Posts Tagged ‘Freeloader’

The Wii 4.0 software update was recently released. I held off on installing it because my Wi-Fi connection is a pain to set up, but having heard a lot of good things online I plugged in the Nintendo USB Wi-Fi connector and (after reinstalling the Nintendo drivers twice) got it up and running.

One SD card icon.

Upon restarting the Wii initial impressions were good. There were the usual media and internet improvements, but bar a quick look at the internet channel to test them I probably won’t be using them again. More striking was the improved SD card support with inclusion of a new icon in the bottom left corner of the Wii channel screen. Clicking this takes you to a new SD card channel where you can launch games directly from the card (but not access save data). A huge advance over the previous card support which required you to juggle data between the card and Wii’s internal memory once you exceeded the 512MB capacity. This change addresses once of the primary issue gamers had with the system (its lack of storage) and allows the possibility of more complete integration of DLC for games.

Also to help with the memory issues the update has managed to increase the maximum supported capacity of SD card. From a previous cap of 2GB the SD card slot now supports up to 32GB. Considering that the average size of downloadable content for Wii is smaller than most of its peers (and the fact that they don’t require patches/updates) 32GB seems more than enough. It also adds the interesting question of how this new 32GB limit was reached. With a software patch raising the limit maybe even this is merely an arbitrary amount, not a hardware limitation, so can be raised further in the future.

The new Freeloader screen...

Nintendo has addressed hardcore gamer’s main complaint in this update, but behind the scenes they screwed them. It’s strange that when publicising feature sets, things like ‘We managed to patch out the functionality of your freeloader disk which allows you to play the majority of games you like’ never make the list. I have been a Nintendo defender for some time; though I felt their insistence on continuing to region lock their hardware this generation was slightly draconian, I understood their reasoning no matter how much it complicated my life as an English speaker in Japan. But the Nintendo region lock is something which has always been quickly and ‘legally’ circumnavigated on previous console generations. It always felt like an unspoken promise, a concession to fans, to allow games that would never be released to the West to still find a way over. But it seems that that promise is broken, and system updates seem to be the way of making sure that it remains so.

There is a chance the removal of import support was accident in the update. Perhaps an altered file name making my boot disk incompatible, as opposed to an outright attempt by Nintendo to cripple my ability to play local (Japanese) games on my US system. The result is the same however. Though the extra functionality of 4.0 is welcome, had I known installing it would have prevented my enjoyment of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom I would not have bothered. After all what’s more of an annoyance – having to juggle games I rarely play between storage media or not being able to play a game I actually enjoy?