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Back in June of this year, Nintendo closed down a few of the channels on the Wii which relied on someone sitting in head office maintaining some sort of online service.  These included the news and weather channels; while there are far more effective ways of looking up the news and the weather, Nintendo's approach of giving you a globe to grab and spin was more fun than most.

One of the services closed down was the Everybody Votes Channel.  When this first launched I visited it a lot - checking the results every couple of days, suggesting my own questions.  I was pretty good at predicting which option would be more popular.  I'd not used the channel for a couple of years, but when I heard it was closing I went back to look at it.  It seemed to still be quite well populated - there were at least enough people to form meaningful results, at least.

There are few good quality screenshots of the channel on the Internet.  I captured quite a few in June, which are included here.  If you want to use any of these on your websites, feel free - please just include a link to this post.

As you can see from my to-do list, there are a number games that I want to play and complete before I move onto the next in the series.  I loved Pikmin, and completed it properly by playing through twice and getting all the rocket ship parts within thirty days.  I bought Pikmin 2 for the GameCube, and then never got around to playing it because I wanted to devote time to it.  I bought the original and the sequel when they were released on the Wii, and have bought the third game for the Wii U.  I've never played any of them.

Until now.  Spurred on by the blue Wii U game box sitting on the shelf mocking me, I've started to play New Play Control Pikmin 2 on the Wii.  Yes, actually on the Wii and not on the Wii mode of the Wii U, so that I can take screenshots and video through my component capture box.  One of the best things about the Wii U is the integration of Miiverse, and it's daft that you can't use that while running Wii games.


The Wii seems to output at a bit of an odd resolution which the capture box has difficulty with, but you get the idea.


I'd forgotten how freaky Olimar looks, but compared to other people on his home planet, he's positively plain-looking.




Louie's expressions in particular are pretty horrific, and I was pleased to get into the game with the lovely pikmin.


The idea of the game is to collect rubbish which has a high value back home, so that Olimar's boss won't have his business closed and all assets repossessed.  The SS Dolphin was already taken, and so Olimar and Louie travel back to Earth in a rickety old rocket which has a really annoying metallic twang every time it speaks.

While I'm talking about things that annoy, the font used to show the number of pikmin, the name of areas, the results of the day, and so on, is really ugly.  It's odd that there are two different fonts used, with one nice and neat and the other really scrappy.

The first piece of rubbish indicates that we could be looking at a heavily branded experience ...



... but luckily so far I've not found anything too bad, and most stuff is actually old Nintendo memorabilia, like a Game & Watch, Love Tester, or playing card.  There are, of course, other things that you can collect in order to spawn more pikmin.


On day 2 I went into the first cave, where time seems to stand still and there are treasures aplenty.  The caves are a bit dingy.



The aforementioned Love Tester was also in a cave, and the annoying rocket thing reckons he can use it to make a gauge of some sort.  That sounds like a waste of a good antique electronic device.


I was doing well until day 4, but I then went through a long cave and found a big bug at the end.  I threw loads of pikmin at him, and he then straightened out and started rolling from side to side.  Many pikmin were squashed almost immediately.


They shall not be forgotten.