Hi everybody, I'm in my 30's and pretty new to the Wii (somebody gave me one for free). I'm a classic NES and SNES fan; I grew up with both. We got the NES with ROB the Robot for Christmas in 1986 and I've been hooked every since. Up until recently, I've had a really large collection of games (around 300) but I had to get rid of them; They just take up too much space Here's a pic of some of my collection before I sold them all on ebay

I got the Wii for free and I know there's a Wii U out now... but I don't know very much about them. Here are the questions I have:
1) If you lose your hard drive, can you re-download all the games you've purchased? Does the store keep a history of your purchases?
2) How do you back up your games? SD memory card?
3) All the games I buy in the Wii store, will they work on the Wii U? For example, if they're all saved to a memory card and you put the memory card into the Wii U, does it work?
4) Is there a really good wireless controller for the Wii? Something like the SNES controller would be perfect

1. All downloads are tied to the system, I dont know what you mean by lose your hard drive but if something were to happen to the Wii you can send it into Nintendo for repairs and if they have to replace the system they will transfer all the stuff from the broken Wii to a new one.

2. You can save games to the Wii itself or a SD card.

3. Yes you can transfer your stuff from a Wii to a Wii U. Nintendo Life even has a handy transfer guide http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2012/11/wii_to_wii_u_data_tr...

4. The best wireless Wii controller is probably the Control Pad Pro which plugs in a Wiimote. If your Wii has the Gamecube parts than you can use a Wavebird Gamecube controller on some games including most VC games.

its a shame you got rid of your collection, if you still happen to have your little samson, id be interested in it, im going for the world record of little samson cart collecting
and welcome to nl.

The original Wii does not have a hard drive, nor can an external drive be connected to it. It uses internal flash memory. The Wii U is the same, however an external hard drive CAN be connected to it. You'll need to put an SD card in the original Wii for Virtual Console and WiiWare games, as the internal memory fills up very quickly.

Yes, the Wii Shop Channel remembers all of your purchases. Once you've purchased a game, you can download it as many times as you like at no additional charge.

I don't "back up" my games and I don't think you really can back them up. All of the games I've downloaded are on the SD card in my Wii.

Yes, all games you've downloaded on your Wii will work on the Wii U once they've been transfered.

I don't know about any 3rd party controllers, but most of us use Nintendo's own classic controller, which connects to the Wii remote, so technically it's wireless. The Wii remote itself also works great for NES and Master System games. If you turn the Wii remote on it's side, you'll notice it's similar to an NES controller.

Awesome! Thanks for the great responses guys I will be heading to buy an SD memory card and the classic controller. As cool as having the actual carts is, they take up a lot of space. My wife was pretty pissed off because the 300 carts took 2 closets of space @ogo79, here's my semi-rare/rare carts if you wanted to see them
Little Samson, Bubble Bobble 2, Die Hard, Flintstones Surprise at DInosaur Peak, Contra Force, Dragon Warrior 2 - 4, TMNT Tournament Fighters

I just looked up the prices those sell for now and I almost threw up. I wish I held onto them I sold all 300 games for $1200, with the new generation system.

Little Samson is so good. Nice collection!

Since you are a die-hard retro gamer, I think you would love these. If your Wii has the Gamecube ports, you can buy adapters here that let you play VC games with the actual NES and SNES controllers. But just remember, if you upgrade to a Wii U you will lose the ability to use these. http://www.retrousb.com

That would really suck if you had Stadium Events. Look like that one game alone is up to $2500. (and I suppose you know it's just a title variant of a $3 game)
(causing my friend to further tease me when I passed one up years ago for $9 at a GameStop because I thought it had to be a fake rumor that people were willing to pay a grand or more. And I didn't want to be stuck with a game I couldn't even play.)

I'm sorry to say that the excellent Dragon Warrior games you owned are not on the Wii's Virtual Console.
We all share the pain.

It is a shame they only got a Japanese-exclusive Wii disc release.

I've gotten all setup (got the Classic controller and a 16 GB SD card) and I've gotta say this is REALLY cool! My only experience before with the Wii was playing bowling at parties where I was completely drunk The games look and play great! I bought 50 bucks worth of games so far, gonna keep accumulating a collection. I really hope the Dragon Warrior series eventually becomes available Such great games. If I had a wish list (besides the DW series), I'd have to ask Nintendo to release:
-Bionic Commando
-Contra
-Crystalis
-Duck Tales

Definitely did not have Stadium Events! I am a little bit nuts and dumped all my games into a database and pulled prices for each from a price guide website similar to this. I got my money back for sure, but it looks like those rare titles went up in price

@bclifton
thats pretty cool, you should stick around here
the link that brooks83 gave you http://www.retrousb.com is a legit place to do business with, ive ordered there plenty of times. in fact, im waiting on some snes adapters to use on the gamecube gba player

I'll definitely be hanging around here (and possibly ordering stuff from that website)! BTW, do Nintendo staff ever read these forums? Curious if our input matters at all

But yeah, definitely looks like there's a great group of people here Besides playing games a lot, I'm a computer programmer and I've been wrapping up development of a game on Xbox 360 (here's a link to our game, it's basically a Metroidvania style game). I wonder how hard it would be to port this over to Wii or Wii U? I'll have to look into that, but our next stop is Steam (on Windows). I'll check out the WiiWare forums for more info

Well since this is one of the best Nintendo fan made sites I wouldnt be at all surprised if they do read it. I am sure that Nintendo of Europe knows about this site and even maybe pokes around here since one of the former editors from here now works at NoE. However if you wish to contact Nintendo the best way to do that would be contacting Nintendo directly.