Retro Nostalgia In The Feels: Unboxing my Late-Dad's Nintendo Wii

In this personal episode, we take a deep dive into an object that holds a tremendous amount of meaning for me: the black Nintendo Wii that belonged to my late father. My dad passed away in 2019, and after his passing, my stepmother graciously gave me his console. So let's take a look at some Retro Nostalgia that may hit you In The Feels as we get to Unboxing my Late-Dad's Nintendo Wii.

The launch of the Nintendo Wii in November 2006 was a monumental event for me personally. 2006 was a tumultuous year, and the successor to the Nintendo GameCube was something I needed, and it was the very first system I got on launch day.

Like many people during the holiday season, I took my shiny new console to various get-togethers. I distinctly remember hooking it up at my brother’s house, where my family all gathered around the television. Wii Sports bowling matches were a smash hit! The laughter and the sheer fun of watching everyone from 20-somethings to retirees flailing their arms around was infectious.

My dad, apparently, couldn't stop talking about it. For a couple of years, he kept mentioning to my stepmom how much he enjoyed playing and how much he wanted one of his own. In 2013, she finally broke down and bought him a Wii combo pack.

The bundle my stepmother purchased was fantastic for a casual player. It included copies of both Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. Crucially, because it came with Wii Sports Resort, the package included a Wii Remote that featured Wii Motion Plus technology integrated directly into the controller itself. I know my dad wouldn't have had the patience to screw around with the original Motion Plus dongle accessory, so this built-in feature made the experience seamless right out of the box.

Upon examination, this is a fairly standard black Nintendo Wii. When I navigated to the system menu, I was still able to see storage locations for GameCube data, even though Nintendo removed the GameCube controller ports and the GameCube memory card ports from the top of the unit. It seems Nintendo opted for a cheaper solution by not creating separate firmware revisions to reflect the hardware changes.

Diving into the System Memory: Six Games Played
My dad was not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. Because of this, I was incredibly curious to see what, if any, play records this console held.

Diving into the system memory provided a surprising, yet expected, answer: they had played this thing a grand total of six times. Five of those times were dedicated to Wii Sports, and one time was a hunting game. The fact that he never tried Wii Sports Resort or any other titles shows that his interest was limited. It doesn't surprise me that his long-term interest was minimal, but I am still slightly taken aback by how little he actually used it!

The Setup: RetroTINK 5X and Modern Video
I disconnected my own launch-day Nintendo Wii and put my dad's system in its place. I ran his console through my RetroTINK 5X Pro scaler, utilizing OEM Nintendo component video cables.

I ran into a small technical snag during filming where the aspect ratio seemed to be locked at 4x3, but I adjusted things to get a proper, clean 16x9 aspect ratio—the way the system was meant to be seen!

The entire mechanical mechanism of the console is running smoothly. The rollers for the disk drive feel perfect, and when I put in New Super Mario Bros. Wii the experience was seamless. The only thing that was truly "no bueno" was the state of the rechargeable battery packs my stepmother had purchased for the Wii Remotes. They were never used, but upon looking at them in the package, they had leaked and corroded all over the place. That was something I had to safely dispose of immediately!

A Legacy of Fun and Memories
It's hard to believe that the Wii has been out for nearly two decades at this point. It’ll be nineteen Christmases since we all gathered around my brother’s television to enjoy Wii Bowling as a family. I firmly believe that the Nintendo Wii did more to bring people together than any other console released in that generation. It made people pick up a controller who would have never otherwise done so, simply to have a great time and share a laugh.

I am eternally grateful for Nintendo going off the beaten path and doing something so different with the Nintendo Wii. In this case, different was absolutely better. It didn't need to be the most powerful; it didn't need the best graphics. Its success lay in its ability to bring people together to create lasting memories and have pure, unadulterated fun.

And now, almost 20 years later, with the console in my permanent collection after having lost both my parents, this little black box will forever hold a profoundly special and honored place.

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