Why its still a good idea to pick up a Wii

Written by Erik Kubik, kube00 Thursday, 15 March 2012 06:00

The Wii is on its last days and the future release list is short. But fear not fellow gamers, this Nintendo system still has its uses. The Wii is primarily known for its robust first party gaming library featuring Zelda and Mario but the Virtual Console is where its at. Granted the PS3 and the 360 both have a decent selection of classic games, but the Wii has the best selection.

The Wii has an extensive library of classic games to download. There are almost 400 games and include titles from the SNES, NES, GB, GBC, N64, Sega Master System, Commondre 64, Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, and Neo-Geo AES. Outside of the usual Nintendo/Genesis/SNES classics, I highly recommend looking at the TurboGrafx-16 and Neo-Geo libraries. A lot of these games and their consoles are tough to find and are not cheap.  A few games I can personally recommend are Blue’s Journey, Street Slam, and Magical Drop.

The Virtual Console also has the Wii Virtual Arcade. The Virtual Arcade is best known for having arcade classics from the 1980s with such titles as Mappy, Rygar, 1942, Golden Axe and several others. The best and most overlooked aspect of the Virtual Console is that there are several titles on the VC which were never released in North America. Until their release on the Wii, many gamers paid a large premium to import and play these games. Here are some great examples: the original Sin and Punishment for N64, Alien Soldier, Bomberman ‘94, Super Fantasy Zone, Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and Puyo Puyo 2.

Finally, there are the Wiiware games. Some of the better games include World of Goo, Mega Man 9, Bomberman Blast, Swords and Soldiers, and my personal favorite, Tetris Party. The Wii is almost to the $100 or less price point. By now all gamers should have gone out and picked a Wii up just to play some of these classic games. I’ve seen used Wiis for as low as $75 on eBay and Craiglist. All you need to get started on this retro journey is the console, a classic controller, and some sort of 2GB or larger SD card to back everything up as well as to expand the on-board storage. Thus, if you are a retro minded gamer, this may be the most affordable and space saving way to get most of these games legally.