Top 10 things to do with your Wii while you’re waiting for AAA games.

[E7ernal]

Well, it’s been about 6 months since the Wii’s launch. I’ve already played through the few AAA games that have been released, and now the Wii’s been getting a little stale. There are a ton of great games in the pipeline, but those aren’t coming for a few months. What am I going to do with my system until that time comes?

I’ve complied a list of 10 things you can use your Wii for until Smash Brothers Brawl hits us across the face this fall.

1. Play Free Flash Games
There are a few web sites out there devoted specifically to providing links to flash games that work well on the Wii, some of the sites even feature news RSS feeds and such. Here are some links to a few Wii flash game web sites.

WiiPlayable
WiiCade
miiboard

2. Watch Streaming Video
While you can just head over to YouTube and check out videos there, there are again, many sites dedicated to the Wii’s Opera browser and streaming videos.

Wiitube
StumbleVideo
sofaTube

3. Play the past top 25 Gamecube games
Despite it’s lower market share and small size, the Nintendo GameCube has a TON of great games that a lot of people missed out on. Check out IGN’s list of the top 25 games on the little system.

4. Play older classic games
The Wii has something the other systems don’t- a huge back library of classic games waiting for people to download (and pay cash for). Although some people think the Wii’s Shop Channel is a little pricey, some of these classics are wroth the admission. There are a ton of games from the NES, SNES, TubroGraphix, and Genesis, with more to be released every Monday morning in the North America and Friday’s in Europe.

5. Create celebrity Mii’s
I think I’ve had more fun creating Mii’s that didn’t look like myself, but looked like characters I saw in Movies and TV shows. Then I stumbled upon this little gem of a web site that has a TON of celebrity Miis including Master Chief, Samus, Sponge Bob, Storm Troopers, R2D2, and the classic Chuck Norris!

6. Use it as a portable presentation system
There are a few things that make the Wii great for doing presentations if you don’t have a laptop. It’s very portable and easy to hook up to a projector, it has a wireless remote and pointer, and an SD card slot. Most presentation software, like Keynote and PowerPoint, have the ability to export your slides as JPEG images. Dump those slides onto an SD card, launch the Wii’s Photo Channel and you’re good to go!

7. Use the free channels
Almost everyday I turn on my Wii. Lately, it hasn’t been for games, but the great little FREE channels that Nintendo has been releasing over the months. I usually start by checking out the weather from around the world on the Weather Channel, then hop over to the News Channel and check out the headlines, then lastly hop into the Everybody Votes Channel to give me opinion on some weird, but fun polls. It’s entertaining for a few minutes, and heck, some of the information that you get is actually worth it!

8. Use it as a free streaming media server
Orb is a piece of software that allows you to stream your media from your PC to any web browser (including the Wii’s Opera browser). Check it out, it’s free and works pretty well.

9. Loose weight and have fun doing it
There have been a lot of articles popping up online about people using the wii to loose weight. Simple poop in your copy of Wii Sports and do a few rounds of boxing and you’ll see how it’s possible. Maybe Nintendo will release an official exercise game in the future that’s more focused on weight loss, rather than using the sports titles for it.

10. E-mail yourself reminders
You can setup yourself as a friend on your wii via an email address. This makes it possible to email your Wii- complete with photos. The nice thing about this is, the Wii has a bright blue light that pulsates when you have a new message. The light is VERY hard to miss and forget about so it easily reminds you to check your messages. Violla! 21st century reminder system!

If you have any other ideas please feel free to post them in the comments for other users to see. Hopefully this will keep people using their Wii, while we all wait for the next AAA title to be released.

http://www.bagunk.com/blog/?p=104

 

[Byuakuya]

Nicely done. Keep up the good work.

 

[BrentNewhall]

Very nice. I, too, hop on my Wii every day or two to check weather, news, and Everybody Votes.

For what it's worth, the site with celebrity Miis is miiandme.com.

Unfortunately, Orb is PC-only. Does anyone know of a Mac alternative?

 

[adf3424sdff]

Good find ! I knew most of those though.
lee

 

[CantGetAWii]

And I also knew some of these, but still good to read. Good work!