Pimp My Wii!

December 23, 2007 1:51 PM

How can I get the most out of my Wii (without mods or hacks)?

I am the lucky owner of a Wii, and while there are still games out there that I am sure I'd enjoy, I'd like to get the most out of the cheap or free content. I enjoy the Mii Channel and Check Mii Out Channel, but the Everybody Votes channel comes across as too simple and boring.

Are there ways to "pimp" a Wii? Customizable features that I wouldn't necessarily know about? I'm wary of a hack or modchip because I share it with my fiancee, and she'd be very upset with me if I bricked it. However, any tricks or websites to know about would be great.

posted by explosion to sports, hobbies, & recreation (6 comments total)

Might I recommend you use the Internet Channel to bookmark WiiCade? It basically takes a bunch of fun and popular flash games and turns them something you can play on your Wii.
posted by miasma at 1:55 PM on December 23, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

If you've got a computer with bluetooth that can talk to the wiimote you can try out some of the incredibly awesome wiimote-tech prototypes.
posted by moift at 2:15 PM on December 23, 2007

You can skin it. I like the NES skin.

Do you have a digital camera with an SD card? The photo app in the Wii can preview and email your photos.

If you plug in a USB keyboard it works with the standard Wii stuff like the messaging app as well as the latest browser. (I use one that came with my PS2 linux kit.)
posted by krisjohn at 2:40 PM on December 23, 2007

Here's another site to bookmark on the Internet Channel: WiiWant2Play -- more Flash games, also some streaming music stuff (internet streams, that is.)

The Virtual Console games (on the Shop channel) can be a lot of fun. New ones are released every Monday. (Come on, come on, Kirby 64, I'm waiting for you!!)

There's also Winamp Remote, if you'd like to stream music from your own computer to the Wii.
posted by tomboko at 6:05 PM on December 23, 2007

Honestly, the best way to get the most out of your Wii is to invite friends over to play. I don't mean that as a snark, but really the fun of that little device comes from almost hitting each other in the face with the controller while trying to play tennis, and such.
posted by davejay at 1:07 PM on December 24, 2007

I cry when I realize that there's no good reason that my Wii won't work like SanDisk's TakeTV product (playing DIVX video from a flash drive), or even a plain old DVD player... no reason except that it won't. Sigh.
posted by onshi at 2:19 PM on December 29, 2007