What is the Wii SD card slot for?

[82-T/A]

Probably a stupid question, I have to assume it's so I can load Wii games. I haven't kept up with the Wii since the N64, and never had a Game Cube. My wife bought a Wii like... I dunno 12 years ago or something? My wife and daughter play it all the time (Wii resort), but it occured to me I always see that SD card slot.

 

Can I just load ROMs on there and have at it? Or is that simply just too obvious and stupid? Did they sell games on SD card? I seem to recall Nintendo DS games were on an SD card (never had one).

 

Thanks!

[Atariboy]

You'd have to install the Homebrew Channel if you want to install homebrew emulators and roms. So it's not quite as plug and play as it sounds like you're hoping, but apparently it's an easy enough thing to do with a low risk of bricking your system. But if you get into that scene, chances are you'll switch over to an external USB HDD for the increased capacity.

 

The primary official purpose of the SD slot initially was for manually copying over downloaded Virtual Console and WiiWare games (from the soon to be closed Wii Shop) for storage if you were running low with your internal memory, as well as photographs and mp3's for the Photo Channel. No game related content could be directly reached without copying it back over to the Wii's own internal 512 MB of memory.

 

Later on Nintendo patched the OS and added the ability to actually play Virtual Console/WiiWare games stored on the SD card. They're essentially automatically copied to the Wii's internal storage when you hit play without the tedium of manually doing it yourself. The copying process is almost instant for something like a NES game or can take upwards of 10 seconds if it's a larger WiiWare game.

 

Some games even had downloadable content like Rock Band. I assume you could store these files on the SD card if you wanted, but I never owned a Wii game with legitimate DLC. Just things like Mega Man 9/10 where the DLC is baked-in and all you're downloading is a 1 MB or so unlock code to grant access.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Atariboy

[Flojomojo]

Virtual Console games were tiny. You could fit lots on a 2GB card.

 

You could also use it to look at photos.

 

Seems like long ago that this was a "cool" feature -- like more than the 12 years it actually was.

[+sramirez2008]

You'd have to install the Homebrew Channel if you want to install homebrew emulators and roms. So it's not quite as plug and play as it sounds like you're hoping, but apparently it's an easy enough thing to do with a low risk of bricking your system. But if you get into that scene, chances are you'll switch over to an external USB HDD for the increased capacity.

 

 

This! I found all the necessary info on the WiiBrew Wiki page. Atatiboy is correct, it's not plug and play, but I was able to successfully get everything up and running, so you should be able to do so too.

[Video]

For sd cards obviously!

 

Sorry, just some jackassery I had to post. The above posters already covered it. Can you back up game saves to sd?

[Atariboy]

You can backup game saves to the SD card and even load them up on another Wii.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Atariboy

[Video]

Cool, never tried. Thanks.

[TDIRunner]

You can actually store your downloaded Virtual Console games on the SD card and boot them from the card (they will only work on the console they were downloaded for). This means that, if you really wanted to, you could put one Virtual Console game on one SD card and have a physical collection of VC games of sorts. The cost would add up, and it would not be very efficient with the small sizes of VC games, but some people really enjoy their physical games.