Would you order a Pizza from your Wii?

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I wish more youtubers could be like thomas game docs

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/testeremail10001 📅︎︎ May 28 2019 đź—«︎ replies

Wii Deliver

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/thunderboyac 📅︎︎ May 28 2019 đź—«︎ replies
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Hi there! So the Wii had a bunch of weird channels. Like the Everybody Votes channel, which let players take part in polls and surveys across the world. That’s a pretty original idea! Or the Check Mii Out channel, which allowed players to share Miis they’d created, and enter them into popularity contests. I think that’s a super unique idea. But one channel which I find especially interesting is this: the Wii delivery Channel. This channel let users order food from a whole bunch of restaurants nearby to them, and have it delivered in 30 minutes or less. It was essentially Deliveroo for the naughties. But how exactly did this channel work? And how did it come to be? Well, let’s take a look, shall we? It was the late 2000s, and the Wii had been out for a good few years. It was selling like hot cakes, and Nintendo wanted to take advantage of this popularity as much as possible. Looking at the channels the Wii had - the Mii Channel, the Wii Shop Channel, the Everybody Votes channel - Nintendo saw a gap in to be filled: Food. There was no way to order food through the console. And so, they partnered up with Japanese food delivery site Demae-can. By visiting the Demae-can website, users could order food from over 10,000 different restaurants across Japan. According to their website, “There are a large number of stores across the country, from major chain stores to local soba shops!” Indeed, all that a restaurant needed to sign up to Demae-can’s service was a fax machine, which is a lot easier to come by in Japan than it is elsewhere nowadays. Because of this ease to sign up, there really are an absolute ton of different restaurants here. In fact, according to Demae-can’s homepage, they’re the number one food delivery service in Japan. They might be a little biased, though. Now, to develop the channel itself, Nintendo called on developer Denyusha. Before this, the company had a pretty weird track record when it came to games. The first 3 games Denyusha developed were all released for this weird obscure handheld console Nintendo released in 2001 called the Pokemon Mini. As you can see, the console is absolutely tiny - about the same size as a Game Boy cartridge. Now, a total of 10 games were released for this system, 3 of which were developed by Denyusha - Pokémon Party mini, Pokemon Zany Cards, and Pichu Bros mini. As you can see, these games were all very simplistic - the Pokemon mini had a lower resolution than even the GameBoy, which I guess makes sense given its very tiny size. Now, after these Pokemon mini games, Denyusha went on to develop a few licensed titles here and there, and then in 2007 they came out with Math Play, an educational DS about, well, maths. With this smorgasbord of past titles, who else could Nintendo choose to develop this new Wii channel, right! Oh, and if you’re curious, the company has now gone on to work on mainly mobile games. Make of that what you will. Anyway, with Nintendo’s guidance, Denyusha put together a Wii based interface using which customers could order food from Demae-can’s service. And on the 26th of May, 2009, the Delivery Channel was released as free WiiWare on the Japanese Wii Shop Channel. So that’s the history of this weird little channel. But now, I feel like it would only be right to try ordering something. Not for real - I don’t live in Japan and even if I did, the channel shut down 2 years ago. But we can at least go through all the steps to see what it would’ve been like to order something back then. So first, let’s boot up the software. And we’re greeted by this nice welcome jingle and animation. From there, we’re brought to this menu. Each of these little buttons has a different type of food - sushi, pizza, chinese, curry, it’s all here. Oh, and there’s this button in the corner which Demai-Can calls the “can’t decided roulette”. It kinda speaks for itself - if you can’t decide, the it will pick a type of food for you! Here’s someone’s reaction to the random food they received: Uhhh. What is this? This amount of food might be dangerous... Huh? Why... Oh, and one thing I really like about the channel is that each type of food has its own music. For sushi, it sounds like this. For Chinese food, you get this. For curry, you get this very Indian music. For western food, you get this piece which sounds straight off Broadway! But, I feel like I should live up to the title of this video, and order some Pizza. Uh, let me try that again. Order some Pizza! Uhmm. Yeah, the pizza music really doesn’t sound particularly Italian. I could imagine riding around a ranch on the back of a mule, lassoing cattle, or something. I don’t know what cowboys lasso. At any rate, this is the music we’re given, so let’s just roll with it. Once we’ve chosen our type of food, we’re shown this list of all the Pizza places nearby. Pizza Hut, Dominos, it’s all there. Next to each store, there’s an estimated delivery time. Most of these top ones have a time of 30 minutes, which I think is pretty good! I do notice a disturbing lack of my favourite Pizza restaurant, Pizza Express, though, but I think that might just be a UK thing. Pity. Now, once we select a Pizza place - let’s go with Pizza Hut - we’re brought to this screen, which asks us if we want to order from the super fancy special menu, or just the regular normal one. Now once we’ve chosen that, we can select an actual pizza. Each one has the price listed next to it, which is quite important info. We can also select either small or large sizes. Since I haven’t eaten today, let’s go with large, shall we. From here, we can add toppings, change the dough, and so on. Once we’re done, we can press order. Shortly afterwards, we’ll receive an email on the Wii Message Board with our receipt. Perfect! Now it’s just time for our pizza to be delivered! Well, as I mentioned, the service has now shut down, so I’m going to switch over to YouTube user Tadashi Akimoto who filmed the buying process first hand. Now, our pizza’s supposed to arrive in 30 minutes, so let’s see if that’s actually true. 3, 2, 1, go! Oh, there it is! With 14 minutes to spare, no less! And look at this pizza-y goodness! So that’s what it’s like to order a pizza using your Wii! I have to say, I actually really like the process. It has that Nintendo charm, you know? All the different weird and perhaps a little corny music, the slightly convoluted but somehow loveable menus, it all screams of mid 2000s Nintendo. Of course, I don’t think there’s any way whatsoever this would be a viable service nowadays. Ordering from your phone is just so much faster and more convenient - but I still love this channel. It’s so charming. So, what became of it? Well, you might surprised to learn that it only shut down on the 31st of march 2017 - that’s *after* the Nintendo Switch was released. That’s also 3 years after Nintendo shut down all of *their* online services for the Wii. Even after the News Channel was gone, the Forecast Channel was gone, the Check Me Out channel was gone - people in Japan were still ordering their pizzas. And all the power to them! So while this odd channel may not live on to this day, I think it had a pretty incredible run, all things considered. Great job, delivery channel! Great job. Hi there! Thanks for watching to the end! If you found that interesting and you’d like to see more of my videos, subscribing is super helpful. Plus, sharing my videos with your friends really helps this channel grow! Plus, leaving a comment makes me feel less alone in this big old world. Right, see you next week, it’ll be a hoot!
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Channel: Thomas Game Docs
Views: 2,511,142
Rating: 4.9227324 out of 5
Keywords: Wii, Nintendo, Pizza, Miis, Gaming, Behind the Scenes
Id: RSXN9tSbemE
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 9min 20sec (560 seconds)
Published: Mon May 27 2019
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