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!
I wish more youtubers could be like thomas game docs
Wii Deliver