While we're all overcome with joy that the new 4.0 Wii system update adds support for SDHC cards (up to 32 GB, which I'm pretty sure is as big as they come currently), there are a couple unfortunate games left out in the cold... and hope is not good at all for seeing them updated.
When I finally got home and got my hands on the new update, it occurred to me that a few games have released with some form of SD support, namely, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Animal Crossing: City Folk. I don't have Brawl in my library right now, but City Folk was close at hand, so I borrowed the SDHC card from my music player and plugged it in. The SD Card Menu feature worked flawlessly, but sadly, City Folk complained that my SDHC card was an "unknown device".
I expect similar behavior from Brawl, since it's an older title. I recall that BlastWorks developers once said that they had hoped to put SD support in their game, but Nintendo blocked them. This might have been explained away if Nintendo was planning SDHC support eventually, but why did City Folk ship without this ability, then?
No matter what the answer is, there's little-to-no hope of ever seeing SDHC support backpatched into these titles. Wii's architecture pretty much runs counter to this sort of thing (as explained in very bluntly in an analysis at HackMii); the only reason the 4.0 update is able to do the SD trick at all is because it copies the channels from SD to internal memory, then runs them there; only the Wii Menu software needs to be modified to do this. So, if you're a Brawl or City Folk player, your options are to either forgo the SD support in these games entirely, or stick to 2-GB-and-under standard SD cards, one of which you hopefully already have.
It's an unfortunate situation, but it was certainly not unexpected.
Update: N-Sider reader Yannick confirms that, regrettably, Brawl also does not recognize SDHC cards.
When I finally got home and got my hands on the new update, it occurred to me that a few games have released with some form of SD support, namely, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Animal Crossing: City Folk. I don't have Brawl in my library right now, but City Folk was close at hand, so I borrowed the SDHC card from my music player and plugged it in. The SD Card Menu feature worked flawlessly, but sadly, City Folk complained that my SDHC card was an "unknown device".
No matter what the answer is, there's little-to-no hope of ever seeing SDHC support backpatched into these titles. Wii's architecture pretty much runs counter to this sort of thing (as explained in very bluntly in an analysis at HackMii); the only reason the 4.0 update is able to do the SD trick at all is because it copies the channels from SD to internal memory, then runs them there; only the Wii Menu software needs to be modified to do this. So, if you're a Brawl or City Folk player, your options are to either forgo the SD support in these games entirely, or stick to 2-GB-and-under standard SD cards, one of which you hopefully already have.
It's an unfortunate situation, but it was certainly not unexpected.
Update: N-Sider reader Yannick confirms that, regrettably, Brawl also does not recognize SDHC cards.