A few months back, Nintendo announced that the Wii Shop was going to close down. The ability to buy games goes away on January 30th, 2019. That seems like a lot of time, but they're disabling the ability to add Wii points to your account on March 26, 2018, which is in a month and a half now in the past! Sorry that you missed out on adding points.
I'm guessing there aren't a lot of people who still have their old Wii systems set up. It was actually the last Nintendo system I bought (not counting the SNES Classic), so I still had the system hooked up to a TV until a cross-country move back in August. Since we're getting nearer the end of the Wii Shop, though, I decided to finally open the box it was in and make sure I could connect it to the internet today. That went without a hitch, and I saw I still have 300 Wii points left. Not enough for a full game, but if I add 1000 points it's enough for a Genesis/SNES game + an NES game. There are also a few WiiWare games I want to grab before I can't anymore. I haven't thought much about which Virtual Console games I want (although Faxanadu for the NES is a contender), but I can easily think of two WiiWare games not available anywhere else that I want to download and experience before they're gone:
Contra ReBirth - 1000 Wii points
This looks like a good throwback to the classic Contra games. It's been fun watching Dan and Vinny work on the original NES Contra, as well as Contra Hard Corps for the Genesis in their This Is the Run feature. I will definitely be picking this one up when I finally add more points to my account.
Gradius ReBirth - 1000 Wii points
I was never as big of a fan of the Gradius series as I was of the other big Konami franchises like Contra and Castlevania, but I still have fond memories of the original on NES as well as Life Force. This looks like it references both of those games.
That's all I can think of that I personally need to buy, but I can throw out two (cautious) recommendations:
Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth - 1000 Wii points
Why they put this music into the trailer, I do not know. It's not in the full game as far as I remember. I bought it at release in 2009, but I didn't finally play through it until 2014. It's supposed to be a remake of the first Gameboy game Castlevania: The Adventure (and until this remake came out, I always thought it was called The Castlevania Adventure). It bears little resemblance to the GB game, fortunately, except for the main character (Christopher Belmont), your whip power up that shoots fireballs, and those eyeball enemies. For some reason, they have the GB game's first level music in the sound test, but it never actually appears in the game, which is too bad because it's one of the best Castlevania tunes. Anyway, this is a solid classic Castlevania. I wish @vinny would have given it a try for VinnyVania, but it feels like that series has reached its logical end.
Blaster Master: Overdrive
OK, so I also bought this when it came out, played it for a little bit, and it seemed OK. I was a huge fan of the original Blaster Master on the NES. I hated the one on the Sega Genesis. I was...confused? by the one I played on the PS1. And I haven't had the opportunity to play the new one on the Switch. This one is probably not as good as the Switch game, but definitely better than the Genesis game.
Another thing to note about the Wii Shop closing down: eventually you won't be able to download the patch channel for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I still haven't played that one, but I do own it, so today I made sure to download the patch. I'd rather have it now rather than not be able to download it later.
On the off chance that someone else reads this post, are there any Wii Shop games you might recommend before this service goes away forever? Any that you remember fondly?
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