The Bizarre Nintendo Wii Mini

Right before the Wii U, Nintendo released the Wii Mini. At $100, it was an ultra budget version of the Wii that lacked GameCube backwards compatibility, SD card slot and even Wi-Fi.

[xxnikexx]

To be fair, the lack of a slot loading disc drive means less moving parts. Less moving parts means more reliable and less likely to fail. The lack of Wi Fi isn't that big of a deal since most people play Wii games offline. What's weird is that there's no SD card slot. From what I understand the Wii Mini has 512 MB internal storage for game saves. Is that enough? Either way this is not a bad choice for strictly playing Wii games offline.

[averagejoe_]

I like the opening disc drive more. It’s fun to press the button and it would be easier to repair the disk drive. I also feel like more people would appreciate the disk art.

[platimation]

Funny story, my family had a Wii, soon a storm came through and because we had no surge protector, the Wii sadly would never turn on again. My grandma heard about what happened and bought us a Wii mini for Christmas, we still have it to this day and it’s in mint condition. (Keep in mind the Wii mini had just come out, it wasn’t rare then.)

[Plainapple]

this console would’ve made so much more sense to get if they stripped certain parts of it and kept the sd card slot and the Wi-Fi.

[DicePunk]

Not calling it the Pii Wii is a missed opportunity.

[godz]

I bought this brand new and still have it now. I like how straight forward it is

[devilmikey]

At least in Canada these things dropped to $50 bucks after about 6 months. I bought one because it was 10 bucks cheaper to buy a wii mini, which came with wiimotes, than it was to buy wiimotes alone. I then went and sold the wii mini for 20 bucks without wii motes. Kind of wish I'd kept it now but oh well.

[TFGA_tFoMS]

My grandparents actually have one of these, and it works better than a normal WII, it has less moving parts, the power button and eject button are pretty well placed, and there really is no need for wifi on it. It works really well.

[gagecampbell]

I had the Wii mini and I think its perfectly fine

[crazycomet]

“Have you ever heard of the Wii Mini?”
No I haven’t. And probably for good reason.
“It’s not backwards compatible.”
That’s why I haven’t heard it.

[brutal]

Did you know that since amd aquired ati before the wii mini came out, that the wii mini has amd branding instead of the ati branding seen on other wiis.

[Nabhan]

I love this version, very retro looking and simple. I'm glad I bought one when it was released.

[cajunag]

I always thought they should have called this this “Wee Wii”.

[Jimbob_Offical]

I remember watching Austin’s original video on the Wii mini, it’s actually the first video I watch by him.

[breadD]

I actually have one of these. It was the first console I ever got and I loved playing it with my little brother. Years later I was able to mod it despite the lack of sd card slot, (and wifi). The modding community figured out you can hack it through the Bluetooth feature and the singular USB slot on the back. It's definitely worse than the original but it gets the job done.

[mylespl]

I modded one for my kids to play on with bluebomb and had a huge library of retro games plus game cube and wii games. Great little system.

[crasheffort]

The real reason they stripped out features like the SD and WIFI is to prevent hacking vectors. It took many years to eventually hack it, and it was complicated enough to make hacking it not worthwhile.

[Nodeathnolife]

There have been mods that have restored the cut features, mainly the sd card slot and Wi-Fi

[averytucker]

The irony of it was that you could get a used Wii for the same price. And it was twice as good even when it was heavily used.

[ThePlushShowOfficial]

I had my Wii mini I think in like 2015 I still have that Wii today