PixlBit

A unique user interface that stood the test of time and provided some fresh ideas about content on a game console.

Standard Fare

Several channels came pre-loaded on every Wii and a few others were so fundamental they should have.  Many of the Wii’s defining features relied on these standard channels and helped ease lapsed gamers and grandmas into the whole experience.

Mii Channel:

This was the system’s greatest success.  Of all the things that helped get the Wii into the consciousness of the general public, it was Miis and there could be no Miis without the Mii Channel.  In the console’s early days when some early adopters tried to convince themselves that Excite Truck was fun, lots of people just kept screwing around with the Mii Channel instead of actually using the system to play games.

The Mii Channel lets you make Miis that sort of look like yourself, and everyone in your family, and thousands of versions of Michael Jackson.  Other than making personalized avatars for certain games, your Miis can migrate over to your friends’ consoles and then migrate to their friends’ consoles and so on.  Migrated Miis fill out the channel’s Mii Parade - where all of those Michael Jacksons you created and everyone else’s could march side by side with Jesus, Admiral Ackbar, and the occasional regular looking person.  Creativity really started to emerge from the Mii Channel as the fairly limited set of facial features available in the Mii creator were bent and merged to make tons of inhuman celebrities.  Your Mii Channel and it’s parade are still going strong as long as you’ve left it online all these years. It’s been constantly migrating in new Miis, and if you had some minimal number of friends entered into your machine, you probably have quite the collection now. 

RATING:  System seller

Wii Shop Channel:

From the very early days of the Wii, the Wii Shop Channel was sitting there waiting to take your monies.  In the beginning they only suckered sales from everyone who thought Mario Bros. was Super Mario Bros., but we all went and at least browsed around.  While window shopping, we heard that wonderful Wii Shop music that was completely relaxing and hypnotizing.  The Wii Shop tune can stick in your head for weeks and the only relief is to go and listen to the thing again.  Overall, the Wii Shop itself is set up in a pretty basic manner that was OK when there were only a handful of things available, but as the inventory increased it got a little frustrating.  Over time, Wii Ware was added as a shop section in addition to the Virtual Console and Channels sections that were there from the early days.  It certainly seems like less and less people used these services over time, including big-name publishers who largely gave up on re-releasing their classics on the Virtual Console due to the cost of getting their old games rated by the ESRB.

Almost every game that was released on the Wii Shop is still there for you to download, provided you can find what you’re looking for in the clunky interface and you’re not looking for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for NES. (It was pulled years ago after the license expired.)  Although probably less used by moms and pops, the Wii Shop Channel certainly contributed to the system’s overall reputation among serious gamers and those wanting to get a dose of nostalgia from the Virtural Console.

RATING:  Gets the job done; addictive music

Internet Channel:

With all the grief we give Nintendo for their online philosophies, they did have Microsoft’s console beat by actually including a web browser.  Not very many people actually use the browser, but it does work fairly well for watching YouTube videos and is a neat way to enjoy a small set of sites created specifically for the Wii web browser.  Several flash game sites featuring chunky graphics that could be steered with a remote pointer popped up, as well as internet radio services similar to Pandora.  Microsoft is just now making internet browsing sort of functional on the Xbox, but the Wii added the capability a few months after launch.

There’s probably little need to use the channel at this point, but it’s still a handy way to use those tailored services if you got hooked on them early on.

RATING:  Good replacement for WebTV

Nintendo Channel:

Since Nintendo still generally fails in the free demo department, the Nintendo Channel offers a way for the company to persuade you to buy new games for the Wii and DS.  The channel was home to Nintendo Week for years, a show featuring Alison and Gary that was surprisingly not terribly cheesy or awkward. It was just a little cheesy and awkward. The channel also provided promo and instructional videos for DS and Wii games that was refreshed pretty frequently to keep up with the games as they were released and as new announcements were made.

Probably the coolest feature of the channel was the DS Download Station.  Since demos weren’t distributed over the normal internet to a DS, you had the option of downloading a few demos from the Nintendo Channel.  Before the channel was around, you would have to go to a store with a download kiosk to get these demos, so having the ability to get the same thing in your living room was pretty cool.  They never really expanded this to demos of Wii games, which are understandably quite a bit larger – but still, it would have been nice. The 3DS has sufficient online capabilities to allow for direct demo downloads, so as that system takes off, there is less and less need for the DS Download Service.

The Nintendo Week show has been replaced with a by-the-book promo series called Nintendo Update and you can still download demos to your DS if you want to.  Some of those demos have been kicking around for years, like Brain Age and CrossworDS. 

RATING:  Sufficient stopgap

Photo Channel:

Yeah, the other guys let you watch a photo slide show and do it straight off of your home network, but for the technophobe, sticking an SD card filled with pictures and starting a presentation was easy to understand and implement.  It was a standard experience, with the view slowly zooming in and out on pictures while your selected MP3s played – that is if you didn’t upgrade to version 1.1.  For some reason, they “upgraded” the channel and disabled the ability to play MP3s and only allow AAC files.  This shift was never sufficiently explained by Nintendo, and it’s an even stranger choice since they always made it optional. If you bought a Wii after version 1.1 was released, you’re going to be out of luck if you want to play MP3s during your slideshows since the original version was removed from the Wii Shop.

The channel also has a function that allows you to edit and goof around with your pictures.  This is a fun thing for kids to do without getting in trouble for messing up Uncle Ted’s wedding photos, but other than just screwing around, nobody was going to use this editing functionality for anything important. 

This channel still works as well as it ever did, but using it for a slideshow is probably less and less likely with how easy it is to hook up a laptop to a modern television or beam your pics directly to another console for viewing. 

RATING:  Never necessary, now pointless