The Nintendo Channel

I walked into the living room this morning and was greeted by the eerie pulsating blue filling the room. My first fear was that the Mii channel once again had some stupid contest that theoretically I could win if I were that much of a loser, but those messages had stopped abruptly so long ago. The Wii hardly flashes anymore, so this was peculiar, and I can see why when you are greeted with that light in the morning your first thoughts are not about video games but about aliens...

Anyway, it was the Nintendo Channel update. Nintendo Channel....Oh, I thought, and promptly downloaded the channel that I felt would be about as useful as that voting channel. Really the only useful Channel aside from the Shop channel is the internet, and the only good thing about the internet channel is that it supports a website called Surf the Channel. Look it up, you'll see why that is good.

The Nintendo Channel, in case you've been living under a rock, is your connection to third party games on the Wii, something I feel is still lame, since nothing hopeful has yet to be announced. And no third party thing comes with the launch. But, I am fine with it. The Virtual Console sucked too. I flipped mindlessly through videos of things, vaguely interested in their content and were it not for a World Civilizations II final this afternoon I would have lingered and watched a few. But I was left with a very good impression as Nintendo did something i thought they never would do: A look at what VC games look like.

I am, and I am sure many others are also, annoyed by the fact there are no demos of VC games that are not on SSBB. Xbox LIVE has the market on this covered, providing consumers with demos for their Arcade games, and demos that do provide a decent feel for what the game provides. And any service that allows you to buy games directly on your console should come with the ability to see if that game is shit. It is only fair, but I suppose Nintendo neglects this because many of the games filling up the VC are really, undeniably, horrible games. Any demo of those games would ruin the selling value as kids would probably be less inclined to badger mommy for China Warrior. But I don't think a demo would keep people from demanding shitty games, since I've watched countless people pick up that Conan game.

What Nintendo has done is offer game footage. Anyone with a brain, fingers, and the ability to put you and tube together can do this, but now you can do it through Nintendo. Which is good. I already knew I wanted Pokemon Puzzle League, but it is nice to see James is still in a dress as he stands beside your puzzle grid.

What I am really impressed with though is the DS download service. I've long felt that eventually there would be a DS virtual console, and with the rumors of the DS with internal memory, I felt it was even more of a reality. What better way to fix the fact the DS cannot play older games the old fashioned way than to download them directly? See, cool, damned cool. Though those rumors died a very painful death, but live on in my dreams. Even though the DS download service is a bit empty at the moment, and the DS can really only support demos, it is still a fantastic, and more effective, method of demo distribution. I hate using those download stations in stores. The store I worked in never had the station DS turned on....


Anyway, if you haven't by now, download the Nintendo Channel and go to town. It sucks for the time being, but everything sucks when it first launches. It needs to age, and then it will knock your socks off.