Duck Hunt Nintendo Right in The Donkey Kong

I've never really been a big gamer. I guess I've always had other priorities. Rather than buying a new console, I've always chosen other things that I've considered more important, like books, or a new computer, or a miter saw, or pretty much anything. I have occasionally bought games on sale for my computer though. But, I've actually never even played most of them. Despite gaming a lot on my old computer as a kid, spending hours playing Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Baldurs Gate, and other games, I don't really do that a lot on my current system. I spend a lot more time doing research, watching educational videos, learning languages, and occasionally actually doing work.

Despite this, I've actually always wanted a hacked Xbox console (the original) to play a few games I really loved on it, as well as emulation and homebrew, as well as a Wii, again, hacked, to play a few fun games, and do homebrew and emulation.

I'm also bidding on a Sony PSP literally right now, to repair, possibly sell, hack, play around with, etc.

Also possibly going to get a Nintendo DSi XL to repair and hack and play around with, because why not?

I find taking things apart it's own kind of fun. Might as well learn to repair something if I'm gonna play around with it.

But, the Wii has a sort of situation with it that's happened since I first started wanting one.

_{Image by Rob Fahey May 12, 2006 (source)
Used under CC BY-SA 2.0}

Nintendo has a bunch of consoles. They could have modified to Wii store and expanded it to support the Nintendo NES classic and SNES classic, allowing people to download old classic games on those consoles, as well as the Wii, and their various portable systems, making apps for old systems, getting money out of players with old systems occasionally, etc etc.

Except they didn't.

Instead of putting a bit of money into paying programmers to make apps for different consoles, and maintaining a store on all their different consoles, the dumb fucks disabled functionality on the Wii, and now you can't buy new games on your Wii.

I assume if there were similar online stores on other consoles that are just as old, they probably killed those stores too.

This sort of situation is actually exactly what the crypto faithful are always talking about with stores like Steam and other digital store fronts. Thankfully Nintendo let you keep the games you had downloaded on your console, but Netflix and other online activity no longer works...just because they didn't want to maintain the servers anymore, despite all the users that still use the Wii being potential sources of further revenue. Now all those users are probably pirating all their games. GOOD JOB!

From what I've read, you actually can still use Netflix, or some can, by simply changing the date. I'm sure a cracked version of the app would probably work unless things have changed since then.

Nintendo has shown the same thing that tons of online services have shown in the past, that it doesn't matter if you bought something expecting some kind of service or something, as soon as a company feels like it's too much of a hassle to maintain something, because you aren't earning them enough money anymore, it's gone. It doesn't matter how much you spent on it.

The funny thing is that Nintendo actually very recently just released a Wii Mini that is basically a stripped down version of the Wii.

The odd thing is that it's only barely smaller than the Wii, and doesn't have online play or an SD card slot.

Except it's 2019.

Save for some people out in the middle of nowhere, most people have internet. Sadly there still are a lot of people out in the middle of nowhere that want internet and have real trouble getting it in this day and age, despite all these idiots assuming everyone has super fast internet, just because they do. "The future is cloud!" Unless you can't get anything but shit internet, then you're shit out of luck, and left out of the future.

So, don't be an idiot and assume everyone has super fast internet, but most people have internet, and some people have really fast internet, so you can leverage that.

I personally would have dropped the CD drive to lower the cost of the system, and just done games on SD cards. An SD card slot is cheap. Sure, it opens your system up to possibly pirating and hacking, but your system is going to be hacked, and people will pirate games. Plus the Wii has been out forever. It's cheaper for people to just get a used Wii, and it has more capability. If you drop the CD drive, you can get a lot smaller system, while simply losing the ability to load old Wii games. Which means anyone with a Wii will buy whole new versions of some of their favorite games on SD cards and online. And you'd have a reason to keep around with Wii store, getting more new users with a new cheaper system.

What's gonna happen with all these new systems when they decide to drop support for them in a number of years though?

Trash bin.

Heaps and piles in the garbage dumps and land fills.

Yeah, duck that.

The Wii and other old consoles are still cool for modding and using for old games and maybe even streaming, probably for your older TV's. Maybe they don't play the most realistic new games...but they'll probably keep working in their current state for quite a while, with a bit of care, upkeep, and occasional repair. Nintendo already showed they don't care and abandoned the Wii, so now we don't really have to worry about losing any added functionality from where it is now. We already lost it.

I've started to think that we've often moved a bit too fast away from these old systems. I still quite enjoy quite a few side scrollers and such on my computer. We could probably still be using these old systems if somehow it was possible to maybe upgrade them a bit and maybe put on an online store on them or such. Maybe you could see that some game you bought on Steam or wherever has a version that runs on your console, and you'd just need to get a mod to bring it online, then you could play various games you already bought on your system.

But that's not the world we live in currently. We're in the world where these systems slowly get abandoned, because not as many people play them every day, and their price drops, and their functionality lowers.

Ironically, now is the time when the poorest people can finally afford these old systems.

Sad.

I think I'll get some of these old systems finally though, and work on learning to repair them, and maybe figure out which ones I can occasionally make some extra cash on. Seems like an alright hobby to have.