50 Fun Facts About Wii

Nintendo's president reportedly used a stack of which household items as his target for the Wii's final size?

Three DVD cases was the reference, and the finished Wii came out only slightly larger than that stack, small enough for the president to hold above his head in one hand on stage.

According to Nintendo, the two lowercase letters in the Wii name were styled to look like what?

Two people side by side is what the pair of i's depicts, and the name was chosen to sound like the word we, signalling a console meant for everyone.

Which South Park boy freezes himself in 2006 rather than wait three weeks for the Wii to go on sale?

Eric Cartman overshoots badly and wakes in the year 2546. Nintendo later played a clip of his pleading for the console at its own E3 2007 press conference.

The Wii's motion-sensing controller won Nintendo which award normally associated with the television industry?

An Emmy for game controller innovation came from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, joining a Golden Joystick on the console's trophy shelf.

Which Wii accessory, placed above or below the television, simply shines infrared light for the Remote to detect?

Sensor Bar is a misnomer: it holds ten infrared LEDs and the Remote does the sensing, which is why a pair of candles can stand in for it.

Which game packed in with most Wii consoles became the system's best-selling title, with over 82 million copies?

Wii Sports was bundled almost everywhere outside Japan and South Korea, and its tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing drew in people who had never touched a video game.

Which Zelda launch game for Wii was flipped into a mirror image so that Link could swing with his right hand?

Twilight Princess stars a left-handed Link, but most players swing the Remote with their right, so the team mirrored the entire world rather than rebuild his model.

Which Hollywood director teamed up with Electronic Arts to create the Wii block-toppling puzzle game Boom Blox?

Steven Spielberg said he wanted a game he could play with his kids, who enjoyed the Wii more than its rival consoles.

After flying Wii Remotes broke televisions in 2006, Nintendo recalled and replaced which part of the controller?

The wrist strap was swapped for a stronger one free of charge after a class action suit, and a silicone jacket was added the next year for a stickier hold.

Before Nintendo announced the name Wii in April 2006, the console was shown to the public under which codename?

Revolution reflected the president's belief that the machine would transform the industry, and it survives in the RVL prefix on every part number.

Which Wii attachment, held in the other hand and wired to the Remote, adds an analog stick and two more buttons?

Nunchuk units take their name from the nunchaku, the chained martial arts weapon that the cabled pair resembles once plugged together.

The Wii Remote sends its button presses and motion data to the console using which wireless technology?

Bluetooth gives the Remote a range of about 30 feet, and because the link is a standard one, hobbyists soon had the controller talking to home computers.

A panel on top of the original Wii hides four controller ports and two memory card slots for which older console?

GameCube discs, pads and memory cards all work on early models, a feature that the later Family Edition and the Mini quietly dropped to cut costs.

Which racing game came bundled with the Wii Wheel, a plastic shell that turns the Remote into a steering wheel?

Mario Kart Wii also added motorbikes to the series for the first time and went on to become the console's second best-selling game.

In Super Mario Galaxy on Wii, which guardian of the cosmos helps Mario from her starship, the Comet Observatory?

Rosalina looks after the star-shaped Lumas, and collecting all 120 stars earns her thanks before she sets off across the universe again.

Which Nintendo hero is transformed into yarn and sent to the fabric world of Patch Land in a 2010 Wii platformer?

Kirby cannot inhale enemies or fly while made of wool, and the game began life starring a character called Prince Fluff before the pink puffball took over.

The Wii Balance Board, sold with Wii Fit, holds a Guinness World Record as the best-selling example of what?

Personal weighing device is the record category: the board sold 32 million units by November 2010, which made a games accessory the world's favourite set of scales.

The Wii's success pushed Sony to launch PlayStation Move and Microsoft to launch which body-tracking camera?

Kinect and its Sony rival arrived in 2010, and Wii sales fell by 21 percent that year once motion control was no longer Nintendo's alone.

Which 2012 Wii successor, built around a touchscreen controller, became Nintendo's worst-selling home console?

Wii U was meant to win back the core gamers who had shunned its predecessor as a casual machine, and it still runs the older console's discs and accessories.

The 2010 Wii remake of GoldenEye 007 swapped Pierce Brosnan's likeness for that of which James Bond actor?

Daniel Craig was the Bond of the day, so the plot was reworked to match the style of his first films, which meant leaving out Q and Miss Moneypenny.

Which Wii fighting game was the first in its series to add outside guests, Solid Snake and Sonic the Hedgehog?

Super Smash Bros. Brawl was announced as a Wii launch game before work on it had begun, which came as a surprise to Masahiro Sakurai, the man then asked to direct it.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii added which power-up that lets Mario throw ice balls and slide across water?

Penguin Suit wearers also get a firmer grip on icy floors, in a game where up to four players can run through each level together.

Which Ubisoft rhythm series kept releasing new Wii editions until 2019, six years after the console was discontinued?

Just Dance began on the Wii in 2009, and the motion-friendly console stayed its home long enough to receive the edition titled 2020.

Which Wii service sold downloadable classics from older systems such as the NES, Super NES and Nintendo 64?

Virtual Console reached beyond Nintendo's own machines too, offering Sega Genesis, TurboGrafx-16, Neo Geo and even Commodore 64 games.

The Wii's Internet Channel was a specially adapted version of which desktop web browser?

Opera for Wii supported Adobe Flash and USB keyboards, turning the living-room television into a web browser shortly after launch.

The Wii's disc slot glows with which colour of light when a message arrives through WiiConnect24?

Blue LEDs around the slot also flash during disc reading, and the service behind the messages kept the console online while it sat in standby.

The Wii's small, minimalist casing drew comparisons at its 2005 unveiling to which Apple product?

iPod comparisons suited Nintendo, which wanted a console small and attractive enough for parents to welcome into the living room.

Which 2011 Zelda adventure for Wii, the first story in the series timeline, requires the MotionPlus add-on?

Skyward Sword tells the origin of Link's legendary blade, and its motion controls proved so troublesome to build that the team nearly discarded them.

The Wii Mini, a stripped-down model in black with a red border, first went on sale exclusively in which country?

Canada got the budget model in December 2012 for CA$99.99, and a Nintendo executive there said the red trim was a nod to that exclusive launch.

Which Nintendo president championed the Wii's broad appeal and held the tiny console aloft in one hand at E3 2005?

Satoru Iwata told his hardware chief to ignore the industry's technology roadmap and build a machine that mothers would welcome.

Which Wii collection of nine minigames sold 28 million copies, largely thanks to the spare Remote bundled with it?

Wii Play gathered the pointer-based tech demos Nintendo had shown at E3, among them a shooting range in the spirit of Duck Hunt and a top-down tank battle.

Which gun-shaped Wii shell, packaged with Link's Crossbow Training, borrowed its name from the NES light gun?

Wii Zapper first went on sale in Japan packed with the arcade shooter Ghost Squad, while other regions got the Zelda spin-off instead.

Wii MotionPlus, the add-on released in 2009, sharpened the Remote's motion tracking by adding which kind of component?

Gyroscopes measure rotation, supplementing the Remote's accelerometer so that a player's movements could be rendered on screen in real time.

Nintendo showed, but never released, a fingertip Wii accessory at E3 2009 that was designed to measure what?

Pulse rate readings were meant to launch a line of wellbeing products, but the device was shelved after tests showed it did not work for every user.

What was the name of the currency used to buy downloadable games on the Wii Shop Channel?

Wii Points came on cards sold in shops or could be bought by credit card, and the ability to add them was withdrawn in March 2018, ahead of the shop's closure.

The Rabbids franchise began with a 2006 party game, released first on Wii, that was a spin-off of which hero's series?

Rayman was first meant to get a conventional fourth platformer, but Ubisoft restarted the project as minigames once Nintendo revealed its motion-controlled console.

The first Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, a 2007 Wii hit uniting rival mascots, was set at which city's Olympics?

Beijing 2008 became the backdrop after Sega won the Olympic licence, and the result was the first licensed crossover to feature characters from both series.

Which Walt Disney character, created before Mickey Mouse, returns as a resentful rival in the Wii game Epic Mickey?

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit belonged to Universal for decades until Disney acquired him in 2006, and the game marks the first time he and Mickey have appeared together.

Shigeru Miyamoto said the Wii might have gone back to the drawing board had which earlier handheld flopped?

The DS had shown that novel controls could attract people who did not usually play, and designers even built a touch-panel Wii prototype before abandoning it.

A ban on foreign-made consoles kept the Wii from officially launching in which country, despite plans for 2008?

China was meant to get the console through Nintendo's local partner iQue, but the two could not meet the requirements for getting around the ban.

The Wii's graphics chip is named Hollywood, while its IBM processor is named after which other entertainment district?

Broadway runs at 729 MHz and descends from the chip in Nintendo's previous machine, which is why the Wii is at most about twice as powerful as its predecessor.

Which Nintendo composer wrote the Wii Menu's channel music, including the much-memed Mii Channel and Wii Shop themes?

Kazumi Totaka's tunes have outlived the hardware, inspiring jazz covers and countless internet memes, and one critic called them the console's longest-lasting legacy.

Which Texas studio made both Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii?

Retro Studios asked for the ape's comeback itself: its president told a Nintendo producer that the team wanted to make a Donkey Kong game after years of Metroid.

Which 2011 fan campaign lobbied to bring Xenoblade Chronicles and two other late Wii games to North America?

Operation Rainfall got its wish despite an initial refusal: Nintendo published one of the three games itself and Xseed Games picked up the other two.

Which ultraviolent Wii brawler by PlatinumGames is drawn in stark monochrome and blood red, in the style of Sin City?

MadWorld was built with Western players in mind, because PlatinumGames doubted that so violent a game could be released in Japan at all.

Wii Speak, a microphone that picks up a whole room's voices, was first supported by which village-life game in 2008?

Animal Crossing: City Folk let everyone in one living room chat with a friend's household, and the device was tuned to filter out the game's own sound from the television.

Which health charity endorsed the Wii with its Healthy Check icon in 2010, after a $1.5 million gift from Nintendo?

American Heart Association approval also covered two active games, though a British Medical Journal study found Wii play no substitute for regular exercise.

The Wii Menu's grid of channels was modelled on which everyday sight?

A row of store TVs, each tuned to a different station, suggested the layout after testing showed that people liked glancing at constantly updated weather and news.

Which free emulator, first released for Windows in 2003, lets Wii games run on computers and Android phones?

Dolphin began as an experimental emulator for Nintendo's previous console, whose development code name it borrows, and it became open-source software in 2008.

Which designer of city-building and life-simulation games called the Wii the only next-gen system he had seen?

Will Wright, the mind behind SimCity and The Sims, praised the console for reaching a completely different demographic rather than merely improving graphics.