Nintendo Wii Shop
December 10, 2006 to January 31, 2019
Today, we take for granted that games can be purchased and downloaded at any time, and that retro games will be re-released and made available on a variety of platforms. Much of that began with the launch of the Nintendo Wii Shop for the holiday season of 2006.
The retro gaming renaissance owes itself in large part to the Virtual Console games on the Wii Shop. For the first time, gamers were able to download NES, SNES and N64 games alongside Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Turbografx-16, Commodore 64 and Neo-Geo classics. There was even a selection of vintage arcade games and Japanese titles that were never sold in the United States. While it's true that these have all been available to the emulation community for many years, there was something very special about Nintendo bringing all of these together and making them available for fans to purchase and enjoy.
The end of an era came at 1:00 am today when after 12 years, the Wii Shop Channel has been officially closed. YouTube user Shoebillan has preserved the iconic music from the shop on a 10 hour loop in this video.
