My Experience with the Wii

I wasn’t exactly planning on getting the Wii on launch day for a few reasons. There wasn’t a “killer app” that I really needed or wanted, and I felt like I hadn’t put as much time into the GameCube, but it was mainly because funds were low. I was in college and we were surviving on my student loans and my wife’s paper-route wages, and slowly adding debt to a credit card but then paying it off every year with our tax return. My friend Michael emailed me about how excited he was for the new system (back when it was going to be called The Revolution). Launch day came and went and I wasn’t too concerned about it. I was more focused on my take-home math final that was going to be rather difficult (thanks, Dr. Ghoreishi).

But we went to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, and I decided it would be fun to wait with my brother at GameStop for Black Friday. The word on the street was that they’d have a few to sell. We were numbers 3 and 4 in line, and it was frickin’ freezing. I tried to work on my math but it was too cold to write or for the batteries in my calculator to work properly. My high school friend and former roommate Edgar showed up a few hours later and was number 6 in line. At some point, I just decided to get one despite telling Anne that I wasn’t going to. I figured if we decided we couldn’t afford it or didn’t really want it after playing Brady’s, I’d sell it for a little profit. When the store finally opened, the guy told us he had 5 Wiis in stock. Brady and I each bought one. Edgar was out of luck, unfortunately; but I told him that if we decided not to keep ours I’d sell him the one I bought. We both also bought Twilight Princess, which was the real reason I wanted a Wii.

We took it home and I kept mine in the car. Brady hooked his up to the upstairs TV and we started trying out Wii Sports. After a few hours, Anne asked if I liked it and wanted to get one. I answered in the affirmative, and she gave me permission, thinking that Wiis would be sold out for the next couple of months. I nonchalantly went out to the car and got mine and brought it in to show her how I’d outsmarted her. But I only really opened it for the Wii Remote and Nunchuk so Brady and I could try out 2-player boxing.

The Wii kinda became a minor cultural phenomenon, and several prominent videos showing people losing grip on the Wiimote and shattering TVs or light fixtures caused a little concern. Nintendo responded by making rubber jackets available (for free) which cushion the front of the Wiimote and add grip to it. I ordered 4 of them anticipating having 4 Wiimotes in the near future.

(the one I had was slightly different)

I really wanted to hook up the Wii to the internet. We didn’t have a wireless router at the time, so I was looking for some cheaper alternatives (see aforementioned poor, starving college student sob story). We ended up trying the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection USB dongle. It required the computer to be on, dongle plugged in, and the stars to be in the correct alignment. The reliability of it was bad, and the probability of it working the first time each use was pretty low. Whenever I wanted to use some kind of connectivity it was usually at least 10 minutes before I could be up and running. Eventually we just bought a regular router that also had wireless capability because I was going to hook up 2 computers to each other. Since then there have been very few problems with it or other systems being online.

For the next couple of months, I scoured the local stores for a second Wiimote, and was having serious flashbacks of what happened with the N64’s initial controller shortage. I could find the plastic controller attachments everywhere (that made them feel like a racket or bat), but not the Wiimotes themselves. Eventually I got wind of ShopKo getting a small shipment and secured one. A while later I was able to buy its accompanying Nunchuk. We didn’t have any games that were more than 2 player at the time, so this was fine. Later I would buy Wii Play in order to get more small games that Avery and Aurora could easily play (sorta like what Wii Sports was) but mostly to get another Wiimote, bringing the total to 3.

At nights when Anne and the kids were in bed, I would play around with the Wii’s settings, menus, and channels to see how everything worked. I would browse the News Channel and really liked the global way it showed the stories. The Weather Channel wasn’t as interesting, but I mostly liked it for the quick forecast it would give on the home screen. Once the Check Mii Out channel was released, I used it mainly to make a lot of celebrity Miis by copying what everyone else had already done. I messed around with some of the other channels (Internet, YouTube, Everybody Votes, Nintendo) but ultimately the only ones I really used were the Disc Channel (to play games) and the shopping channel (not that I bought a ton of stuff from it – I just liked to browse).

We ended up getting a few games for the Virtual Console, including Zelda 1, Zelda 2, Metroid, and Mario Kart 64. In order to play 4 player Mario Kart, we bought some white 3rd-party GameCube controllers from Family Dollar for cheap. We also got some demos and a few other things like Metroid Prime 3 previews.

I loved watching Avery and Aurora play the boxing game in Wii Sports. Avery would try to block and time his punches, but Aurora would just thrash the controllers around and usually win. I was even able to get my grandma to play the baseball game with Avery a year or so before she died.

At some point later, we bought a third Nunchuk. We eventually also got Wii Play Motion, which came with a Motion Plus extension and a longer jacket. We also bought a separate Motion Plus attachment so we had 2 that could do that. Finally we got a fourth Wiimote with Wii Sports Resort, but this one was black and it had the Motion Plus built into it. I used a RC Willey gift card to get Avery’s birthday present (Zelda: OoT3D and used the remaining bit to get a black Nunchuk to go with it. At last we had 4 and could do 4 player things (unless it required Motion Plus). Later when I got a second Wii, I made one of the older Wiimotes that didn’t work as well the main controller for the second Wii, and replaced it with another black Wiimote with built in Motion Plus.

For some reason, the Wii started being loud when in use. From the internet I got some suggestions of what to do, so I took it apart and tightened some screws to fix it. That seemed to solve the issue for a while, but later it stopped reading discs altogether. We sent it in for repairs, but they just replaced it so we lost all the save data (including my perfect game of bowling, grrr).

We got Link’s Crossbow Training for Christmas a year later, which was a Zelda-themed on-rails arcade style shooter that came with an attachment to make the Wiimote feel like a real crossbow. And, of course, when it came out in November of the next year, we got The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, but I had to wait until Christmas to play it. Anne wouldn't even let me rip the music CD that came with it to mp3 beforehand. 

After playing Guitar Hero at my friend James’ house, I really wanted it so we got Guitar Hero 3. All of us played it and loved it. Later we would get Guitar Hero Aerosmith (at midnight on launch no less to take advantage of a discount) so we could do 2 players as well as have more songs. Later we would buy a used disc of Guitar Hero 4 for more songs (even though we didn't have the drums or microphone). 

We had some friends/neighbors down the street that had boys the same age as Avery, and so we hung out occasionally. We played couples Mario Party 8, as well as Guitar Hero 3 with them. 

Another peripheral we got was the Wii Fit Board – a pressure sensitive board to assist with games that dealt with fitness, balance, and yoga. 

Some neighbor kids Anne was watching brought over New Super Mario Bros Wii and played it with our kids, and afterwards they just HAD to have it, so my kids spent their money they had saved up to get it. Unfortunately, Logan ended up breaking our copy of the game. He was being careless and stepped on it (I think), so we had to use his money to buy a used replacement copy.

Some of the other games we got over the years were several of the Lego games (Batman, Indiana Jones, and Harry Potter), a Ben 10 game for Avery (who was into the cartoon, but the game was less than mediocre), Super Mario Galaxy, and Goldeneye 007 - a modern remake of the classic N64 game but with pointer controls, though I didn't play it very much. We got some other games used from Gamestop that were just discs (no cases) that we still haven't played, but they were only a buck or two. 

Once Nintendo announced that they were no longer updating the Wii’s firmware, I felt ok about doing a little hacking. With the help of Brady, I installed the HomeBrew Channel and then I had access to pretty much any NES, GB, GBC, GBA, SNES, and N64 game from a menu. To facilitate playing the older games I bought a used white Classic Controller from a used gaming store called Gamer’s Asylum in town.

The HomeBrew Channel was so cool that I ended up buying a second Wii from eBay that did not read discs (purposefully as that would make it cheaper). I again hacked it and now have it hooked up to our secondary TV. We also got a Classic Controller Pro to go with it so that playing all these games felt more like the original. I also did the same for my brother Mitch for a birthday present for him. On a trip to Oregon I also hacked my brother Matt’s Wii for his family, and then Chad also bought one to be hacked, so we all have hacked Wiis that are used for playing older games.

Once the Wii U came around, a lot of people upgraded and transferred their Wii stuff to the Wii U. I didn’t, as I planned on keeping both systems. But since both used Wiimotes, I originally designated that the black ones be used for the Wii U (since mine was black) and the white ones be left for the Wii. But we have to pair them back and forth because the kids will play 3- and 4-player games on both still.