Nintendo has announced that the Wii Shop Channel is ending its service in 2019.
The last time you’ll be able to add Wii Points is March 26th, 2018 while you can still
purchase content on the Channel until January 30th, 2019.
This means you only have about a year and a half to re-download any purchased WiiWare
and Virtual Console titles or use the Wii System Transfer Tool to put those games on
the Wii U.
This naturally also means that the Wii U won’t be able to access the Channel anymore either.
It’s weird to think that the original Virtual Console will no longer be there.
But here’s the thing, there’s a lot of games that came to the Wii’s Virtual Console
that never appeared again on the Wii U’s.
And with no news, as of this video, on the state of the Switch Virtual Console, this
could be the last chance to download some of the gems you may have missed the first
time around.
But we’re here to help as we went through and catalogued all the games on the Wii Shop’s
Virtual Console that cannot be downloaded on any other Nintendo Console.
At least as of right now.
So if there’s something that you missed out on originally, here’s your chance to
grab it before the service is gone.
We begin with the NES where there’s a few Japanese imports like Bio Miracle Bokutte
Upa and Ninja JaJaMaru-kun along with classics and hidden gems like A Boy and His Blob, the
Adventures of Lolo 2, BurgerTime, and even the original Final Fantasy.
The SNES section is filled with classics like these though: ActRaiser, Final Fantasy II
& III, Ogre Battle, Super Adventure Island, and even Zombies Ate My Neighbors.
Most of all, you can pick up the original SNES version of Chrono Trigger which wasn’t
even included on the SNES Classic.
The N64 has slimmer pickings in general, but Pokémon Puzzle League and Super Smash Bros.
are definitely worth picking up if you haven’t had a chance yet.
Next are the TurboGrafx-16 games and while I’m not overly familiar with the system,
there are still plenty of good options here that can’t be found anywhere else on a Nintendo
console yet, like Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, Bomberman ‘93, and Splatterhouse.
But the thing about the Wii U is that it never had any Sega games on it like the Wii.
So you could potentially miss out on Master System titles like Alex Kidd, Fantasy Zone,
Wonder Boy, and the original Phantasy Star.
And then there’s the Genesis line-up which is filled with so many great games.
Sonic, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, the other Phantasy Star RPGs, Shining Force, Ristar.
It’s all great stuff.
A more curious situation are the NeoGeo games on the Wii Shop.
While they weren’t re-released on the Wii U Virtual Console, they have been seeing a
re-release on the Switch outside of the Virtual Console moniker.
Many of these games could appear on the Switch eventually, but these are the ones that aren’t
yet.
Finally, we have the arcade line-up.
Some of these are also on the consoles we’ve already shown but there are a few exclusives
like 1942, Mappy, Zaxxon, and Shinobi.
And there you have it.
All the Virtual Console games that are on the Wii Shop but can’t be found on another
Nintendo console.
There’s a shocking amount that never saw a re-release and figuring out which ones to
grab while keeping to a budget could be more than a little tricky.
Still, at least there’s still time to grab some of these classics.
Which ones are you planning to pick up?
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and other things gaming.