Wii On-line for the First Time, got some Old School back!

A few screens to show the kick-ass goodness I'm playing tonight!!

Indeed, the Virtual Console is a feature more Wii owners should take advantage of. Though sadly fewer old school classics are being ported while more new WiiWare titles are coming out, but then I guess they've had over three years all to themselves already.

Indeed, quite true. While I haven't gotten "On-Line" with my Wii until now, I've known what's there for the most part as I have a life-long subscription to "Nintendo Power". I have to pay for it, but I've never missed an issue. Unfortunately over the years of moving since I was a little kid I've lost two issues. Probably the most valuable of them all, Issue 1 and Issue 2.

Interesting factoid: The first issue had Super Mario Bros 2 in claymation on the cover while issue number 2 was the Only Time that Nintendo used a live actor on the cover. The actor portrayed Simon Belmont for "Castlevania 2: Simon's Revenge" and had him holding Dracula's severed head. So many parents called in and complained that the cover scared their kids that Nintendo has never used a live actor since.

Of course in comparison to what's on the cover of some of today's video game magazines it was nothing, but, it was the late 80's...a simpler time when Micheal Jackson wouldn't snatch your kids (it's not too soon for jokes is it? :P) and Boy George kept shim-self in the closset...LoL.

I am really enjoying the Monster Hunter Tri myself, and have had my Wii online since the beginning for Mario Kart. I don't think you need a new Wii though for more old games. One of their updates allows you to launch from the SD card now so you can save them there (so I am told). I don't buy a bunch of Wii VC or Wiiware games yet. I have sent them as gifts to other Wii players though! Mario 3... fun stuff.

forum go boom

again and again

Thats what she said.

No really, thats what she said. Just there. See I quoted it.

I still love playing the old 8 bit games from my childhood.  Super Mario, Contra, Excite Bike...I was elated to be able to get them on my Wii.  So fun.

You can't forget to purchase games like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Star Fox 64.

Also, I highly advise getting Gunstar Heroes. It's a Genesis game my friends introduced me to 10 years ago (I was a Nintendo kid), and I had to buy it the moment it became available for the Virtual Console.  It's fairly short, but awesome.

Poor Nintendo Power, how I miss thee I haven't been around long enough to be a life-time subsriber, but I still have 150+ issues of it. But when they got bought by... who ever it was who bought them, I felt like the quality went way down, and the number of ads went way up. I tried to give them a chance, but I ended up not renewing.

I got the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the VC. I missed out on it the first time (I only ever had 4 games for the N64. I still have them though). It is an awesome game! I really wish I got the original back then, I was missing out on a lot.

If you don't mind my asking, why don't you like to have your consoles online? I can understand with the 360, you are pretty much forced to buy a $100 wireless adaptor, but the Wii's is built in. I've had mine connected since the beginning, although I admit I don't go online very often.

From what I recall Xbox360 has a ton of old games also, think I bought Joust, Contra, Frogger, Galaga, and some others.

They weren't "Bought out" or anything. It's still owned and ran and published by Nintendo. You're right though there was what they called a "Format Change" a few years back. They started running more adds and cut some of the more in depth coverage. They said they did it to "Update the look and feel" and "take the magazine in a new direction". Like you I also think it went down hill some when they made the change.

I don't mind you asking at all, my friend. It's hard to explain though. I guess it goes back to my family being either some-what poor during parts of my childhood or has to do with growing up in a area that didn't have adequate Internet access. All my life until I got a computer all I had were consoles and console games. Up until the current generation of consoles, console gaming was a solely Off-line experience. They didn't have things like down-loadable games and DLC and on-line miltiplayer. If you were playing multiplayer it was because a friend was over and he or she was sitting right next to you, playing the game with you.

I've had a Wireless adapter for my Wii for years. It's a little USB cable with a receiver on the end for sending wireless signals from your Wii to your Router. It came with a small disk which had to be installed on the PC that was hooked to your router for it to work. I could never get it to work though. I opened ports, everything was installed and configured correctly, but still my Wii wouldn't get On-line. As of now my Wii is On-Line with a hard line cable I.E.Firewire. It's not running wireless. I could of ran the cable and plugged the Wii up like it is now a long time ago, I just never did.

My X-Box360 sits pretty close to my router and has a built-in Fire-wire plug in the back. I put it on-line for a while so I could buy a X-Box Arcade game called "Shadow Complex" which is AMAZING. It's like old school Metroid and Super-Metroid. Probably one of the sweetest platformers I've ever played. Aside from that though, I've never had my X-Box360 on-line either.

Again, thinking back to when I lived in the middle of no-where when I got my computer when I was 18, even then I kept my computer off-line. To get it on-line I would have to run a phone cord (a 100 foot phone cord) from my bedroom at the back of the house, to the phone jack in the kitchen because my room didn't have a phone. Getting my PC on-line was a pain in the ass and it was only on dial-up as my cable company at the time refused to run Internet Cable in that area as it wasn't "cost effective". Because of where I lived I had a pre-built dislike of anything "on-line" as my on-line capabilities were very limited and the experience of being on-line was slow and plain old lousy.

I never fully appreciated what could be done on-line until I moved back to where I live now in the city/town. Then I experienced what it was like to play Unreal Tournament on-line. Then I started playing other "on-line" games. I graduated high-school and started college. Straight out of college I got incredibly lucky and ended up being employed by Origin Systems Inc (the makers of the first Real MMO, Ultima On-line). During my college years I was a UO player and part-time Staff Volunteer. When they shut down the Volunteer program I was one of only 2 volunteers (that I know of) that they hired on instead of letting go. Most of the other volunteer staffers were so dis-heartened by the closing of the Volunteer program they stopped playing UO all together.

Still, even today, I just never got into on-line with consoles. The experience of being "on-line" is so much better and easier to accomplish with a PC that doing it with a console seemed lame. For me it's like the difference between watching a movie on a small 15 inch screen, or watching a movie on a large 52 inch screen. Sure, you could watch your movie on the 15 inch screen, but why bother when you have a 52 inch screen sitting right next to you? That's why, for me at least, I've always enjoyed on-line gaming on the PC and not so much on consoles. Consoles also don't always give you the options that PC's do when on-line. Some games you can't even turn off built in chat or talking programs. I don't want to hear a bunch of 13 year olds talking about "kill that noob, kill him!!!..Oh fuck you and your Mom too you nade throwing assphinkter!!!" and crap like that when I'm playing Counterstrike or Unreal Tourney.

Sorry that's such a long explanation. I hope it answered your question though, my friend.

This confuses me abit, so I think I might be misunderstanding you. The Wii does not require a wireless adapter of any kind. The adapter should be for a wired connection. Natively, the wii uses wireless.

The adapter I'm talking about is called the "Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector". It's nothing but a cable with a tiny white box on the end. At the very end of the "white box" there is what looks like the transmitter on the end of a TV remote. Here it is, I found a picture.

It also comes with a driver disk that must be installed on the computer that's acting as a "Hub" I suspect. Either way, it never worked right and I couldn't figure out why. Neither Nintendo Customer support nor Microsoft Customer support could help me figure out why. Every time I called one they told me to talk to the other one and neither of them could help so I said "fuck it" and never bothered getting on-line with the Wii until I hard-wired it like I have it set up now.

Only if you want wireless connection. My 360 has been plugged in via CAT5 from the beginning.

But why would you need that? I mean the Wii has a wireless connection built in.

According to the Boxed instructions in my Wii I needed to get that to get on-line wirelessly *shrugs*. Did they change something in the production model from the first run to now?

You don't need it. I play MH3 online without it on my Wii.

If you think connecting your Wii is hard, just try the Nintendo DS. There is NO way to set it up without putting in a game. If you want to set up your connection, and all you have is a game like spectrobes, you have to spend three hours playing before unlocking the ability to set up your internet connection

I have Pokemon Snap and Kirby Crystal Shards on my Wii at the moment. Both were well worth the wii points

It can connect to regular wireless as well. I think that is just for people who have dial up or something to be able to create a wireless environment that the Nintendo systems can use.

Gunstar Heroes is on the virtual console now?!? *Runs to go get it on his Wii*

i remember playing alex the kid with my younger brother, on the sega master system 2 my parents bought for him, we were totally addicted, we had certain rounds only one of us were good at, so when it came to the next scene, the control would get handed over, im pretty sure mum was estatic, her 2 kids giving her peace for hours lol.

EDIT: Quoting is all messed up, sorry.

They haven't, I have an original, release-day Wii as well, and I don't need it. My understanding is that the thing you have is necissary only if you don't have a wireless router (you use dial-up or something) or your router is incompatible with the Wii/DS. You plug it into your computer, and it basically acts like a router. Since it sounds like you have a wireless router, I suspect you don't need that.

Oh, my understanding at the time was that they were bought out, but I guess I was wrong. I'm positive though that they changed publishers, it's published by Future US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Power. Regardless, they changed the style, and I didn't really like it. I was also disappointed that they have apparently stopped doing the Nintendo Power game guides. I always thought they were of higher quality than other ones (not that I used them much, mostly just collected them).

I totally understand your reasoning for waiting so long. I was hesitant for quite a while, and I still don't use it fully. Mostly just to play with out-of-state friends and that sort of thing.

My 360 is way too far away from my router to do that. My family wouldn't appreciate the 100 foot cable snaking across the floor.

Ahh, so they did change publishers. Still owned and operated by Nintendo though and they did change the format, yes. I was going by what they I read in the magazine. If they mentioned changing publishers as well I guess I missed that part wondering why they messed up a good thing. The new "feel" of the mag is definitely geared for a quicker market to push more games with less coverage on each. I remember back when each issue would show at least one or two games almost from start to finish. I always collected their game guides as well, at least for the games I owned, like Chrono Trigger. I hope they put that out on Wii Ware.

That's a great story, Vampothika. Good memories are great, hold on to them as long as you can.

oh i do, believe you me........(cuddles cola can)  hehehe....xx