Sadglobe » Wii

Nintendo Wii’s WiiWare service live in Japan

DocGroove — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:02:11 +0000

Finally, the WiiWare service for the Nintendo Wii has gone live. The first region to get their hands on the nine games available at launch is Japan, but the US and Europe will (hopefully) follow in May this year.

The list of launch titles for the WiiWare service is as follows :

Dr. Mario & Virus Buster
Star Soldier R.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King
Tenshi no Solitaire
Okiraku Ping Pong
Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Wii
Saku Saku Animal Panic
Pokemon Farm
LONPOS

Before you can use the WiiWare service, you first need to update the Wii system to the latest version, which will add the WiiWare service (when it’s live in your region) to the Wii Shop channel. Also, judging by the screenshots and information available, buying WiiWare games will be like buying Virtual Console games, using the same familiar interface.

At the moment, the prices will range from 500 Wii points to 1500 Wii points. One thing that raised concern is the fact that judging by the filesize of the games and the limited internal memory of the Nintendo Wii, it’s very possible you’ll soon run out of available space, especially if you also have some Virtual Console games installed.

Probably the coolest thing of WiiWare games (compared to Virtual Console games) is that they offer online functionality like online multi-player gaming, leaderboards etc (if supported by the game).

Some games can also be extended with additional downloadable content through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Pay & Play service. At the moment, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King, Kotoba no Puzzle Mojipittan Wii and LONGPOS are the only games which support this functionality.

Minor Wii update

DocGroove — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:58:36 +0000

The Wii received a small firmware update adding some new functionality to the Wii-menu and shopping channel.

Some notable Wii-menu changes :

Digital clock added to the Wii-menu
Forecast channel box now displays current weather condition
News channel box displays scrolling headlines
Address book entries can now be shifted (A+B key)
The ‘accomplished today’ messages are now coloured white to differentiate them from other messages
The area around the Wii Message Board button will now flash when a message arrives

Some notable shopping channel changes :

It is now possible to search for titles by partially typing in the name
Added a search by category option
Genres and Publisher views added
The welcome screen now shows you 4 recommended titles

Apparently to this source, Nintendo also added basic USB keyboard support to the Wii with this update. Right now the keyboard can only be used in the shopping channel, settings menu and message board, but not (yet) in the internet channel. I haven’t been able to confirm this yet.

Be careful though if you are using Freeloader because after the update it won’t work anymore.

Making Wii-friendly pages

DocGroove — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:32:31 +0000

One thing I like about my Nintendo Wii is the fact that I can surf the web through it’s Internet Channel. Being a game console hooked up to a TV, one problem is that most web pages are harder to read and navigate through than on a PC. Luckily the Opera powered webbrowser does have some options like the ability to zoom into a page, but it’s still far from perfect.

Fortunately there are quite a few Wii-optimized websites. For instance there’s Viewii which is a front end for Youtube videos (Flickr pictures coming soon) and Finetune, a radio station. Even Google made Google Reader Wii-friendly.

If you are interested in making your website Wii-friendly too, check out the Making Wii-friendly pages artice at Dev.Opera. It describes what web standards the Opera browser on the Wii supports, how it displays a website and lot’s of tips and considerations on creating Wii-compatible webpages.

Wii Virtual Console

DocGroove — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 14:19:33 +0000

Besides the ability to play Wii and GameCube games, the Nintendo Wii also allows you to play those console classics of the good ol’ days. The list of supported classic game systems are :

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Super Nintendo (SNES)
Nintendo 64 (N64)
Sega Megadrive
TurboGrafx-16 (PC Engine)

At the moment there are about 60 or 70 games available and they can be bought for 500-1000 Wii points (about 5-10 bucks) through the Virtual Console channel.

Before buying a game, I would recommend checking out vc-reviews.com , a site where you can find the latest news, reviews and other useful information on these Virtual Console games.