Student Reflects On Wii 15 Years Later
Photo Credit: Wyatt Harris
The Wii, which was released in 2006, is steadily making a comeback.
Let us go back in time for a few minutes. It is Christmas 2006. A young you comes down the stairs, excited to open presents and to see what you have received. A big square box lies under the tree, with your name on it.
The box is white, with a picture of a rectangle console and controller. Overlapping the picture of the console, it reads, “Wii”. This was the start of one of the most fun times of your young life. The brand-new Nintendo console was in your hands, along with two of the first ever games, Wii Play and Wii Sports. Many kids and adults got to experience this throughout the start of the 21st century, the start of the newest Nintendo technology created at the time.
Now we are back in 2022. The Wii has aged and had its time of popularity and entertainment, as the Wii turned 15 years old last November. Even so, the Wii is still an everlasting console with everything that is able to be used through it, even after its discontinuation back in 2019. Why is this? It’s simply because the Wii is too precious to be let go of and forgotten. With everything that the community has done over the years for the Wii, it’s just like how it was back in the early 2000s.
Homebrew has been around for almost three decades now, first appearing at older Nintendo consoles around the time of 2002, being the first “hacks” for people to use on these consoles. The software is used through installing it directly onto the console with “third party” methods, which then allows people to install unofficial apps and software that can be used for multiple things. Homebrew software can be used for installing things like hacks for video games, emulators for older video games, and much more. This goes along with the revival of the Wii as well.
Projects like Riiconnect24 allow the Wii’s original features to be brought back up and used on the Wii, exactly how it was in the past. Most online channels and services like Check Mii Out, Weather and News Channel, and many others were brought offline after Wiiconnect24, the official service, was discontinued in 2013. This was also applied to online modes of games, mainly Mario Kart Wii. The servers were brought back online through a Homebrew service Wiimmfi, bringing back the competitive gameplay from years ago.
It is clear that people merely refuse the Wii to be forgotten, just because it has been discontinued by Nintendo. All of this time and effort that has been put into multiple software and services makes it obvious that a console like this should remain through present times and even further, no matter the new consoles to be released. It is surprising but at the same time understood that Nintendo would let go of the Wii only after seven years of its life, with newer consoles being released. But at the same time, it is hard to let go.
