The Wii's Least Used Feature | The Golden Bolt

[@TheGoldenBolt]

INSERT DISC 2: A Brief History of Multi-Disc Video Games kzbin.info/www/bejne/b5jTdIyFjs5gf5o *POST-UPLOAD NOTES AND ADDITIONS:* There are a few games I've gotta add to this list, as expected with such a narrow and under-covered topic! But first, a couple folks have commented on me using the word "ROM" to describe the chip on the WiiMote, since ROMs can't have data written to them - some genuinely interested, some snarky as expected. Well, tell that to _EEPROM,_ the chip in question here! EEPROM is a special type of memory that can have data erased and rewritten at the byte-level - similar to flash memory, except that it takes longer to rewrite things byte by byte, and that EEPROM has a longer lifespan than flash memory. You can't actually "write" data to it, since you have to use an electrical charge to reprogram each byte rather than, say, drag and drop a file, which is at least as far as I'd ever understood it why it's referred to as ROM - even though it feels like a misnomer! I had a chunk of script that I cut out before recording, because frankly opening the video with 1-2 minutes of explaining what ROM is vs. EEPROM vs. flash memory and going into the weeds would just make for a fundamentally worse video that people would tune out of quickly, as much as I like digging into that stuff. (Plus, half the comments that tried calling me out on the ROM part would still have left a snarky comment anyway, so hey.) Beyond that, I went in and tested out a handful of the game series in the comments that folks mentioned also possibly used the WiiMote's onboard memory - at some point I have to tweak the thumbnail! I went with 10 to buy myself a bit of headroom knowing that at least a few others had to exist (I already didn't like the thumbnail feeling a bit baitier than my usual style, after all) but it looks like it's closer to 15 as of right now! Other series include: 2010 FIFA World Cup (shoutout to a commenter below for mentioning it in this very thread!), where you could save your dream team to the controller and bring it to a friend's house. Similarly, Inazuma Eleven Strikers let you do the same thing, and I'm guessing that probably means that the Japan-only Strikers sequels also have this functionality. Some of the Wii PES games might also do this (I have to check PES to confirm, however). Petz: Dogs 2 and Petz: Catz 2, which let you transfer your pet to the controller. I have no idea whether there are other Petz games yet, but odds are that any others released on the Wii in the same timespan have the feature since those were pretty close to asset-flips. Mario Party 8 let you save the Miis to your remote for the Extras Zone to play a handful of minigames with your Miis, as did Fortune Street, although Fortune Street let you play in regular gameplay with those Miis rather than just a side mode, and you could customize them with different outfits and gear. I've played Fortune Street at least a few times before so I'm surprised I just missed that option! and lastly there's apparently a Yu-Gi-Oh kart game that exists(?) called Wheelie Breakers that lets you save some data to the WiiMote.

[@huh968]

oh hey, 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa is another game that uses this feature. it allows you to save your zakumi's dream team to the controller and take it with you

[@BBWahoo]

This vid blew up, that's what I like to see.

[@BBWahoo]

I love how the dead space my sims segment is the most replayed

[@adog3129]

thanks for clarifying the rom thing, not knowing was gonna bother me.

[@Monkwrestler]

The EEP stands for "electronically erasable programable" I usually shribnk EEPROM to PROM when enunciating it

[@Mephy.]

I remember using this feature exactly one time when I was 12. My friend and I were so excited when it worked, but we never remembered its existence again lol

[@kamenanew9867]

...what one? Doesn't this video feature a few? Edit, no no it does not lol I'm sleepy

[@erementsuna]

same except i use it for PBR around the age of 15/16.

[@linuskonig7963]

same

[@That0neDud]

I used this to take my miis to my cousin's house and back

[@DDracee]

i used it so others couldn't use my mii rofl

[@TheMinersMax]

I remember this feature saving me time once. My Wii died a few years back and I was so sad that I'd have to recreate all the family miis and funny ones but my young self backed up every mii he liked across like 4 remotes, including all the family miis

[@jdogthegreatone8700]

That’s awesome lol

[@heroslippy6666]

[@bes03c]

That is amazing

[@Gabriel_Cook]

Your younger self was wise.

[@ethancroll8896]

I remember having done the same thing off and on, thinking: If this Wii dies out of nowhere, at least my siblings and I have some-odd iteration of our Miis stored someplace.

[@NathanielBandy]

Oh man I completely forgot you could save Mii's to the remote, I remember reading that in Nintendo Power when I was young but never tried it lol

[@toxic_teaaa7810]

Ain't you-

[@TehLimeRemixer]

NB

[@STICKOMEDIA]

yep its a thing

[@CallMeDoc_]

I used it to have more miis, because I had so many

[@cheddarsunchipsyes8144]

Woahh

[@taylorfrench6722]

Pokémon Rumble speedruns actually utilize this feature since you can save a bunch of strong Pokémon from one save to your WiiMote and import them to a different save. Some Pokémon have traits that give extra speed which, combined with certain moves, can cut the time to beat dungeons by over half. Also cuts down on the grinding since you already have strong Pokémon that can beat all of the tough battles.

[@salvatore_slate]

seems cheap

[@Debbiebabe69]

@@salvatore_slate But not as cheap as when I played through pokemon red/blue 6 times with two gameboys to get 6 Mewtwos for my main game using the gameboy network lead......

[@gfytoby8904]

@@Debbiebabe69 lmaooo

[@apakuamita17]

@@Debbiebabe69 Lmaoo I guess back then you didn't know about the Ditto glitch (around which year was it btw?). Can't blame you tho.

[@selfaware7617]

Only speed runners would think of his

[@vibri_]

I honestly do like the idea of saving some game data to the controller and taking it to a friend's house. Kinda like a more modern version of taking memory cards with you

[@teo2157]

I actually hate this idea ,not through any fault of its own, but because it reminds me to much of FIFAs profile system linked to controllers, which is actually cancer to use on PC

[@IndiBrony]

I remember thinking this would have been an amazing feature back in the days of the Xbox 360. I mean the Dreamcast kinda did it with their VMUs, but once controllers became wireless I thought it was pretty logical to have storage on the controller itself in a day where local multiplayer was still extremely common.

[@Kingboo247]

Fortune Street (released in December 2011, FIVE WHOLE YEARS after the Wii released) used this feature as well. It was used to transfer your custom characters which, while based on your miis, could be equipped with custom outfits, accessories, and even playstyles if you wanted it to be a CPU-controlled character. Like Mysims Racing, this could transfer unlockables, meaning you didn't need your friend to grind to get bone dragon wings so you could put it on your mii in a property-buying board game.

[@walugusgrudenburg3068]

Can't believe anyone would forget about Fortune Street! That game's a classic! (it's seriously the best Monopoly variant I've played to this day btw) (okay literally nobody played the singleplayer, even amongst those who own it.)

[@NotNahtan]

⁠@@walugusgrudenburg3068you have to play single player to unlock the rest of the maps by far one of my favorite wii games, so much so that my family still plays it

[@MatchaFoxx]

Nobody EVER talks about this, but I used it quite a bit as a kid! Mostly for bringing Miis to friends houses or to take my Club Penguin account with me for Club Penguin Game Day! Actually, considering Club Penguin closed down and my original Wii save data was lost, my original Wii Remote is the ONLY way I can legitimately access my original Club Penguin account nowadays. Insanely cool!

[@albinopenguin]

If I remember correctly, Rabbids Go Home (and also the Rabbids channel) had a feature where you could save your customized rabbid inside the wii mote, which was really interesting due to the game treating it as though the rabbid is physically trapped inside the remote.

[@sporeham1674]

Yo?? That's really cool!

[@arekrekas213]

that's honestly one of the funniest concepts ever they even let you beat the rabbid up by vigourously shaking the wii remote

[@ToomanyFrancis]

I used this feature but I don't think I ever actually used the saved Rabbids anywhere other than my own Wii.

[@iamapie13]

I was thinking this feature on modern joycons would be really cool, if joycons had an actually reasonable amount of storage for saves and stuff. But now that I think about it, that could have great potential for game exploits so it makes sense Nintendo abandoned the idea

[@svenmify]

Doesn’t seem that useful since the switch itself is quite portable - so they could just allow data transfers between switches instead (not sure if that’s a thing).

[@swishfish8858]

Flash memory in the already-prohibitively-expensive Joycons, driving the price up even further? No thank you!

[@ABlob]

...Doesn't the portable Ring Con Multitask feature, where you can use the Ring Con while the console is off, imply that the joycon has some amount of storage?

[@LakoIsFun]

The closest thing is the PokeBall Plus storing walk data from Pokemon GO and being able to transfer it to the Switch

[@ShadowFox10587O]

@@swishfish8858 it wouldn't be that expensive for such a tiny capacity. If you're just storing save data you wouldn't need much. It wouldn't really make sense to store anything big like games on a joycon.

[@silverbullet11202]

You couldn't begin to understand how useful that control transfer feature was for Brawl until you've played with friends who were too impatient to watch you spend 2 minutes to reconfigure your controls. And if I recall correctly, I think it also carried over the stats for the profile that layout was tied to.

[@QuestionBlockGaming]

For clarity on the Monster Hunter stuff, it was very much next to useless to even do this because a) the Arena had characters that were already premade and you could select from them based on weapon (and they were likely better and more optimized than what you had unless you played online A LOT) and b) the arena tokens that you could transfer back to your game would only give you gear that was essentially cosmetic; as in it didn't give much in terms of skills or armor. It was basically a flex. If you had MH Tri at the time, it was MUCH more useful to just call your friend on the phone (Use those free nights and weekend minutes!) and arrange an online playdate, especially considering that a majority of the content in that game was actually locked to playing online anyway- a handful of monsters and higher level encounters couldn't be played alone or offline, and playing this weird arena mode certainly wasn't going to make you any progress.

[@dogruler543]

fair to argue that, but, when me and my friends back in the day played mh:tri the reason to play on arena like that was because playing online with no communication wasn't as fun (because we didn't have the wii mic, and didn't have cellphones with headsets at the time) playing a monster hunter game with a wiimote is hard enough, let alone trying to type on one.

[@Zant5976]

@dogruler543 you could plug in a usb keyboard to chat, lol.

[@dogruler543]

@@Zant5976 im like 99% sure i didnt even have a usb keyboard in the house during that time, we had the old port style and a bunch of laptops, had i known that was even a thing i might have done it, but at that time the thought of using a usb keyboard on something that was a console was pretty foreign. i probably thought that i would need the old gamecube controller keyboard to do that.

[@Lutyrannus]

Some of this is incorrect. I'm fairly certain that even if you put your save on your Wii Remote, you would have to use the pre-selected equipment, rather than use your own equipment. All the Wii Remote save transfer does is let you bring home the Arena Coins. Also, the idea that the Arena Coin gear was purely cosmetic is just incorrect. Sure, it's not amazing gear, and there's better gear in the game, but it's not bad at all. You're being very hyperbolic for an audience that would would have no way to discern hyperbole from reality. In fact, I think that the Arena Quests are the best way that they could have implemented local home console multiplayer at all into a Monster Hunter game. Considering that Loc Lac City required connection to an online server, and couldn't work offline (as such preventing Loc Lac City from being playable in local multiplayer), and Moga Village was exclusively designed to be played in single-player, it just makes a lot of sense to allow this to the local multiplayer feature. Obviously none of it was essential, especially since you can play through the Arena Quests online. However, when you consider that this game released for the Wii (every other Monster Hunter game prior to it had been a PlayStation 2 or PSP release), which had a much more casual playerbase and also much less robust online features when compared to many other consoles, and as such the playerbase had less access to online play (since many might not have even had an internet connection), local multiplayer just makes sense as a feature to add. So yes, the save transfer in MH3 is not end-all be all or anything like that, and in fact the vast majority of people who played the game probably never interacted with it. But "next to useless" as a broad statement is, in my opinion, just incorrect, when you consider the breadth of audience that MH3 was meant to have, especially in Japan where Monster Hunter was much more popular, a country with a much higher population density, and where Monster Hunter was *well known* for its local play on the PSP, and actively floundering on the PS2 (which focused on online multiplayer, rather than local). In fact, I would argue that it's a pretty genius way to incorporate local multiplayer into a home console Monster Hunter game, and when you consider 1) the Wii's more casual (and less internet-savvy) playerbase, and 2) the Japanese affinity towards local multiplayer and association of Monster Hunter and local play, the local play Arena Quests make a lot of sense, and being able to bring home the Quest rewards that you get from these Arena Quests just makes them much more rewarding than if you could only do it for fun.

[@Lutyrannus]

@@Zant5976 USB keyboards were much less common here in the States than they are in Japan. In fact, the Japanese version of MH3 has 10-player online hubs, whereas the American version only has 4-player online hubs, exclusively because of the Wii Speak support, which the Japanese version doesn't have. It was primarily designed to be played with a USB keyboard, which people in Japan used much more frequently than western gamers. So it's kind of interesting to see the cultural differences in online play affect design in such a crucial way that they literally lowered the maximum amount of online players in a lobby, exclusively in order to give the western version of the game voice chat instead of just text chat.

[@modulusshift]

Phantasy Star Online had some cross-memory card shenanigans. If you wanted to play with characters from two memory cards, the slot 2 card character could “guest” onto slot 1. I think a memory card could only have one guest? And while you didn’t have to be in a hurry to move it back to the original card, it’d play just fine indefinitely, trying to play that character on the original card would say “hey the guest version isn’t going to be able to come back if you do this” and you’ve effectively split the timelines at that point, they’re separate characters, one of which is clogging up the guest slot.

[@Aasoko]

That's also how it worked on Crystal Chronicles as well, where you could transfer a character to another person's memory card and then transfer back later. You could delete this extra data if you wanted, like say if your friend moved away and you weren't likely to see them in person again, then you could free up that slot to potentially transfer or make another character.

[@Atlessa]

I used this feature quite a bit with a friend and have a correction: up to 3 characters could 'guest' on a memory card. Which makes sense since you could play with up to 4 players locally, and if each player brought their own memcard you needed those 3 guest slots to fill out the roster.

[@Aasoko]

@@Atlessa Ah, yes. That's sounds about right. I only have two siblings, so we didn't really hit the limit.

[@davidmcgill1000]

@@Aasoko Crystal Chronicles truly was the game to try every gimmick. Would be impressed to find any stories of 4 players using their GBAs as controllers and personal maps for their co-op gameplay.

[@baltakatei]

@@modulusshift Yeah, overnight PSO gaming sessions at a friend's house usually involved at least fifteen minutes at the end transferring everyone's characters back to their original memory cards.

[@nitro4769]

I remember that the Wii game "Inazuma eleven strikers" used this feature to allow you to save a team to your controller to play it on another system.

[@tthunder878]

I was thinking that exactly

[@juliannocartagena2007]

The Inazuma Eleven series is REALLY underrated.

[@illford]

@@juliannocartagena2007 all i know about this series is the anime opening. I imagine it's not popular because it's a football game, not a popular sport in the US and in places where it why would you not just play FIFA which has players you know? I'm not saying it's better, i actually dislike FIFA but it does have a very strong appeal. Especially in England where i don't think most FIFA players would even touch an Anime Football game

[@kanchomerocks12]

@@illford Inazuma eleven is actually great, and football is super popular in many European countries. There's a lot more to Inazuma eleven than just football, it's football with superpowers, genetically enhanced kids, demons, aliens... All sorts of crazy shit

[@RSTLegacy]

@@illford well, i know better the inazuma eleven characters than the real life football players, but that may not be the case for most people yeah still inazuma eleven is a good franchise

[@zandershepherd4746]

Wow. I knew about the Wii Remote's internal memory and that you could save Miis to it, but I had no idea it actually worked with games. Awesome to learn!

[@isaac_aren]

I used this quite a few times actually! I brought my Mii to friends' houses to avoid the setup and took some of their miis home with me. I also transfered some Miis to the 3DS

[@NottJoeyOfficial]

I still use my Mii that I made in 2007. I transferred it to 3DS, Wii U, and Switch. I even used them on the Android app that had Mii support and one DS game that has Mii support. I love how Nintendo made sure that Miis could be transferred in some way to every console they made after the Wii that has Miis!

[@saucewizard69]

same!!

[@scottthewaterwarrior]

Same, my Wii still has a bunch of Miis from friends, like Admiral Ackbar!

[@gondothedragon3110]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I could've sworn Rabbids Go Home also had a way to save custom Rabbids to the Wiimote, and even had a separate app just for that that you could install on the Wii home menu. I remember playing the game myself years ago and could've sworn that that was something you could do in it.

[@Super_Pizzaman5]

Same i was looking through the comments to look for this

[@TheGoldenBolt]

I wouldn't be surprised at all - it was such an endeavor searching through different article archives with dead hyperlinks, different old forum posts, looking through a Wii games database, all of that, that I know there are probably a good couple games I missed. I'd be shocked if it's more than two dozen total, but I've been prepared to tweak the number on the thumbnail as time goes on! Lol

[@Miracle7Seven]

There was a mini game where you could see the rabbid inside the Wii mote, and you could swing the remote around and he’d fly and hit the inside walls, was funny back then

[@Miracle7Seven]

They also had some kinda thing for a contest on a Separate channel but the timer was always resetting 😢

[@cericat]

@@TheGoldenBolt hell it's a feature I wish was still in use regularly since with wireless controllers it feels like a good way to enable friends to enjoy couch coop/comp and I'd forgotten Monster Hunter Tri and the Wii generally had it at all. Last console that really seemed to want to lean into it actively was the Sega Dreamcast with the VMU which actually could be used with the arcade versions of a couple of the games even.

[@angeldude101]

If local play was more common than it is now, I would actually love the idea of being able to bring save data from my system to a friend's, and then take any additional records or progress back to my home system. The Wii Remote storage is a perfect way to implement this. The N64 actually had something similar with the Transfer Pak that could be inserted into the controller. It makes the save data more tied to _you_ rather than just the system you happened to be playing it on. Nowadays I'm more likely to play on my own systems, but there's still the matter of multiple devices that one might want to synchronize their saves across, which is usually only possible by storing them online on someone else's server.

[@Joey64YT]

13:00 So Mario Party 5 also used this feature for its Garage mode. The gamemode would let you build and customize a mech that you could use to fight against other mechs. You could transfer up to three additional mechs onto one console useing your freinds memory cards. Yall could then fight against eachother or fight with each other against Bowser and his minions.

[@crazynaut223]

On the topic of GameCube memory cards, Wii games did technically have access to them. The only two I'm aware of are Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn and Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World, which look for save data of their respective predecessors and give you bonuses when starting a new save file. I'm not aware of any game that actually saves data to the memory cards, though, and you could also make the point that Nintendo wouldn't want to lock anything too major behind legacy hardware.

[@JlBUNROCK]

I like how how both of those are jrpgs with the word dawn in the title

[@Soonjai]

There are a handful of Racing Games that can load from 2 Memory cards. Some Gran Turismo games allow both players to load cars from their own Garage to race against each other. The most unique implementation of this was the High Stakes Mode in Need for Speed: High Stakes. Here both player pick a car from their safe file and they race for the virtual pink slips, winner will get the car from the looser, and this meant that is was deleted from the loosers safe file and adder to the file of the winner.

[@TheGoldenBolt]

I totally forgot about High Stakes entirely, wow. That mode was so neat!

[@Zippy_Zolton]

Oh my goodness gracious pink slip races in that form would be even more tearing than mario party LOL

[@sbanner428]

Wow, that is absolutely demonic lol

[@jiaan100]

What about the tighter

[@adinaton_]

One correction, vWii has this functionality. vWii Mii channel has it disabled, but that can be fixed with homebrew. I can only suppose that it was disabled in software on Wii Mini too.

[@remnantknight56]

I believe the game 'Rabbids Go Home' used this feature to save your own custom Rabbid to the Wii Remote, though it has been a long time since I've played it, so my memory might be fuzzy.

[@TheGoldenBolt]

You're not the first I've seen mention it, so I'm guessing you're on the money with this one!

[@tomysshadow]

I knew about this feature - it actually uses Bluetooth, so it was possible to hook up the Wiimote to a PC and transfer Miis onto it using a command line tool. You could get Special Miis (so called "golden pants" Miis) this way. In case you're wondering: you couldn't then transfer them to 3DS. Although the 3DS could transfer Miis from the Wii, Special Miis required a signature on the 3DS, so it could know it was a fake. Also, honourable mention for least used feature goes to the Wii's USB port, which exists solely to allow plugging in a keyboard for use with the Internet Browser channel (EDIT: apparently according to the replies it was used for a lot more stuff that I wasn't aware of, so thanks everyone for pointing that out.) Or possibly the Nintendo Channel's demo feature which could download game demos to your Nintendo DS. Or the Messages feature where you could send notes and photos to friends. The Wii has a lot of barely used features, come to think of it...

[@Octobot_77]

The USB port was used a bit more than that, as it also allowed you to plug in the bases for toys-to-life games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity.

[@MathiasWolfbrok]

Plus at least the Wii messaging system allowed you to gift Wii Shop games to a friend like on Steam (And that is still a missing feature on the Switch)

[@tsvtsvtsv]

@@MathiasWolfbrok wait really?? that's pretty neat actually

[@cosmicjenny4508]

@@Octobot_77I currently have a 128 GB USB stick plugged into my Wii that I use to play downloa- UH I MEAN LEGALLY ACQUIRED BACKUPS.

[@th4tw3irdg1rl]

I used the USB port on the Wii for an Ethernet adapter, because my wifi sucked hard enough it made downloading games and playing online impossible

[@ABlob]

Mario Party 8 used the Mii data feature to let you use Miis saved on the Wii Remote for the game's Extra Zone, without having to go to the Mii Channel. I suppose that counts as another game that used the feature, but probably in the worst way imaginable?

[@newguy371]

Are you sure that used the data on the remote and not the system's mii data? EDIT: Never mind, you're right.

[@ABlob]

@@newguy371 Yeah, it can use both.

[@jummy0]

This feature really came in handy after I lost my original Wii to a shady 3rd-party support site and got a different one back from them (the Wii stopped reading dual-layer discs and Nintendo refused to do anything because it had homebrew). For a long time I assumed the Miis on that system were lost forever, but a decade later I happened to rediscover the Miis saved on one of the remotes. Really made me feel nostalgic.

[@TheXppp1]

I feel this feature would have been used way more if nintendo made the memory in the controller bigger, like maybe 128kbytes instead of kbits

[@tcscomment]

@@TheXppp1 that would've been 8 times larger and somewhat more expensive

[@SmirkyTrick]

Fun Fact: During Development Strongbad's cool game 4 Attractive people, was also planned on incorporating this feature to transfer Strongbad's unlockable outfits to other wii systems. There's even some cut dialogue of Strongbad himself explaining the feature as well. However it got scrapped for unknown reasons, most likely it wasn't a popular feature.

[@cericat]

They may have run into issues with implementation due to the storage limit potentially or being told no by Nintendo even. Really hard to say anything with certainty with niche features unless the devs pop up to comment.

[@eeveemaster5794]

Actually, GameCube memory cards weren’t only usable for GameCube games. While I don’t think there were many uses, you could use your data from your memory card of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance to get stuff for Radiant Dawn.

[@Gabe5748]

Tales of Symphonia 2 also had something like that

[@KyanbuXM]

F Zero AX could also save to your memory card. Mainly for unlocking stuff on GX. As well as saving your progress. And it also might have allowed you to use your custom ship in the arcade game. I found an AX machine at a local arcade years ago before it closed down. Sadly i couldn't try this out. As the slot was broken.

[@phineas81707]

That feature probably deserves a video of its own, if it even has more appearances than this Wiimote reading, although I'm almost certain that a) Fire Emblem has the most extensive system and b) it would only be read-only anyway. To use Wiimote storage with Gamecube cards, you'd need Wii games to be able to write to them.

[@Dairunt1]

I think there was a Naruto game where you could get extra currency by having a save file from the previous game on the GameCube.

[@alpokyar]

bro im so tired i thought the feature was an actual golden bolt and your channel and entirely dedicated to the golden bolt feature

[@TheGoldenBolt]

it should've been called that tbh

[@Aderon]

I remember that one of the things my sister did with this feature is that she loved the 'Petz' games and would bring them over to sleepovers with her friends, and she would *always* save her cats to the wii remote so they could play together with her custom character.

[@NostalgiaNerd777]

mario party 5 had super duel which used the second memory card slot so you can use the mech over there to verse them, it's kind of a tiny feature on the game but it is kinda neat

[@IcyXzavien]

The Wii is such an interesting system, I don’t have too many memories of it since I was 5 when it released. I kinda wished most of the games didn’t poorly utilized motion controls stigmatizing the concept.

[@GELTONZ]

As a motion control fan, I agree. But the problem was that the Wiimote was a bad motion controller even for its time. Nintendo advertised it as something that tracked controller movement but in reality it was basically a Guncon 3 with a Kirby Tilt & Tumble stuck to it. So it's great as a lightgun and decent at detecting gentle tilt, but actual controller swings? Not so hot. The MotionPlus added a proper gyroscope making the tilt sensing much better but it got decalibrated a lot. Thankfully VR has given motion controls a second chance and indie devs are finally doing incredible things with them.

[@diablo.the.cheater]

@@GELTONZ tbh the most useful use for motion controls is VR, VR-less motion controls feel like wannabe vr most of the time, with the exception of gyroscopes to help with shooting or maybe as a way to implement a wireless car wheel. Full on motion controls with swings and what not, truly shine in VR

[@BierBart12]

Did it stigmatize the concept outside of niche online communities at all, though? The reason why Wii Sports was the most sold game in the world for years is that many older people, retirement homes and community/holiday/leisure centers bought it and still heavily use it. Seniors have probably put the most play hours into the game than anyone else, but it's not like younger people don't still play with it. Especially Wii Sports resort and its fairly big online community

[@VistaGrooves]

It’s worth noting at the very least that senior centers and mental hospitals all around me in the US still have wiis. Also as someone who did grow up with a Wii and was old enough to enjoy it, sure the motion plus needed a recalibration every once in a while but to be honest I never had issues once unless I was sitting. Played the entirety of skyward sword standing and it was easily my favorite Zelda until botw/Totk.

[@Wasa8i2]

@@VistaGrooves holy shit i cant believe i found someone with my exact same experience, i was even talking about this the other day: i loved the Wii motion controls, never had an issue with it either unless i was sitting, and Skyward Sword on the Wii is still one of my most favorite games to this day with the motion controls working pretty well! i cant believe someone actually agrees with me on this, normally i hear everyone saying that Skyward Sword played really badly but i never had that issue

[@Deltarious]

Actually used this a few times and it was absolutely awesome and surprised the people who I showed it to. It's the kind of feature that should really 'just be there' to be honest and it felt so natural and immersive to use

[@spaghetto181]

12:39 i don't think they removed the feature from wii remotes, i have two somewhat recent wii remotes(both with remoteplus integrated), and i think i can still save stuff from pokémon battle revolution for example

[@arkdetective]

Both soulcalibur 3 & mortal kombat Armageddon used 2 memory cards so you could fight each other's create-a-characters against each other, much like the robo-ky example you brought up. There's probably more like those examples I'm not thinking of.

[@TheGoldenBolt]

I can't believe I forgot about either of those, considering how ingrained in my mind the character creator stuff in both games was. Good shout!

[@BrennanMorris]

You just brought back a memory of me discovering this feature before going to a friends house, I was so excited when I just plopped my mii onto his console and we went on to play Mario kart.

[@Mystic-Aidan]

Carnival Games Mini golf is honestly one of my favorite games of all times. It’s basically just nostalgia but it was a surprisingly solid golf game. I should really replay it at some point.

[@wookiebear514]

Yes it was a fun game ! One of the few non first party games i definitely dont plan on selling. That one and Boom Blox Bash Party were alot of fun

[@runed0s86]

It's not gone. The feature still works. There was no update that removed it. The feature works on offbrand and wiimotionplus wiimotes too.

[@GNVS300]

I knew about the Mii Transfer feature, I was always curious about the 'Wii Remote' tab in Wii Sports so experimented with it, but then it turned to be a huge advantage when I had to get a new Wii. Shame the Mii's save data couldn't be transferred, though.

[@SamuraiJeff]

I sunk a great many hours into Super Swing Golf’s PC counterpart, Albatross 18, and this video unlocked that memory for me.

[@benamisai-kham5892]

My friend used to take her miis to my house using her remote, it was cool and fun. I don't think I used it because I didnt mind making a new one at my other friends' houses

[@BBall0027]

13:46 A lot of sports games on sixth-generation consoles did allow you to access data in any memory card slot, with Xbox versions of Madden even allowing saves to up to eight memory units (two in each controller) and the hard disk. The closest I can think of to how you described it is in PS2/Xbox-era Maddens where you could export your team from Franchise and play against your friends' exported team.

[@jacobgiron96]

I think the only game I used this feature with the Inazuma Eleven games, you could save your team to play with your friends on another Wii with your own team, it was really cool

[@asaleilani1205]

another game that used this is Petz Cats!! I remember being a kid and discovering this feature, thinking it was the coolest thing ever, but not having any friends to play with lol. I think it just transferred your character over, but I was still amazed haha.

[@theseabass]

Im not sure the bit about Wii games not being able to use Gamecube mempry cards is entirely accurate. Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn was able to detect Path of Radiance saves and would transfer character stats from your first playthrough to the new game. As for Wii games that actually write data to the memory card, these Im not sure exist.

[@segevstormlord3713]

Something I could see this being used for in a more modern, internet-accessible age would be to put your "user ID" and associated password onto your wiimote-equivalent, so your online-stored account can be accessed from any wii-equivalent you're using your wiimote-equivalent with. Basically, think being able to access not just the PlayStation Plus that is associated with the console, but access the stuff that belongs to YOUR PS Plus thing by bringing your game controller with you.

[@lordeilluminati]

the Wii U gamepad is region locked because it is not a Bluetooth device, it is a Wifi 5ghz peripheral. Like routers, it has to function based on the laws of the country it is released, for example, american wifi routers operate on a certain wavelenght, japanese ones operate on different channels and so on. I dont remember about the channels available for 5ghz wifi but for example, american 2,4ghz wifi devices have channels from 1 to 11, japanese ones operate from 1 to 13... The Wii U is kinda like an router, it uses a hidden network to connect to 2 gamepads (this feature wasnt used but it is there).

[@Skylancer727]

I actually used it to move my Miis from my old busted Wii to my new one. My old Wii got stuck reading only Gamecube games but not Wii games and I was 10 so my parents wouldn't really let me rip it open to fix it.

[@greensmithbackup6774]

Inazuma Eleven Strikers (and presumably their two Japanese exclusive sequels) use this feature, it is exactly the same as Pokemon Battle Revolution where you can take your team to a mates house. But I don't blame TGB for missing it as the games did not release in the US.

[@RSTLegacy]

i can confirm, yes, the japanase sequels use this feature too

[@abdelali9279]

Yup I completely forgot about this, and I knew about it because of Smash Brawl, I found it quite interesting because you could save your name, I think records, but also controller setup that for a game compatible with mostly anything you could connect to the Wii it's quite handy, but my friends never cared to try and everytime we got to play on a new Wii we have to take our sweet time configuring our own control schemes, although years later in college I was finally able to try the feature, and yeah, it saved my name and control config into someone's Wii, then I completely forgot about it until now.

[@Diwasho]

Reminds me of how GameCube was capable of some highly advanced type of multisample anti-aliasing but the only games that made use of it are Rogue Squadron 2 and 3. The main console menu used it too I think, but other than that nothing else. That's even more underutilized than this Wiimote internal memory, at least that was supported by 10 games many of which were fairly high profile (I either own or wanted to own at least 6-7 of them).

[@mathieudoucet1446]

Imagine being the developer of this feature and realizing not a single person in the world used it.

[@HarvoSpoon]

i've always wondered why wii sports resort & wii party never had support for miis on the wii remote, especially considering part of the mii's simplicity is so that they could fit 10 in one remote... (at the very least, you can import the wii remote's miis into another console's mii channel and use them in games that way)

[@HarvoSpoon]

(anyway, for anyone wondering... no, miis stored on wiimotes weren't stored as their full graphics & models, but rather as a string of code which the wii & it's games read to set & arrange the mii's parts whenever they appeared)

[@cericat]

@@HarvoSpoon exactly, next to nobody would be trying to transfer a full model, it'll just be stored as a key for the lookup tables. It's not usual for dev teams to do like Bethesda did with Skyrim where every item interaction you've ever made was recorded in the save.

[@SdudyoyO]

I don't know that you asked, but Sonic Adventure 2 Battle allowed you to race Chao between memory cards. Since each Chao Garden is tied to specific Memory Cards, my Cousins and I used to take our Memory cards to each other's houses to race our Chao against each other. I can't remember if Sonic Adventure DX had a similar feature or not, but I also remember being able to chose your Save File from both Memory Cards inserted. Other than SA2 and Animal Crossing however, I can't remember any games that could utilize both Memory Card Slots unless you count transferring files between them, or using the Gamecube Microphone. As far as the Wii Remote's memory, I could have sworn you could save user profiles in Brawl to it, but my memory may be faulty on that one. I used Tri's Character transfer a handful of times when playing Tri at my Cousin's house, but after the two or three times of fighting in that little arena, we lost interest and decided to stick with online play.

[@cericat]

With SA DX yeah it had that feature, though we lost features compared to the DC original where the VMU effectively acted as a Tamagotchi as well, and no MP that I recall on the Windows release and since I don't have a disc drive on this computer can't install to check my copy. A lot of fighters and sports games allowed using memory cards to take your customs and stats around, Monster Rancher allowed for battling your monsters or trades with friends don't remember if it allowed crossbreeding that way it's been 20+ years. I used to race the few friends I had with our personal cars in the Gran Turismo series the same way, no way I wanted to drive a freebie when I could pull out my fine tuned AE86 or my Suzuki Escudo. Though I doubt any of my friends understood my love for that Panda Trueno.

[@tiffanyl2121]

I remember this feature. Im pretty sure the wiiware title my pokemon ranch used this too, to transfer your pokemon to your friends ranch so they can play with your friends pokemon.

[@PJSproductions97]

I had such a well curated list of important miis on my remote. I always brough my own remote to friends' houses!

[@nathankellogg2640]

I didn't even know about this feature because, for some reason, the Wii U version of the Wii Menu Mii Channel removed it.

[@CiCaruana]

Holy shit I haven't thought about Battle Revolution in like a decade, crazy to think there was time when a "Battle Pass" being in a video game didn't make me want to headbutt holes into drywall

[@phineas81707]

I'm actually playing some Battle Revolution now. In-game, the name "Battle Pass" doesn't actually come up that often: Most documentation refers to "Rental" and "Custom" Passes separately, and the two types of pass play so differently that it's helpful to think of them as such yourself. "Battle" Passes is the collective noun for both types (as well as Friend Passes, if you can ever source any in this day and age). ...Come to think of it, the help text on each Colosseum's allowable Battle Passes says "you can bring Custom and Rental Passes", which makes me think Friend Passes might just be trophies usable only in Free Battle. I don't have a Friend Pass unlocked and I'm not sure how I can hack one in (let alone generate one legitimately), so I'm not sure if that's because I don't have any or if they're not allowed, but it's worth mentioning.

[@TrinityShoji]

I recall using this feature exactly once: to take Miis from the home console to my uncle's when we went cross-country to visit for a week. I also remember seeing it in the Pokemon Battle Revolution manual, but never used it because I used my DS for everything and just re-made the passes when I'd play on a friend's Wii

[@AGJelly]

At least one more game that utilized this feature was Petz Catz 2. I'm not sure about the other Petz games, but in that one you could transfer accessories to a friends console. That is if you could find another person with that game. It sold about 370,000 copies, which is honestly more than I thought it did.

[@winterdoggo]

This! I think you could also use it to play minigames with your friend using your character? Not that I ever got to do this, however much I wanted to, because I didn't know anyone else who had the game. The clothing trading always seemed a little pointless to me - they stop you from trading the ones that might let you sequence break the story, and almost every other clothing item is available immediately from the shop, so the only use I could possibly see for this is the clothes unlocked from playing minigames over and over in adventure (which most people did not even know existed).

[@Winter-ut3bb]

I was gonna mention something similar. For some reason I had the fucking Petz monkey game, which I assume sold far less than the cat or dog one. Petz Monkey Madness let you copy a monkey onto your wiimote to give to a friend.

[@cericat]

@@Winter-ut3bb you'd probably be right, one of the cool features of the early Petz games on PC was you could if you owned Dogz and Catz was have both in the same game, at this point the series much like the controller save feature is long dead. Funny bit of trivia with the series though one of the original developers was a guy (Rob Fulop) who worked on Night Trap, he specifically wanted to work on something very different.

[@mystman1210]

If it wasn't for the super small memory restrictions I think there's a good chance Animal Crossing: City Folk would have used this feature, because it actually has a very similar feature that relied on using a DS. It was called the DS Suitcase and you could use download play on a DS to essentially download your character and inventory. Then you could bring it to a friend's house and upload the character from the DS, do whatever it is you wanted to do, and then redownload your character and inventory to the DS. Once back home you would upload the data back to your save. In theory this could have also worked with the Wii remote storage, but I guess it couldn't hold enough data.

[@ndxdirectorscut]

I'm pretty sure Inazuma Eleven Go Strikers 2013 (and by extent 2012 Xtreme and the original) had functionality for wii remote saving The game is based on the anime and in the campaign you build your own team using characters from it, if I remember correctly the game lets you save that team to your Wii Remote to use in the vs mode (so you can battle your friend's team at their house)

[@jay-games]

i can confirm that the saving miis to wiimote feature does work on the later versions of the wii! my wii is from december 2012 (the last line of wiis before the wii mini), and i actually semi-recently used this feature to bring some miis to a friend's wii

[@artur24able]

A 16min video? What a heresy.

[@cryptoneo]

Great video, I laughed really hard at the slight break in professionalism at @15:23, lol; I like when that happens. I didn't even know Wii's had this feature, but damn, 4kb is not a lot of space so I can kinda see why it didn't get utilized much

[@HassaelMartinez]

15:24 solely because of WHAT

[@KK-mo9df]

You heard him.

[@floralpoboop]

It was used so little that documentation for this was minimized for the next system that came after so dev;s didn't even know about it unless they studied the controller more, but with that next system controller support for so many controllers took priority, and that gamepad made things complicated.

[@BurningmonkeyGTR]

I think I might have a game with this functionality that you missed, specifically Worms: A Space Oddity. I might be misremembering, but I think it allowed you to save your team

[@cericat]

Not sure myself, that's literally the only Worms game I don't own didn't even know it existed until now. It would definitely make sense if like some of the other releases it allowed for customising voice, names, some weapon unlocks, etc.

[@BurningmonkeyGTR]

@@cericat I got it on release week

[@ThatGirlMisty]

The bit about making your Mii from scratch at every friend's house cracked me up because we used to make such weird Miis every time, my favorite that I made was a really tall and excessively skinny Asian guy with long hair and red tinted sunglasses and I named him Benadryl.

[@c0mpu73rguy]

I remember using this feature for the miis but also completely forgot about it. That’s nuts!

[@NullWes10]

wow this was a rabbit hole and a half, wikipedia only mentioned 7 games, I can't believe theres more than double that. is it possible there's even more games that just haven't been tested? great video

[@saliso470]

Or the IR-Sensor on the right Joycon. The only time I've seen it is in Ringfit to get my heart rate. Actually kinda weird since amiibos are scanned with the right one as well and the home button is also on it. Makes the left one useless in comparison.

[@Phos9]

For loading data from multiple cards, the game that springs to mind for me is Powerstone 2’s ability to load a separate file that would cause VMU shaped chests to appear in game that only you could open

[@dip.918]

"I'll buy you the Battle Pass, Miles."

[@robswc]

Hey man! I remember you were grinding out content a couple years ago in the new tubers discord. Just wanted to say I got recommended this video out of nowhere so it seems you’ve been doing a good job! Really inspiring!

[@Sasha_wolters]

Mom the golden bolt uploaded give me your phone

[@xshme]

If i remember correctly Inazuma 11 Strikers used this feature. In the game you could make your own team and put it on the wiimote to bring it to a friends house and use your team vs theirs.

[@Robbie06261995]

I definitely saved my miis to my wii remote a few times to bring to other consoles.

[@New3dsXL69]

The game "Beyblade metal fusion battle fortress" had a feature called "porta-bey" and it let you download Beyblade part combinations to the wii remote to use on a different console, I think it can only be used in the multiplayer modes and not the story mode.

[@janick8262]

Great video. The lack of documantation about what games use that feature reminds me of the thumbstick for the DS. I really would like to know which games support it., besides Metroid Prime Hunters and Mario 64 DS

[@TheGoldenBolt]

Fuck, now I've got another video to maybe make one day. I'll blame (credit) you if it happens

[@janick8262]

​@@TheGoldenBoltUh great. I think Rayman DS and the Call of Duty Games also work with the thumbstick, but I never tried them.

[@cericat]

You're just reminding me of the small number of games that were released for the DS that worked with GBA games/peripherals as well ie the Boktai games that worked with Lunar Knights (a sequel). Also the fun of trying to play the Spectrobe games on anything but a standard DS as the stencils for rare Spectrobes was the wrong sizefor the lite, DSi, and 3DS.

[@helloperson1235]

M8, when u mentioned my sims, you brought back a bunch of memories of me and my sisters playing that game and it made me cry a little bit.

[@playbossthebest936]

There's an even more rare feature: not using motion controls

[@ToaderTheToad]

Wii Chess

[@akirafuudou2037]

What would be the point of not using the motion controls on a console where motion controls were incentivized and the primary purpose for using the controller? At that point, don't even bother playing the console.

[@playbossthebest936]

@@akirafuudou2037 it was just a joke mocking games which shoehorn motion controls when they aren't needed, that's all

[@Tottosmile]

I remember my dad told me about this feature, specifically for miis. I don't remember ever using it so it's been a while since I thought about it. He had big ambitions for our wii - he bought two of those wii video chat devices, one for us and one for a good friend. We still have it lying around and I always have a chuckle when I see it!

[@itswoahfoxy]

I own 2 wiis and I never knew this feature existed 😂 very cool video!

[@AURAxSTAR]

god i love videos on incredibly specific things i didn't know existed

[@RaspbrylZ]

Say what you like Super Swing / Pangya was a friggen amazing fantasy golf series and I really hope it manages to come back somehow... that isn't the still fun but sketchy mobile game they shut down a few years ago.

[@MattHedgern]

iirc How To Train Your Dragon on Wii was compatible with the functionality, you could port over your custom dragons to use them in battles at a friend's house.

[@sourskittles4187]

0:14 among us

[@Haffey.z64]

No

[@Dakkusu]

If you mod your Wii U, you can bypass the Gamepad region unlock (as well as any other region lock). That will definitely help make potential future buys less annoying.

[@CalebHenson]

This shit look like the battle pass

[@bobobombastisch]

iirc Rabbids Go Home (November 1, 2009) had customizable Rabbids you could save on your remote was kinda fitting considering your rabbid itself was customized inside your remote you could shake the remote around while in that menu and make it hit all the walls they even used the speakers in the remote for that As a kid i never felt safe to try out saving any data to it since the game warned me it would overwrite any data on the remote and i wasnt sure that i had any data on it already + thought that included the remote OS on it

[@JediMastr80]

13:12 - I think it's the system data is loaded from the 1st card, but you can load character profiles with Timesplitters: Future Perfect from either card. I remember playing this on GameCube with 3 friends at Lan party during high school and when I had like 4 or 5 profiles saved. It wouldn't make sense to limit just loading 2 profiles when the game could have 4 player splitscreen multiplayer. You might be thinking loading only 2 profiles for the campaign-coop, which was limited to 2 players I think. Sidenote: Timesplitters: Future Perfect was one of the few games on GameCube that I ALMOST got 100% on. Last I checked, my player profile progress was at like 99% complete. I know what I still need to do, beat the 2nd to last level in coop on hard mode, but I couldn't do it. That level is very difficult and didn't have a friend skilled enough to help me do it. It's the one where you go back to the future and protect your other self that has the time crystals from a distance.

[@honglulimbuscompany]

Fun Fact: Super Swing Golf is a localized version of Pangya, JP and KR versions use the Pangya title. Pangya is a MMO golf game where like Bolt said, is a stat-building game. Brought to you by an autstic person who loves obscure media!!

[@robinkock9435]

We used this when I was a kid, we were collecting cool miis and this is how we would share them.

[@SuperCaleb283]

Makes me nostalgic for Dreamcast VMUs again. I'd love to see another controller do something to that extent, but I feel like we're more likely to see Nintendo expand on their companion app for phones.

[@cericat]

Honestly I talk about this occasionally with a friend of mine, having small storage on controllers for people that actually still play with friends in this post memory card era makes a lot of sense. Especially for players with specialised controller setups due to their accessibility needs allowing their mapping to be always there just makes sense to me.

[@guyamlegend]

I only knew about the Mii functionality but it still blew my mind coming from the era of memory cards and battery saves.

[@racinracerxp8645]

If I remember correctly, the raving rabbits franchise had a couple iterations but the one on Wii and DS both had a feature where you can make your own rabbit with outfits and such and the one on the wii allowed you to save these rabbits to your Wii remote so I guess that's another use of it.

[@sourenergydrink]

One game I have which I know had this feature is a Carnival Mini Golf game (Which I didn't think was going to be shown tbh)

[@Gazer01]

Inazuma Eleven Strikers also used this wiimote save feature. It would allow you to save your custom football team, with each teams different movesets, player, uniform and emblem. Used it a lot to surprise my friends when playing at their their places.