As we’ve said, one of Nintendo’s big reveals at GDC today is the long, long awaited solution to the Wii’s storage woes. It's so obvious it's not even worthy of a condescending drum roll: it’s just the ability to load Virtual Console and WiiWare games off an SD card. Could someone please explain to me why this took two years to roll out?
From today’s Nintendo GDC keynote, we know that this solution adds 32GB SDHC card support and is implemented via an SD card menu that looks a lot like the Wii menu. But I’ve been playing with it, and so have all the extra little details after the jump. This might be rather fine data for something as pedestrian as a storage solution, but don’t blame me: Nintendo has given me way too long to think about what I want from this.
Here’s the breakdown:
- There’s load time. The Wii still can’t actually load games in-place off the SD card; instead it has to copy them to system memory temporarily, and then load it. This means you will be twiddling your thumbs while the copy takes place, and on a big game like Sin & Punishment this load can be nearly twenty seconds long.
- It recognizes all previously backed-up VC and WiiWare games. Imagine my surprise and buyer’s remorse when I opened up the SD card menu for the first time and found Solomon’s Key, a launch VC title I hadn’t played since 2006. If your SD card is where your ill-conceived late-night VC purchases have been buried, get ready to be slapped by a bunch of history.
- The Wii Shop can only sort of use the SD card. While you can download from the Shop onto the SD card just fine, once the game gets there the shop can’t see it right away (ie: it flags the game as “downloadable” instead of “downloaded”). Only if you try to download the game to the SD card again will it figure out you already have it and give you an error. If you’re like me, you have WiiWare junk all over the place, and this update isn’t going to help you get more organized.
- Don’t move your save games. If they didn’t work off SD card before, they still won’t now. This is a VC/WiiWare solution only.
- It doesn’t break The Homebrew Channel. If you already have it installed you can still use it after the update, so don’t worry about that half-finished game of Beneath a Steel Sky you were playing in ScummVM.
Related Links:
GDC News: Wii Storage Solution Confirmed
GDC News: Final Fantasy to Hit Virtual Console
Virtual Console New Year's Resolutions