Nintendo Wii

[Chojin]

1. About how much does the Wii cost, and what's it's availability currently? Is it still one of those camp-out situations?

$250, and it's generally rare, but if you go to about five different stores, you'll probably find one. I recommend getting one from EB or Gamestop and paying $30 for their 1-year replacement plan (their plan covers anything at all you do to the console, up to and including setting it on fire or something).

2. What's the average price of a virtual console game?

NES is $5, Turbo-Graphix is $6, Genesis/SNES are $8, N64 are $10

3. Approximately how many games can you hold on the Wii's virtual console (or whatever it would be called)? Or, about how much memory storage do you have, and how much does the average NES or SNES game use?

I think there are 5 pages of channels, with 12 channels per page. Each VC game uses a channel, and the Wii has several channels dedicated to its various functions, so you can store about 52 VC games. However, you can delete or move VC games to an SD card if you find you're running out of space. If you delete a VC game, you can redownload it later at no charge. I don't remember the Wii's storage space, but i'm reasonably certain you can fill the channels with games and not run out of space.

4. How much/how available are these additonal controllers?

Remotes are $40, Nunchuks are $20, Classic Controllers are $20. You can use a gamecube controller in lieu of the classics if you don't want to pay for a redundant controller, but the Classic Controller has a way bigger D-Pad and feels nicer to me :<

5. Are there any GC games that for any reason aren't compatible with the Wii? I remember hearing something about this.

Not that I'm aware of; The Wii pretty much switches entirely over to Gamecube mode when you play a GC disc; You can't use the Home menu or parental controls or check play times on GC discs. So, I doubt there'd be any compatibility issues.

6. Are there currently/is anyone aware of any prospects for external storage, in the form of a hard drive, blank minidiscs, or whatever? And how much are those if they exist yet?

There're SD-RAM cards you can put in to load pictures & video, and you can also store VC games and savegames on that media.