Connecting an external hard drive to your Wii to backup and play your games is a simple way to keep expensive discs out of harms way, decrease game load times, and organize your collection with swanky cover art. Here's how it works.
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I posted to delicious.com
How to Back Up and Play Your Wii Games from an External Hard Drive
http://lifehacker.com/5518518/how-to-back-up-and-play-your-wii-games-from-an-external-hard-drive
April 16 2010, 10:20am
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I posted to mademistakes.tumblr.com
Super Mario is a lot harder than I remember… or have my...
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/mmistakeslog/~3/gJUPo6trjls/247925216
Super Mario is a lot harder than I remember… or have my skills just deteriorated over the years? Sort of crazy to think that Super Mario Bros. 3 came out almost 20 years ago. Crap I’m getting old…
- Tags:
- wii
- video games
- Super Mario
November 17 2009, 6:42pm
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I posted to flickr.com
Frog outside my house
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_knows/3258495947/
- Tags:
- animalcrossing
- nintendo
- dharma
- snow
- flower
- frog
- videogame
- lamer
- jacobsladder
- wii
- cityfolk
- accf
February 6 2009, 3:48pm
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I posted to flickr.com
Frog suiting in the City
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_knows/3259326350/
February 6 2009, 3:48pm
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I posted to flickr.com
Chilling with some dinos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_knows/3258495801/
February 6 2009, 3:48pm
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I posted to flickr.com
WHAT!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_knows/3211110595/
January 19 2009, 10:55pm
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I posted to flickr.com
Hah!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_knows/3211956614/
January 19 2009, 10:55pm
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I posted to mademistakes.com
Those City Folk in Animal Crossing still love the gossip [34]
http://mademistakes.com/blog/those-city-folk-in-animal-crossing-still-love-the-gossip
Some things get better and some things don’t change. Going in I knew Animal Crossing: City Folk (for the Nintendo Wii) would be remaining mostly unchanged from it’s predecessor AC: Wild World. But frankly I didn’t care and wanted to try it out for myself even after reading a few lackluster reviews online (I’m a dork like that). What really surprised me after playing for a few hours was how it was able to hook me once again. Which is pretty admirable seeing how it’s the same damn game I’ve played TWICE before!
The Animal Crossing series has always been able to take boring tasks like paying a mortgage, picking weeds, making deliveries, planting flowers and trees, cleaning up trash, fishing, digging up fossils, catching bugs…and transform them into fun. The charm of the game is its ability to introduce new ‘carrots’ along the way that encourage you to play the game more. An example of one of these carrots would be paying off your first mortgage which is followed by Nook informing you that in a day you’ll have a bigger house. This drives you to visit your town the following day only to see that you have a new mortgage obligation and even more empty space in a house that needs filling. Repeating a few more times until you’ve paid off your final mortgage and have a flag proudly displayed outside your house.
None of this should be news to veteran Animal Crossing fans. What follows are some of the additions and changes to the series that have for the most part won me over.
How You Play:
In the Gamecube and DS versions, time traveling (or TT) was frowned upon. If you forgot to save before turning off your game or if you changed the internal clock, Resetti would popup and drone on about the ill effects of not saving properly. TT’ing was mostly used to make money quick with the drawback of having a ton of weeds and bugs in your house to deal with after.
In City Folk I’ve been known to TT a day or so to catch events I missed. This time around Resetti doesn’t bug you and the game itself makes it easy to change the time before entering your town. If you TT your turnips will wilt, you will get weeds, you can’t gain interest (unless you change the Wii’s clock in the system settings), and town folk may leave. But used in moderation I see no problem with going back a few hours so you can enter Nook’s or catch missed visitors.
A cool addition is the ability to import your character from Animal Crossing: Wild World. Everything you obtained in your catalog makes the move (with the exception of some rare items). You don’t bring over the physical items, house expansions, or accumulated bells. But you can re-purchase any of these items from Nook by asking to see your item catalog.
Additionally you can take your character to a friend’s town through a process called DS Suitcase. The game essentially saves your character to a DS allowing you to go to a friend’s town, mess around, earn bells/trade items/etc, save back to your DS, and then return to your town back home. Pretty handy if you don’t have an Internet connection to visit a friend via Nintendo WFC and want to nab some foreign fruit.
At first I thought you could transfer your save from the Wii to a SD card and visit this way (similar to the Gamecube game). But sadly you can’t since the save is locked to your console. Although if you installed the Homebrew Channel there are tools that let you transfer it and then edit your town data on a PC. Browsing around on Youtube I found a ton of crazy looking towns and glitches going on. While it might be fun to tinker with your town, I don’t really see the point if you want to get the most enjoyment out of Animal Crossing. Getting rich quick and having all the rare stuff sort of defeats the purpose of playing the game. Meh…
The Town Stuff:
For the most part everything functions and looks like it did in Wild World. The exceptions being you can now have a fountain, windmill (helps with perfect town status), or lighthouse (helps bring in rare fish) built by donating enough bells to the town fund.
I like how you can still customize the gate’s flag and place patterns on the ground, to do some really creative paths and textures. Pattern making has been enhanced allowing you to create what are called Pro Designs. Now you can design clothing and work on the front, back, and sides independently to do elaborate and realistic costumes.
What I don’t like is how your house expands. Instead of building rooms off of the house like in Wild World, you get additional floors. I suppose it’s nice to have a basement again but having a kitchen on the second floor doesn’t really make a whole heck of sense does it?
Another small change is the floating balloons that appear randomly during the day. In WW they floated above the horizon and were easier to spot upon hearing the wind sound effect. In City Folk they hover directly above you and a shadow can be seen on the ground. Cool.
A feature I thought was cool at first has caused quite the uproar in the AC community. Walking the same route daily will wear the grass or snow away, leaving a dirt path in it’s wake. The effects aren’t obvious until you quit for the day, but the ground does wear away and look like sand. The developers thought this would help visiting friends find their way through your town. Sure the grass eventually grows back…but you have to refrain from walking on it for extended periods of time. Lame. Guess my town is going to look like one big beach soon…
Controlling Stuff:
Using the Wiimote and numchucks combo is so much better than the DS d-pad and stylus combo. My hands no longer cramp from holding the DS and playing for long periods of time. Drawing patterns can be a pain with the Wiimote but it’s better than using a traditional control pad. I only wish there was a select all button for quicker Nook transactions.
If you plug in an USB keyboard it is instantly recognized by the Wii and allows you to type letters or chat with friends quickly. The function keys are mapped to your Dr. Shrunk emotions as well, which is convenient if you want to emote anger in a hurry.
Pressing the 1 button on the Wiimote takes a screenshot and then you can transfer it to a SD card or post it to your Wii Message board to send to friends. Trying to take photos of the screen with my camera while struggling to keep the action in focus is a thing of the past. Now you can document all the inappropriate catch phrases and greetings your neighbors’ say or rare Gyroids you may discover.
To the City:
For the most part the City is a zzzzZZZzzz fest. You can visit Dr. Shrunk and pay 800 bells to learn a new emotion (you can hold up to four at a time).
Go to Gracie’s and get ripped off on some furniture or ‘trendy’ clothing. Guess this changes depending on the season, so maybe something cool will pop up and I’ll feel like spending 140,000 on a table… or not.
Learn more about why you weren’t chosen to be the model room of the week by the HRA, which is sort of cool since it pulls from all of your friends. Looks like it pulls in anyone added in your town since I saw rooms from people I never added to my friend’s list but my girlfriend did (we share a town).
Put your rare items up for auction or bid on your friends’ stuff…cool…but not. I’m guessing this is a limitation of Nintendo’s WFC because you can only bid and sell on a certain day, and once an auction starts for the week you can’t sell anything else. I’ve yet to remember what day I can actually sell shit on and go back to the City to auction something. Very inconvenient! Can you imagine if eBay only let you bid or sell one day a week?
Change your shoe color by getting them shined by some skunk.
Check out Crazy Redd’s forgeries of the week.
Get a haircut or put your Mii’s face on at Shampoodles.
And learn what your town’s charm is.
Oh and I guess some balloon man comes through on sunny days and gives you pinwheels, bubbles, and balloons. Who cares?
Online with WiFi:
This could have been the showstopper; instead you get another under realized implementation of online functionality by Nintendo. Works just like Wild World—you register friend codes and then you can open your gates or travel to these friends’ towns ONLY! Well you can add other people to your list if they happen to be in a town you’re visiting, but that’s about it. No hub to meet other people if you want to—no nothing. Just like every other Nintendo game with ‘online’ features…FAIL!
Ok I get it—Nintendo wants to stick with this god-awful friend code business. But why in the world do you force me to check with Copper every time I want to see if a friend is online? Why can’t the Wii be online all the time and notify me when a friend is available ala Xbox Live or any other online service? Get with it Nintendo!
So far I haven’t seen that faceless character that would show up in your WW town and ask you to draw them a new one. And those missing cats haven’t shown up yet either so I’m not sure if they did away with that along with the bottled messages that would wash up on your beach.
I wonder with Microsoft trying to make the Xbox 360 appeal to the casual gamer, if they will ever create a true Animal Crossing clone? When Viva Piñata came out I thought that maybe it was their answer to that. Well not really seeing how all the fun stuff in Animal Crossing was nowhere to be found in Viva Piñata. I can only hope they’re working on a true rip-off of the Animal Crossing franchise that has full avatar support and is backed by Xbox Live’s excellent online experience. Oh and lots of achievements…damn that would be an amazing game.
That being said. Feel free to add my friend code and town information if you have Animal Crossing: City Folk. Leave a comment with your friend code and I’ll add you. Always looking for more people to play with since it can be hard to find open towns late at night.
La mer in Beetus Friend Code: 4769-1328-3546 My native fruit are apples (I have pears, peaches, cherries, oranges, and coconuts). I have some golden watering cans for sale, a fountain and am close to having 1,000,000,000 bells to purchase a lighthouse
- Tags:
- nintendo
- videogames
- wii
- animal crossing
- nintendo wfc
- review
- ds suitcase
- city folk
- wild world
- pro designs
January 5 2009, 11:18am
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