A Shopping Wii Will Go.

Today Nintendo updated their pretty pitiful Virtual Console lineup with a title I was interested in purchasing. So I fired up the Wii and headed to the Wii Shop Channel. When you sign in to Xbox Live on the Xbox 360 you're connected to the whole service. You can browse Xbox Live Marketplace instantly. Nintendo's Wii doesn't work that way. When you select the Wii Shop Channel you're prompted with a choice to go to the shop or go back. Going on to the shop initiates the Wii signing in to the shopping server. For me this takes roughly ten to fifteen seconds. Once in the shop proper you can select the Virtual Console or the Wii Ware sections. The Wii Ware is where you'll purchase items like the Opera web browser and downloadable content for games such as extra levels and the like. The Virtual Console section is of course where you'll go to download those NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and TG-16 titles. I was interested in Bonk's Adventure they added to the TG-16 section. You have a few ways of finding your item. You can browse a master list alphabetically. You can check out games for a specific system. You can check a list of the newest additions. Once you find the game you're looking for you can get some basic information like the original year of release and the Wii Point cost. There is an option for additional information that will give you a basic overview of the title. And of course there is an option to purchase the game. When purchasing the game it will go to a screen showing you how many points you have, how many points it'll cost, and how many points you'll have after the purchase. It does the same thing with the amount of memory you have. It asks for a final confirmation. Upon the final confirmation it will go to the download screen which is fittingly Nintendo charming. It's a screen with three blocks from Super Mario Bros. on the screen with a bunch of coins on the ground. Mario runs from left to right collecting the coins. As the download goes on Mario will jump and hit the block with the appropriate sound effects. He hits the first block at 33%, the second at 66%, and the final one at 100%. The download took me roughly fifteen seconds. Upon finishing the download when you return to the main Wii Menu you'll notice you now have a TG-16 channel. That's where you'll find all your TG-16 games of course. Bonk's Adventure loads almost instantly upon selecting it. I messed around with the game through the first boss. It was enough for me to tell that the emulation level for the TG-16 on the Wii is absolutely amazing. It's dead on. They also do something rather cool. Within the game you can press the Home button on the Wii Remote to bring up a menu that features the control diagrams. Screen shots that label what everything on the game's HUD actually are. You'll get full instructions. You'll get graphics showing what each in-game item does. You get a full-on virtual manual. Not just a scanned version of the original. One written to meet these new standards. I don't really care to have to sign in to the shop each and every time, but that's only a slight annoyance. Shopping from the Wii is easy enough. And it seems the emulation is held to a very high standard. And they've prepared new manuals and instructions for every game. I'm impressed with all of the little extras and the quality displayed so far.