the transient ownership of digital games, why physical games are better than digital or anything of that sort. There is a place for those discussions, but it is not here - there's plenty of other places of the forums you can rant away about those!

[alienjesus]

Well, I did threaten in the slack channel that if no-one posted here I would probably have enough stuff to fill the thread single handedly. Looks like I'd best get started.

When I was a teenager I was never a 'retro' gamer. I still had my old games and I'd get them out to play them sometimes, but I rarely sought out experiences for the older systems. That came later, and I have the Wii Shop to thank for it.

Obviously, like most people back in 2006, I was hyped for my new console. But after the luster of Twilight Princess and Wii Sports wore off I was looking for new stuff to play, and right around then they launched the Virtual Console service. I remember reading reviews to see what games were coming out, and there was one particularly glowing review of one of the launch titles on the service. It got me hyped up, that's for sure. I hopped on the VC as soon as I'd bought a wii points card (I didn't have a credit card back then!) and purchased it, and it blew my mind.

That game was Gunstar Heroes.

I quickly followed it up with other titles - Bonk's Adventure. Ristar. Bomberman 93. That was the start of me actively seeking out retro titles. When I went to university I repurchased some of the games I actually owned on cartridge just so I could play them whilst I was away from home - stuff like Sonic 2, Streets of Rage 2, Donkey Kong Country 3. It was good stuff.

The Wii Shop got me into retro gaming

[Sarge]

Is there a good cheap way to get some shop points? I've had 200 left over for forever, and wouldn't mind grabbing a few random VC titles.

I'll try to talk about the Wii Shop a bit later.

[alienjesus]

Unfortunately none that I know other than just buying more and making sure to use the balance. You used to be able to buy them with stars from Club Nintendo.

Rest in Peace Club Nintendo. Like the Wii Shop Channel, you were also a bit of a clunky mess, but I loved you too.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I got into it late, with the Wii U in Wii mode. I've actually never used a credit card to purchase Wii shop games. Rather, I used $20 (or whatever the equivalent points is) cards that were marked down to $18 at Sam's Club. I've got some rad WiiWare stuff, as well as PC Engine titles I probably can't afford otherwise.

I also used the service to buy some cheap NES/Fami type games that I later realized I could get in physical form at a near-equivalent price. Now I'm re-buying some of those as carts. Lulz.

Here's what I have:
http://www.rfgeneration.com/cgi-bin/col ... 2%7C&type=

Nice story, aj. The Wii also sparked my interest in retro gaming, oddly enough.

[ESauced]

I was already into retro gaming when the Wii came out but the Wii shop was my first exposure to turbografx games. I bought Bonk’s Adventure the day it came out and have since picked up the entire bonk series and a couple other TG-16 games. I played Gunstar Heroes and the original Torjam and Earl for the first time on Wii too.

Actually I remember the Virtual Console was revealed before motion controls or the name Wii. So back when it was still called the Revolution I was already psyched for the chance to download classic games.

It’s a shame the Wii U couldn’t at least match the Wii Virtual Console. I’ve got a bunch of classic games still stuck in Wii mode.

[ElkinFencer10]

I need to snag the last few WiiWare titles I really want. I'm not too concerned about VC, but I fucking need some of those never-released-elsewhere WiiWare titles.

[Xeogred]

Kind of surprised the Wii shop got some of you into retro gaming, huh...

The big standout to me is the Konami "Rebirth" trilogy, Contra, Gradius, and Castlevania. The Castlevania one is the only one I've beaten and played a few years back, but I grabbed the others right away when I heard about the closure. There's a lot of PCE games and others from the more obscure systems I'd like to grab, but I'm not going to stress over it nor do I have the money anyways. Oh well, back to emulation. Definitely grab Rondo of the Blood too. I think the PSP version is the only English release otherwise?

Overall, I think the Virtual Console was mostly a disappointment to me. Both the Wiimote and Classic controller didn't feel that great for old games. The Wii not supporting HDMI is an issue too, though I also got some stuff on the Wii U which does have native HD support, but the emulation still seems rather lazy and games don't look that great. I'm not extremely picky about the CRT vs HDTV thing and all but the fuzziness was really noticeable. The Wii menu is also atrocious. The Wii U emulation seemed better... but then it's still highly inaccurate with the colors (look up Kirby's Adeventure comparisons). And somehow they didn't port over the Wii VC list to the U in full, because it took them like a year to program each game for the gamepad or something crazy... in general 99% of the first party selection is stuff a lot of people probably already own and keep, those high priced Nintendo games.

My expectations were really overblown I guess. Initially I thought it all sounded amazing. I figured that we would virtually get 90% of the entire NES, SNES, N64, GC, libraries on there and then some. Along with thinking that Nintendo and other companies would bother to bring over some games we never got before, with new official translations. All I could think of was finally seeing an official release of Seiken Densetsu 3. But I guess hiring a translator and some others to do some patching was too much to ask for. It was nice to get some classics on console for a TV all in one system, but the quality just wasn't that great compared to what emulators could already do years before it.

All that ranting aside... I still think this sucks big time. The obvious flaw to online services and digital.

[ZeroAX]

The virtual console didn't get me into retro gaming, but it sure gave me the opportunity to try out gems that I never heard of before. The hightlight for me was definitly Kirby's Adventure, which might have been the best Kirby game I ever played till Tripple Deluxe came out (before that I always thought that the only really good game in the series was Kirby's Dream Land 2). Some cool mega drive games too.

Unfortunately it was quite limited (and I never understood why it excluded handheld games) and imo over priced, especially when compared with the pricing for psone classics. Mind you I'm not one who thinks that an NES game is not worth 5 euros, when said game is as high quality as Super Mario Bros 3, but I always thought that the games should have been priced more around the 4-7 euro mark, instead of 5-12 (for an N64 game).


As for WiiWare, I only bought 2 games from it Lost Winds and Jett Rocket so.....I guess I didn't have too good taste

[mas]

My Wii and virtual console story goes back to 2009 or so.
For two year I had a Wii and never played it. After testing Mario galaxy and the motion controllers I couldn’t play it so I was done. Then after reading up on virtual console and wiiware I bought a classic controller and bought castlevania rebirth. I was hooked.
I soon learned about club nintendo points and I started to buy Wii games or go to the store and get the info to get points to download free games.

Ended up selling my Wii the first time, back in 2013, to start saving for my house.
In 2015, bought my house and needed Netflix so I bought another Wii red this time. I started from scratch and every other week or so I’d put down ten dollars for Wii points.

I am very happy to have 6 pages of virtual console and wiiware titles, wish I could unlock the last two bikes on excitebike on wiiware but online is gone unless there was another way, but I managed to get the extra levels or stages in games like arkonoid plus, or bubble bobble.

I’m still buying Wii points till the last day, then I’ll buy games I don’t have like some arcade stuff or Neo Geo games, I own most of the tg16, and nes and snes, the n64 library I don’t care for so much but overall I’m happy with what it brought.

The Wii was a great system overall and with the nes and snes classic, I use those controllers for the rebirth series, and the tg16, nes and snes and some Genesis games. Feels a hell of a lot better playing castlevania with the nes controller.