RIP Nintendo Wii Shop Channel

As most video game fans know by now, Nintendo will be closing the Wii Shop Channel in just 4 days, 03/26/18. After March 26th, you'll no longer be able to add Wii Points to your account. Come January 2019, the entire channel will be shut down.

With the deadline quickly approaching to add Wii Points, I accessed the Wii Shop channel last weekend on my Wii U and grabbed several games that I've been putting off. It's been a long time since I've even accessed the channel, so it was a little overwhelming looking at all of the titles that were offered across the different gaming platforms.

I've never been too interested in downloading NES or SNES games, so I kept to the titles in the TurboGrafx-16 library for the most part. Even though I own the original TG-16 hardware, the games have become stupid expensive on the secondary market and these digital versions were about $6 each. While I don't always care for digital games, this just made sense.

The first game I downloaded was the arcade version of Ninja Gaiden. I had fond memories if playing this game at a time share resort my parents used to take the family to up in the NC mountains. The download was reasonably priced so I went with it. After playing it the other night I'm afraid to say that this is one of those games that hasn't aged well. The controls seemed really stiff and the gameplay was just average. Granted I was playing with the Wiimote and not my Classic controller. I'll have to give it another go with the better controller and see if that helps.

I already owned a few of the excellent titles that were released on the WiiWare channel, such as Blaster Master, the Konami Rebirth titles (minus Gradius, that will be my last download) and even the shmup I never see mentioned anywhere, Star Solder R.

Thanks to several recommendations online, I grabbed the Famicom game Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa. I'm a big fan of Hudson and I've always wanted to play this, however I figured I'd just pick up the actual Famicom cart instead. This is another one of those games that thanks to YouTube, the price for the cart has steadily risen so this just seemed like the logical way to own the game (for now). I already had Ice Climber (my wife's choice) and Super Mario Bros. 3.

I grabbed a few TurboGrafx-16 shmps that sadly I don't own anymore, such as Blazing Lazers and Dead Moon. Again, the US version of the games are getting expensive and so are the PC Engine versions. I'll still pick up physical copies eventually, but for now that was a good $12 spent in my book. I also grabbed Ninja Spirit, a game that I've never played but have always heard good things about. I had a great time running through that game the other night.

I looked at several Neo Geo games as well, but I own an AES console and have an MVS adapter cart and have a pretty good SNK compilation on the PS2. Between the MVS games and the PS2 collection, I am pretty well covered. I do plan on going back and downloading the CD exclusive shmup Iron Clad while I still can.

I know I and many others keep waiting for Nintendo to make some kind of announcement for the Switch, because otherwise there are a lot of great games that will be disappearing very soon. Many of these games aren't available digitally on any other platform so I hope Nintendo works something out before the WiiShop Channel closes for good in January 2019.