Wii Virtual Console Shutdown Countdown and Recommendation Thread

The Wii VC will shutdown on January 31, 2019.

I’m a huge fan of the Wii VC. 240P support and rather excellent emulation across many platforms, from Master System to Arcade. I do hear issues with the TG16/PC Engine emulation, but that’s apparently due to 480i/p resolution instead of supporting 240p. If someone can correct me on this.

The libraries aren’t that fleshed out, but you can find some excellent titles not found anywhere else legally. Titles like Ogre Battle/64, DoReMi Fantasy, Ufouria, Pulseman, and for now, the only place to get the original SNES version of Chrono Trigger, outside a very expensive cart purchase.

The prices can seem steep for ROMs sure, but it’s legal and compare them to carts and it can be a great way save money. Moreover, you can easily softmod your Wii to back up your “investment”.

We have a little more than a year to pick up titles, but like anything online related, it would make sense to not wait until the last month to get your must-have titles. I’m sure it will die in that last month due to the traffic.

What are you some of your favorite titles of this great service?

MOD ABUSE: PLEASE NOTE THE SERVICE SHUTS DOWN IN JANUARY 2019, BUT YOU CAN ONLY ADD FUNDS TO PURCHASE GAMES UNTIL MARCH 26, 2018.

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It was super cool to see the PC-Engine CD being as well-represented as it was. The heavy hitters being Ys Book I & II, Rondo of Blood, and Lords of Thunder, with additional support from Super Air Zonk and Monstet Lair. Never expected to play these games officially without a TGCD.

Also dope were the handful of expensive Mega Drive shmups that got a release. Musha and Gleylancer to be specific. Not a huge fan of either game, but I got to see what the fuss was about.

A bunch of games have already been discontinued on Wii VC including every C64 game. It was cool to see various games get re-released on this service (shame about the vaseline filtered look on a bunch of TG16 stuff and lack of proper save states, though). It was neat that Wonder Boy III included FM sound for the first time in the West.

Finally playing Rondo was very cool. It was later released in the Dracula X collection for the PSP, but that was a bit later.

Great topic. I bought a Wii day one in part to explore the Virtual Console, and, as a rehabilitated Sega kid, for a while I eagerly looked forward to each week’s slate of titles. (And the corresponding retro roundup on 1up.com.)

The Virtual Console played a huge part in getting me into retro games – I didn’t think about hooking up old consoles at the time. I played some GOAT caliber games for the first time on VC, particularly Super Metroid and the Streets of Rage series.

I should really pick up some more obscure titles while I can, particularly those that can do 240p to feed into the OSSC. Definitely more TG/PCE CD as well. I’m still holding out hope the Switch gets a similar service.

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Good thread, timely for me. I never had a Wii and I’m now looking to buy a used one with a bunch of VC games on it sometime in 2018. I found one with over 200 games for about $100 in really good shape on eBay. I didn’t pull the trigger, though. 50 cents per game would have been an OK deal…

If anyone here is looking to sell one, PM me.

Still play VC all the time. Love the official route to grab games and still buy them every so often. Recently grabbed PCE Street Fighter. And the new controllers from the SNES/Fami Mini are excellent.

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Important thread. This is the only way to affordable buy a lot of these games. I’ll be buying a ton of them this year.

Act fast, you can only add funds for a few more months. I modified the OP. I hope entremet doesn’t mind.

Thanks, I had actually forgotten about that and was thinking about 2019 instead. I’m on the ebay hunt for sure. Kicking myself for not getting the one I mentioned earlier. All the games were really good. I would only have had to buy a dozen or so more that I would REALLY want.

EDIT: Placing a couple good references here…

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Besides the VC what are the games to get from the Eshop before its dead. I heard there was a bit of decent content.
Is Megaman 9 and 10 480i only? or is there a 480p mode too?

I think I have maybe 150 games. Solid collection. I also have a Japanese Wil loaded with another 40-50 very unique titles for that region.

480i only with no scaling up to 480p on OG Wii hardware. But I think it may be scaled to 480p by Wii U’s firmware if you buy it there. I’m not certain though.

Either way, the results aren’t ideal. Seeing pixel based graphics like that in 480i really makes my blood boil when I know what could’ve (and should’ve) been.

I’d love to see a firmware hack that allows you to force it into 240p native.

Looks like I might have found a seller on GAF.

What can I expect as far as PQ when playing VC games via component on my Panasonic Plasma? What about on a PVM via composite? I have a component->SCART converter, too. Worth using that on the CRT?

I will mostly be keeping this hooked up to my nice CRT in the basement. I would like to play some Wii games, too … I missed out on the entire system so the Galaxy games and so much more are mostly all new to me. I would assume they’ll look great on my PVM. But since I’ll have so many classic games in this one little box, I think it might be nice to bring it upstairs onto my big screen from time to time (no classic systems hooked up there right now) and maybe take it with me to family holidays and stuff.

I use component on Sony consumer CRT. Looks great. Especially due to the 240p support.

You can hack individual games for 240p (I did it with some PC Engine titles), but sadly, no global hack, which would be ideal.

Edit: Missed the fact that we were talking about MM9 and MM10. Yeah, that’s terrible.

It will look fairly good on your plasma and really good on the PVM, but don’t use composite dude. Use component.

Oh for sure. Composite will only be used until a proper cable can be shipped.

So I got my Wii from a GAFer. It’s in worse shape than I thought. It doesn’t have a working remote so I can’t see all the VC games available yet. But one thing I notice right away is the SD card doesn’t stay seated in the slot. I don’t know if any games are on the card but I can only assume so. Looks like it will read the card when I push it in. Seems like I could jury rig a copy setup…

Which leads me to a question: how easy/hard is it to transfer these games to a new console? I’m not the original owner, obviously, so if it involves contacting Nintendo with my purchase history is a no go…

Unfortunately, you’re probably out of luck unless there’s s homebrew solution I’m not aware of.

I’d get my money back if I were you. A busted SD card reader on a Wii limits the device a lot.