Thoughts on the Nintendo Wii
5-27-2025
I initially got a Nintendo Wii back in 2011 and I’ve been using the machine on and off ever since then. My initial infatuation with it was playing Wii Sports and New Super Mario Bros. Wii for hours on end. Most of my game time before this was limited to a GBA, a PS1 in the basement without ever having a memory card, and a cheap off brand plug-and-play Sega Genesis machine. Looking back, I was pretty well off to have all of these options compared to other people. I know my parents didn’t make a lot of money and it was tough to make ends meet, but I don’t remember wanting for things like food or clothing. It did feel like a miracle having our own Wii at the time.
Nonetheless, the Nintendo Wii strikes me as one of the best and most robust consoles out there to this day. I do see endless complaints about what it lacks or didn’t have while occasionally browsing YouTube, but this strikes me as a sort of entitlement broadly pervasive through the “game community” or whatever that means. Youtubers can have endless opinions about this or that thing while endlessly touting their massive collections of hardware or games they’ve never touched. What really impresses me about the Nintendo Wii is its simplicity. It’s just a little white rectangle that blends in easily next to your TV or shelf setup. It doesn’t take up a whole lot of power, as a matter of fact it ranks among the most energy efficient pieces of hardware when compared to other current gen or 6th generation hardware.
What keeps it relevant for me today is the ease with which it can be hacked and softmodded to utilize pretty much most of its game library for free. The virtual console library is especially robust and varied and finding those WAD files with which to download onto your Wii is extremely easy. I can pull up Paper Mario 64 or play Pikmin 2 with ease, only needing a USB drive to store all of my titles. Not to mention how easy it is to play couch multiplayer either with my lady or with friends coming over. The entire Gamecube and Wii library holds up very well these days and I still have fun finding old titles I’ve never touched as a kid.
Before my news blackout, I was paying special attention to the release frenzy of the Nintendo Switch 2 and eager to learn more details about it. I found only profound disappointment in many of the factors and features they plan to introduce with it. I was already unhappy with the subscription/always online library for old Virtual Console titles on the Switch. I do appreciate some of the offline capabilities of the current Nintendo Switch and I find it deeply disappointing that Nintendo is moving ahead with online verification for Game Card installations. Not to mention the steep price tag, I find participating in the future of Gaming to be an exercise in futility. I don’t plan to buy any more new game consoles that deprive you of the ability to softmod or otherwise customize your console. The thought of never owning anything is particularly disturbing to me. Paying hard earned money for a license that may or may not expire on you, especially if you go against the “terms of service” for any reason, is basically like throwing it out of the window.
The Nintendo Wii came out just before an era of great turbulence, especially with the 2008 Financial Crisis and the subsequent recession being unleashed upon most of the world. I still admire how much thought and effort was put into making it something that people from all walks of life could enjoy, even if they didn’t intend for it to be a piracy powerhouse for those eager to mess around with it. Video games nowadays are concerned with getting the biggest bang for their buck. Endlessly sucking the masses into bigger holes away from real world matters that are of more concern. Whenever I think of the Wii, I think of that image of the wiimote on the table with the window open where it suggests “Why not take a break?” in Wii Sports. No modern game would ever suggest such a thing.