So, believe it or not, but I am actually a gamer. I know, wow! The cynical gamer is a gamer! It may frighten you to know then that I do not own a 360 or PS3. Rather, I own that technologically inferior Wii. I used to think that was a bad deal, but then I realized that when I do play the system I am absolutely enthralled. Who’d a thunk it? Thanks, Okami! (and NMH, Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Metroid Corruption, and Twilight Princess). Truly, in the mounds of shovel ware, there are some winners.

WiiWare – how I am excited for this downloadable medium. Games like Eternity’s Child and World of Goo, in addition to Strongbad’s Game for Cool and Attractive People, certainly have my interest. On launch day (well, the day after actually), I decided to buy Lost Winds. It was a gamble for me, for it was developed by Frontier. Ugh. They developed RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, and that game crushed by top of the line laptop. (at least it was 4 years ago) So, I had low, and at the same time high expectations for the game. Turns out that the game is pretty darn good, but then, I noticed something, and it made me rather unhappy.

On the download screen, Lost Winds takes up about 250 blocks on the Wii. It was then I saw how much space I had left on my internal memory, about 500 blocks. Ouch. I guess I can download one or two more games before Nintendo, in their infinite wisdom, decides that I should start deleting things in order to obtain newer releases. I only have a few Virtual Console games on my Wii, and Lost Winds, so, this development has my head scratching.

What the hell, Nintendo? Do you really want to stifle people from spending money on your wares? Do you really wish to not utilize the SD card slot or USB for additional storage? Do you really think 512MB of internal memory is enough? If you did, then you certainly must have a clearer idea of what people like me want. I guess that I don’t actually know what I want. But, thankfully, you do, and you’re limiting me to 512MB of downloads. Bravo, Nintendo! Bravo!

So, Nintendo, is your head so far up your ass that you can’t see that people are willing to spend money to populate more than 512MB worth of space? Do you really think that everyone is going to only by NES games to populate the Wii Channel list that is horizontally expansive? Do you think people are going to want to constantly delete and re-add games whenever they want to play something? I sure hope not.

512MB is a miniscule chunk of space to bestow on a console with downloadable content. Perhaps it’s time for a larger storage solution for the Wii. Certainly, we gamers hope that Nintendo is doing what is necessary to afford us more space. Until that time, we gamers will continue to be frustrated by the prospect that we’ll have to delete something to add something new. On a console that tries to reach out to the elusive “casual gamer”, ease of operation should be paramount. It’s clear though that the ease of dealing with downloadable content is not. It’s time for that to change.

The Cynical Gamer is a semi-regular feature on RF Generation, the classic and modern video games database. As you can tell, this is the 5th entry in the feature. Where are the other four, you ask? Well, they are hiding on our actual website, where this entry will eventually end up as well. You might find interesting things at RF Generation, once it returns. Until that time, keep it tuned here.