Review: Nintendo Wii Mini

[irixith]

If all you do with your Wii is play run of the mill disc based games, it's an OK purchase. The kind of system you'd see in the kids section of a doctor's office, or a daycare, or somewhere where all the fluff removed was suitable.

For me, the Wii Mini is simply unacceptable. No component output really is a pretty big loss, especially considering the Wii outputs 240p for VC games over component. Which I suppose doesn't matter considering the entire library of VC and WiiWare games are out. No SD card, so no Riivolution to enjoy user created Mario Kart, Smash Bros or NSBM levels. No softmodding, so no access to the fabulous emulators and other software out there, in addition to being unable to load everything from a hard drive. (I removed the disc drive out of my Wii and replaced it with a hard drive.) There's the GC accessory and game support too, but that was already narfed in a revision previous to the Wii Mini. I don't remember playing any GC software on the Wii (worst Nintendo console generation by a mile), but the controller ports opened up the ability to use NES/SNES/etc controllers directly plugged into the system. Having to depend on a controller plugged into the Wii Remote was a silly idea from the get-go.

No internet access doesn't bother me at all. The only thing I ever used the wifi access on the Wii for was to update the system software. One of the great benefits of softmodding was narfing all those silly preinstalled things like photos and weather, and news, so the Wii Mini gets points for eradicating all that stuff from the get-go. It would be even better to just narf the menu altogether and just direct boot the games, considering it's the only thing the system can do. Love the colour scheme, the size and the construction as well.

Thankfully the original Wii didn't really hold any value, so they're cheaper than a mini, widely available and infinitely more flexible.

[wclem]

Yeah, think I am gonna stick with picking up cheap Wii's.

[irixith]

Yeah, think I am gonna stick with picking up cheap Wii's.

Right there with you. I have a small army of five. Such an amazing little box.

[wclem]

Yeah, think I am gonna stick with picking up cheap Wii's.

Right there with you. I have a small army of five. Such an amazing little box.

2 x white
1 x red
1 x blue
1 x black

Boxes for them all except the red. Boxes were compliments of the local Gamestop dumpster. Thinking of selling a white to a friend for his kids so I will have to grab another backup at the garage sales this summer. More Wiimotes and nunchuks than I will ever need too LOL. I do not keep doubles in games but I tend to stock up on systems. I know it is dumb but when nobody has one that works I will LOL.

[ninjainspandex]

and so the hording begins...

[Fragems]

Probably will wait for it to hit $20-30 at the pawns then I'll pick one up as a back up just because it's a pretty neat variant. Can get 3 used backwards compatible wiis with about 3-4 controllers and possibly a loose game or two for around $100-110 so even at the reduced price I'm not super drawn to it and CIB systems have never been super important to me.

Netflix and Amazon Prime capability are also a significant draw for me.

Edit: I have a feeling that due to the lack of features it will probably get even cheaper then the original wii's in a few years that is if they manage to sell enough for a healthy supply of them to reach the market..

[casterofdreams]

Edit: I have a feeling that due to the lack of features it will probably get even cheaper then the original wii's in a few years that is if they manage to sell enough for a healthy supply of them to reach the market..

I got a funny feeling that it'll be like the Game Boy Micro in that its like its concurrent model but with less capabilities and will fail to sell anything past a tiny fraction of total sales. That might increase value no?

[theclaw]

Could be. Last we've heard, Nintendo denied discontinuing the Wii in North America. I'm not aware of other places like South Korea either (who don't have Wii Mini anyway).

[ninjainspandex]

Edit: I have a feeling that due to the lack of features it will probably get even cheaper then the original wii's in a few years that is if they manage to sell enough for a healthy supply of them to reach the market..

I got a funny feeling that it'll be like the Game Boy Micro in that its like its concurrent model but with less capabilities and will fail to sell anything past a tiny fraction of total sales. That might increase value no?

except the gameboy micro doesn't suck.

[Konacha]

This thing sounds a bit like the SNES Jr in fact. While we may loose component, there could be a mod or something along the lines in the future. I most likely will not pick this up unless my Wii dies (and even then it is questionable because I have a Wii U and Gamecube with Digital Component cable) or Nintendo could announce that they can re-add component too it in the future but IDK. However, I like the review since most of the internet for the Wii will go offline at some point and will be pointless to have a Wii connected to the internet.