Wii Wishlist

Rumor has it that the Wii development kits as of very close to launch showed no sign of permitting developers to access Wii's built-in SD slot. This is especially unfortunate for one key reason: with Virtual Console games, Wii Ware, and game saves all competing for the slice of Wii's built-in 512 MB Flash memory available to them, avid Wii owners are going to run out fast. In the meantime, for a whopping $30 I picked up an SD card that already has four times that much and it's slotted in the front of my Wii, but all I can do with it is (a) view photos and movies on it, optionally copying them to the internal Flash, but not from; and (b) copy saved games and downloaded channels back and forth.

Solving this is multifaceted, but let's pick the low-hanging fruit first. I can come up with no good reason for Wii games to not be able to give users the choice to save to either internal Flash or to an SD card. Already-released games are probably a wash, but there's no reason future games should not provide this option. Software presents a bit of a problem, perhaps, with the piracy angle coming into play; however, Wii owners can already copy and move channels containing Virtual Console games or Wii Ware to and from the SD card, so why not take it a step further and let people actually run software off that slot?

There are even deeper problems than this, though. Anyone who's had hardware problems requiring warranty service has found out they have two options: send your Wii in to a repair depot, or take advantage of the advance replacement—and lose all your Wii Shop downloads, as well as having your Miis editable. This problem will be exacerbated when warranties run out and Wiis are repaired or replaced outside Nintendo authorized facilities, where the tools to move Miis and paid downloads simply won't exist.

Nintendo can start to make this problem less of one by making the Mii Channel save data both able to be backed up to SD and able to be restored to any other console, with full Mii editability intact. Games that use Miis for profiles (such as Wii Sports) need to be able to "import" Miis that have been modified in this way so that scores can also carry over.

Paid downloads are, unfortunately, another problem. Simply permitting this sort of arrangement with these downloads is opening the door for piracy, something Nintendo no doubt is keen to prevent. It does, regrettably, seem there is no good way to address this problem other than Nintendo making good on a promise they once made: that their customer service reps would be able to transfer Wii Shop downloads (and, though they did not say it, remaining point balances) to new Wii consoles. If honest players are going to be saddled with these sorts of restrictions in the interests of preventing piracy, it does not seem at all like too much to ask for Nintendo to be cooperative in this regard.


Wii comes with an assortment of little programs called Channels. The ones we've been able to get into so far include the Photo Channel, which was available at launch; since then Nintendo has sent us the Forecast and Internet Channels—the latter called a "trial", probably so we don't get our expectations up too highly.

The Photo Channel is a pretty cool addition, for starters. If your camera supports SD cards, you can pop in your camera's memory card and poke through the pictures contained therein. (However, if your camera doesn't support SD cards, you're out of luck—something I've run into once already. How about USB camera connection support, or card reader support here?)

Purportedly, the Photo Channel also supports videos. However, I personally have yet to find, among the cameras my family and I own, a camera that takes videos that the Channel can actually read. It's a shame, too, because the videos have more than once been an integral experience of the event we've recorded to our camera. Additional video support is a must-add.

The Photo Channel also offers some neat paint and stamp functionality as well as a few image enhancement options, but there's one key problem with these as well: you can't actually do anything with your wackily detailed photos besides send them to other Wii owners. Putting them back onto SD simply isn't an option. I can understand if the intent was to keep people from overwriting their photos with crazied-up versions of the same, but that's really easy to circumvent: just automatically assign new filenames to the modified versions, or save them in different folders. When every man, woman and child has a Wii, this won't be a problem—but until then, it is.

The Forecast Channel gives weather, but it's marred by one near-fatal flaw above all else: it's updated far too rarely. When I get up at 6 a.m., I don't care what it was like at 1 a.m. Hourly updates, at the very least, are a must here. I've read reports that sometimes conditions are updated in some places but not their geographic neighbors, as well, creating a very bizarre discontinuity when zooming out on the otherwise-cool Globe view.

In addition, the Forecast Channel does need a few more bits of data. Up here in Michigan, especially in the dead of winter, UV index just doesn't matter. Wind chill does—a lot. I'm sure there are other bits of data that are regionally and seasonally significant that could, and should, be added. Resolving these two problems might actually make the Forecast Channel something I would consult daily. It's certainly more convenient than my other weather options.

On a slight aside, it seems almost criminal to not use the globe in the Forecast Channel for grander things. I can foresee a channel, perhaps titled "Wii Atlas", where you can actually see political lines, geographical landmarks, and just a general wealth of data. You could even check out where the people in your friend list live. Playing with the globe is so fun that I occasionally lament the fact that all I can see on it is weather. It's an awesome toy that really begs to be expanded. Maybe Nintendo could start small, though, and at least add precipitation to its Forecast Channel implementation. It seems like a no-brainer.

Finally, the Internet Channel. Opera's browser, which powers this channel, is actually quite good. Even if it wasn't, being a first cut, it's hard to criticize—but there are a handful of little things I'd like to see addressed.

First off, scrolling. The directional pad on the Wii Remote seems to not be used for anything, which seems especially bizarre given that it's used for scrolling in many other Wii channels and functions. In addition, a scrollable page always puts up blue arrows indicating that scrolling is possible. These need to be something that fades out of the way, because they're getting in the way of one of our newfound pastimes: playing Flash games with the Remote.

The Internet Channel also has one other neat feature: pressing the 2 button will reflow the page to make complex screen-based layouts easier to read on your low-res TV. I find the lettering a little too big, however. When in this mode, being able to change the lettering size with the + and - keys would make it a lot more useful.


By all accounts, the compatibility with GameCube titles present on Wii is unimpeachable. Speculation has most likely pegged the reason for this: Wii's chipset is based on the GameCube's and so it can easily be switched over to run in a GameCube mode.

Of course, this immediately comes with some limitations, the most evident of which—and also the most unlikely to change—is that GameCube titles can only be played with GameCube memory cards and GameCube controllers plugged into the slots on the side of the system, to the disappointment of fans expecting to play with their Classic Controllers and saving to either the Wii's internal Flash or to SD.

While it would be nice to see these options become available, it's both unlikely and not really a problem in practice. What is unwieldy and something I'd like to see fixed is the process by which the system is started and/or shut down. Currently, to play a GameCube title, you must turn the system's power on (either at the console or with a Remote), insert a disc, pick up a Remote, press A to acknowledge that Nintendo is not liable for any violent seizures you may have, point to the Disc Channel, point to Start, then put down the Remote and pick up your GameCube controller. When you're done playing, turning the system off is only doable by the console's main power button.

The biggest offender in this process is the one that's probably easiest to fix: having to pick up the Remote and scoot back from the TV to point makes playing a GameCube title on Wii substantially more involved than playing one on an actual GameCube. To solve this, Nintendo simply needs to make the health warning screen passable with an A button press on a GameCube controller, and then add GameCube controller navigation to the Wii Menu and Disc Channel. For bonus points, Nintendo could also add GameCube controller navigation to the save management and system configuration screens. Finally, for the win: if it's even possible, please, please Nintendo—let me turn the system off with the Remote. I've (rather shamefully, I suppose) become addicted to the notion of not having to walk to the TV when I'm done playing.

Oh, and at least display the little game logo and blurb that we got in the GameCube's system menus before starting up a game. The info's there, there's really no excuse to not read it and plop it on the disk channel screen.