General Category > General Discussion
Component out
JDavis:
The key to telling the new no-GC Wiis from the old backwards compatible Wiis is the writing on the front of the system.
Because the old Wiis were designed to be placed vertically, all the writing is aligned appropriately. The word Wii is a the bottom, Power and Reset are below their respective buttons, and Eject is above its button. If you find these in the box (not likely at this point) they should picture the Wii standing vertically (my launch Wii box only depicts this on one side, while the other side shows only a hand holding the sleeveless Wii Remote).
The newer Wiis do not even come with a stand, so all the writing is designed for the horizontal orientation. Power, Reset, and Eject are above their buttons, while "Wii" has been moved to the left of the reset button.
At this point, the backwards compatible Wii has been out of production for quite a long time. Unless you happen upon a store that for some reason has a back stock of the things from at least last year, you will not find these new.
The vetical/horizontal thing is the key thing to look for when shopping for a used Wii.
And yes, a used, vertical-style Wii and component cables is probably the best way to go for Gamecube games, only lacking GBPlayer support... And with some software modding you can put GBA (and other) emulators onto one fairly easily, anyway.
lcvolt:
my wii is the older version, the one which is retrocompatible, not like the new cheap one that shouldn't exist
sheep2001:
I have 4 Wii's, as i have 3 holiday houses that i rent out, and have furnished each with a Wii. I bought the blue Mario at the London Olympic pack for the newest house which we did up last winter, and was suprised they had done away with the GCN ports - didn't even occur to me that they had removed compatibility altogether (i guess it's obvious now i think about it). I guess it doesn't really matter to me, as my own one is a launch white one - but it still seems like a strange decision for nintendo to have made, as i'm pretty sure the hardware is GCN compatible anyway. It's probably not important to the vast majority of Wii users though, when no new GCN games are being released.
Same can be said for Sony removing PS2 disc compatibility on all but launch PS3's, and yet they are now releasing PS2 games on the PSN store. Obviously emulated, but they could have kept the emulation function within the firmware/kernal. Again, not that important to me, as my PS2 has a hard drive i install my originals onto anyway - but it is a bit of a slap in the face.
Completely off topic, but hey ho! ;D
Superchop:
One thing I didn't like either about removing gcn compatibility is that a lot of games let you use the controller instead of using a wiimote or the classic controller. At least for me I enjoyed using the gcn controller when playing Mario kart. It was a dumb move and even worse is that they didn't even lower the price...so essentially people are getting less for the same price :/
lcvolt:
yeah the ps3 did it real wrong. supposedly to minimize costs. i never owned a ps2 and i wanted to play its games on the ps3, but now i'll have to wait untill hd collection games for the ones i want come out (particularly final fantasy 10, 10 2, and 12.) at least metal gear solid collection exists by now, and FF X is coming out this year (athought no footage or anything has been shown)