PSA - Wii Shop will close January 30th, 2019

Hey, this was announced awhile ago but that day is fast approaching.

If you need to spend your Wii Points, redownload content, or transfer content from Wii to Wii U, you must do it in the next 10 days.

Here is the link to Nintendo for official info.

On a side note, I started playing Silent Hill Shattered Memories on the Wii and holy shit, masterpiece?

Edit: It's worth mentioning, if anybody wants to play Skyward Sword at some point in the future, there is a patch for a save glitch in the form of a channel that's available in the Wii Shop. It's probably worth it to at least download that.

Damn. I kinda wanted the Wii version of the Phoenix Wright games. I can't see myself doing that in the next 10 days.

I know console-specific online services can't last forever, but the Wii Shop Channel closing is sad. As much as the Wii's retail software was aimed at a very wide audience, the Wii Shop (by which I mean the Virtual Console) was aimed pretty squarely at those with an appreciation for the history of video games (or if Nintendo actually thought the general public might buy NES or Master System in 2006-2012 then they were absolutely delusional). Sure, WiiWare existed, and Konami put out some surprisingly decent Castlevania and Contra remakes/reimaginings, Capcom ported the first 3 Ace Attorney games there back when they hadn't been rereleased anywhere in English other than the DS, and it has a pretty good version of World of Goo. But when I think of the Wii Shop, I think of the Virtual Console.

The Wii Shop was the best effort Nintendo ever put into having a wide variety of older games for download through the Virtual Console. It had ups and downs, but it was certainly less of a sad story than Game Room. Sadly, I'm guessing almost all of those sold super terribly, especially lesser known, non-Nintendo games. When you look at the Virtual Console offerings on 3DS and Wii U, they're much more focused on simply reissuing Nintendo-published stuff. And then you have the Switch, where they've almost completely abandoned this initiative to release older games except for this bizarre gradual release of NES games. I guess there's just little to no money in selling old games, especially at Nintendo's bizarrely high prices.

It's worth mentioning, if anybody wants to play Skyward Sword at some point in the future, there is a patch for a save glitch in the form of a channel that's available in the Wii Shop. It's probably worth it to at least download that.

Time to finally put my last 7100 points to use.

I ended up buying Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa, Faxanadu, Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Gley Lancer, and Fluidity. Unless an Arcade Archives port is announced in the next week, the remaining 1000 points will be spent on Ironclad.

I thought I was going to have to lose both Fluidity and Ironclad, but I managed to drop two SNES games from my wishlist after looking into cartridge prices. I had an additional 600 points I hadn't decided how to use, giving me the 2200 points I needed for these two.

The Rebirth games sadly did not make the final cut. Please bring these back on a modern system, Konami. Please.

According to the FAQ redownloading and transferring will end some time in the future and this just ends purchasing.

They haven't given a deadline for redownloads yet, but I would encourage you to get that done before the January 30 purchase deadline just in case. If you need an SD card, a 1 or 2 GB card should be plenty.

I for one will not miss that overpriced store.

Time is running out! Since they haven't announced an exact time that they'll shut it down, try to finish your shopping by tonight to avoid getting burned by an early closure.