I LOVE THE NINTENDO WII!!!!!!!!!!!
im a huge fan of older consoles, especially ones that have had a big impact in my chiildhood; the nintendo wii is my favorite for this precise reason. it was released the year i was born, and as far as i remember my parents got it shortly after release. it was always a Thing In My House during my childhood bc of this-- and my brother and i made use of it a lot
since then, it's become a special interest of mine! i still own my old childhood wii and it's in my room-- my family usually uses the virtual wii on the wiiU to play wii games now bc im hogging the old one lol. i like to play occasionally on it when i have time, i like replaying the wii sonic games like colors and the sonic storybook series but my favorite is wii sports/resort of course!!
what exactly do i like so much about it?
it's hard for me to be specific outside of childhood nostalgia, but i think what has kept me so attached to the wii as a concept is how much it felt like a 'place'; a home where your channels lived, all set up next to eachother for you to go through with your little wii pointer. part of the 'home' feeling is also because of the channels-- it wasn't exclusively just for games, there were channels like the weather and news channel that were completely utility, making it completely reasonable to boot up your wii just to check the weather that day. it also had fun online activities via the everybody votes channel and the check mii out channel, and it was fun to check these on a daily or weekly basis. japanese wiis could also have a food delivery channel, making it even more of an "everything device"!
to me, the wii remains the most unique console to date, going beyond the limit of simply being a games console and becoming something more-- it will always hold a special place in my heart!
wii channels
perhaps the most notable of the wii's channels, being the origin of the Mii characters which quickly became a Nintendo staple. in this channel, you could create and edit your own miis, and transfer them to other consoles either via the mii parade or by putting them on your Wii controller-- which you could then connect to another Wii to send them.
as a kid, even the default channels on the wii were sources of fun for me. i remember i spent a lot of time on the channel just making random miis and naming them nonsense-- going on my wii now, my mii channel is honestly mostly these random miis i made but i don't have the heart to delete them even if i'd end up reaching the mii limit.
the photo channel allowed one to view photos either from the sd card or sent from the wii message board and edit them. there was a sticker function, you could draw on them, add effects- the possibilities were nigh-endless. you could also turn pictures into puzzles and solve them!
to be honest, i didn't spend a lot of time on the photo channel. we had a camcorder and cameras that used sd cards, but the wii had its own sd card that would rarely get taken out of the console so i'd usually just play with pictures sent by my cousin off of the wii messsage board
the forecast channel allowed you to check the weather for your city and cities all over the world by showing you a globe! you could view daily, hourly, and weekly weather just the same as any other weather service or website. the globe at night also makes a nice nightlight!
the news channel was exactly what it said on the tin-- you could check both local and international news on this channel! either you could scroll through articles in different categories, or hit a button to view a slideshow of important headlines.
the everybody votes channel was a channel where you could vote on different polls released by Nintendo for fun-- you also guessed which answer would be the majority vote, and you got points based on how good you were at predicting the majority vote. users were also able to submit their own poll questions which had a chance of being featured as a real poll on the channel!
on the check mii out channel (or the mii contest channel outside of the US), you could submit miis you've created and download miis from others! there were also contests where one would have to make a mii fitting the description, and users voted on which submissions were the best.
as a fun fact, i actually placed on a check mii out channel contest once! iirc it was for a mii that looked like it read a lot... i just made a mousey-looking mii girl with glasses and i think i got at least top 30. it's something i like to flex that like nobody other than me actually cares about LOL
can i still use these?
as of october 2013, service for all of these channels have unfortunately been phased out, but there's of course homebrew that revives these servers, such as wiilink and wiimfi! if your wii isn't modded and you would like to learn how, check wii.hacks.guide!