Wii Shop Channel: The End of an Era

January 31st, 2019 brought an end to a fascinating chapter in the modern history of Nintendo.

While the majority of the gaming world was busy with the latest console generation or gaming on PC, I was watching a live stream counting down the final moments of the Wii Shop Channel as an active marketplace.

Although it had been quite some time since I had actually booted up the Wii Shop Channel, it definitely felt significant to me as the service came to a close. 

My own Wii had booted up for the last time in 2017, and my Wii U was in storage, so even if I’d had the desire, I was unable to visit those endless pages of haphazardly organized games one last time.

I hadn’t purchased a ton of content over the years; but I’d made a point of downloading every demo I could as the novelty of it all never seemed to wear off.  

Still, as the timer ticked down I was comforted by the thought that I had been able to transfer my WiiWare and Virtual Console (VC) purchases (including my massive demo collection) safely to the Wii U, with a little help from Nintendo tech support. 

As fascinating as the virtual console was, especially for those games that I’d missed the first time around or had stayed in Japan, some of the WiiWare games offered truly unique experiences. More importantly, WiiWare offered us the ability to play games that almost certainly would not have been commercially viable at the time if the only option were to release a physical disc. I think we take this for granted now in an era of digital distribution and minimalist indie games.

One specific category of WiiWare featured remakes of classic games, bringing classic gameplay to a modern system with a significant overhaul to both graphics and gameplay. Updating a classic is a delicate balance between making improvements and staying faithful to the original.

Fortunately, Dr. Mario Online Rx is one such high quality remake.

I downloaded Dr. Mario Online Rx sometime around 2011, after doing some research about the best games available on WiiWare at the time. While Dr. Mario had appeared on both the SNES and N64, I hadn’t touched the game since the days of the NES. What I found did not disappoint. 

Dr. Mario Online Rx was released in North America on May 26th, 2008, and was developed by the Japanese company Arika. While it was their first experience with Dr. Mario, Arika had previously developed numerous versions of Tetris for arcade and consoles. They would go on to make 3 more Dr. Mario games for DSi, Wii U, and 3DS, and most recently developed Tetris 99 for the Nintendo Switch. 

(A recent game against the CPU in WiiU off-tv mode. It was close!)

One of the hardest things to get right and also one of the most difficult things to put your finger on is the way a game feels. Starting with the opening screen and being greeted with the familiar title music immediately conveys the sense that this was an adaptation done right. The music and graphics are crisp; the menus are clean and easy to navigate, and despite the color scheme looking more clinical and white than the original classic on NES, it doesn’t feel like a major departure in a bad way.

There are a few new modes, but the classic gameplay and iconic music are both present and faithfully rendered. All too often it seems like added content to a remake actually takes away from the core mechanic or in some cases changes the game fundamentally.

One of the most poignant examples from that same time period is the battle mode in Mario Kart Wii (MKW). Although it’s a sequel rather than a remake, the core mechanic of Mario Kart is the same. However, the battle mode in MKW forces you into teams, rather than use a free-for-all format.

For me at least, battle royal in Mario Kart 64 was an absolute blast to play, and the fact that there could only be one winner produced temporary and shifting alliances. The forced introduction of teams in MKW meant that any three player experience would be a lopsided 2 on 1, and 4 player mayhem was off the table.

In contrast, MKW also introduced a new optional control scheme where you could hold the remote like a steering wheel. The keyword here being optional. If you didn’t like the change or were just unwilling to try it, the game let you play the way that you wanted to play.

It’s one thing to cut out features because they couldn’t be implemented or the game didn’t have space but when it seems like an option is removed or restricted for no reason it is very frustrating.

Dr. Mario Online Rx introduced a new mode called Virus Buster that utilized the motion controls of the Wii remote. If, for example, this was the only control scheme for the entire game, it would fundamentally change the experience and possibly break the game for lots of players.

There is nothing wrong with this new mode, but it never seemed as much fun to me as the classic mode. Fortunately, classic mode absolutely nails the feel of the original, and even adds two new music selections. While I still think the original themes, Fever and Chill, are timeless and wonderful, Cough and Sneeze are welcome additions for extended play sessions.

The addition of online play was also a welcome feature, and I have fond memories of getting destroyed by a Japanese player the first time I ventured online. Dr. Mario is also one of the only video games I’ve been able to convince my wife to play with me, and her superior sense of spatial reasoning often led her to victory.

While remasters were less innovative than some of the other WiiWare games, they were generally well-received, and Dr. Mario Online Rx is among them.

Unfortunately, many of those games, including Excitebike: World Rally, Bubble Bobble Plus!, and Contra ReBirth, were also WiiWare exclusives. Unless Nintendo plans to start re-releasing them on the Switch, there is no easy way to play them, and any online features will not function. 

I didn’t spend a great deal of time with Dr. Mario Online Rx, and I am sad that it remains as a WW exclusive, but with the Switch continuing to surge in popularity we can hope that some of these gems will make the jump to the current generation.

-Ryan (ShadowDx) Sullivan

Wahoo! You are a Super Reader! But the adventure doesn’t stop here… There’s more of this project in another castle! This article is just one level in an entire Super Mario Multiverse, a galactic collaboration between writers around the world sharing a bit of our hearts and memories about our favorite Mario games. Visit the Center of the Multiverse to see more: