Replaying the Pretty Synthwave Tunes of the Wii Channels

Above: Wii photography courtesy of Nintendo.

It's late 2012, and Nintendo has just fallen into an Animal Crossing-sized pitfall. The Wii U—as much as we might still rate its roster of games—has pretty much bombed at launch versus its predecessor, the Wii. Profits are down 30% and Christmas sees the pointless release of the Wii Mini, further confusing the public as to just what the Wii U actually is, and how it's a Whole New System.

Today, things are looking rather rosier. Nintendo's incoming Switch is sold-out on Amazon pre-orders in the UK and US, and it tested pretty well once the press got its hands on it (check out our impressions and Switch-special podcast). The company's Super Mario Run was a surprisingly robust mobile title, the most-downloaded item of anything on the App Store on Christmas Day. It would seem that the only way is up, with the Wii U being left behind in the coming months.

Undoubtedly, though, it's the Wii that represents Nintendo's commercial high point of the past decade. And it's crazy to think that it's now ten years since it found itself under Christmas trees across the globe, consequently whipping up a thousand horror stories of TV screens smashed by flying remotes. So it didn't take long for people to realize they could win a game of Wii Sports tennis sitting down, but for all the small complaints that crawled out from the public, the system still sold upwards of 100 million units.

And now, the thing that makes me most nostalgic for the Wii, in its era of commercial dominance, isn't any of its many excellent games, nor its strange and pointless controller add-ons (come on, your dad can admit that golf club appendage was a waste of money, now). Instead, it's the music that accompanied its various channels. Nintendo games have long had great tunes—that 1986 Zelda theme is pure 8-bit elegance—but these Wii ditties were so damn catchy that listening today takes you right back to the exact channel they soundtracked.

The man to thank is Kazumi Totaka. Classically trained at the Kunitachi College of Music, he joined Nintendo's R&D1 company in 1990 and has been working on soundtracking games ever since. On top of that, he's provided voices for Yoshi, Professor E. Gadd and Birdo, and K.K. Slider in Animal Crossing is based on him. He's the man behind most of the channels, including the Wii Shop, Mii and Check Mii Out channels. Props also have to go to Toshiyuki Sudo, for the ludicrously jazzy Everybody Votes Channel music.

Don't think of me as weird for still listening to these themes—I'm honestly not the only person doing so. These little nuggets of synthwave goodness have racked up millions of views on YouTube. They're as pretty as they are nostalgic, and somehow project Nintendo's recognizable warmth out of the most digital of synths. So strap-in—you don't want to be smashing any more TVs—and let me take you through some of the best channel tunes.

With its delicate strings and lounge feel, there's something of the piazza about this one, which is pretty swell, considering it is soundtracking a "plaza". The violin melody is as continental Europe as Nintendo has ever sounded, and it's the perfect way to kick back and relax while you make some sort of hideous progeny through dicking around with the height and width measurements. Hearing it again, you're almost waiting for the whistle noise to kick-in and all your Miis to line up like little pixelated puppets.

Featuring a slowed-down 2-step beat and little flutterings of tropical hooks, it takes a certain generation back to nicking their parents' card details to download Donkey Kong. It even got fused with Drake's "Hotline Bling" in one of the more unlikely fusions of video game and rap music. I mean, Drake and cheery retrowave: What's not to dig?

Absolutely not taking the piss here: this is the kind of ambient IDM that Eno or Aphex Twin would give a thumbs-up to. Any grainy photos you may have had on the SD card were overshadowed by this number and its feeling of absolute calm. Bleepy, trance-y synths mix with a blissed-out downbeat and the kind of vibes that make you feel like you're covered in an aloe vera face-mask, and you've got cucumber discs for eyes.

Forecast is in—and it's looking like torrential rain down your cheeks for the next couple of hours. Seriously, watch this video and try not to weep. It's the last-ever Weather Channel forecast before Nintendo shut the service down, and it features all the cute click noises and squelchy sounds that you remember. Behind everything is the stunning bit of orchestral magic that sounds like a lost M83 "outro". RIP all those nights spent spinning the globe and hearing the whoosh it made.

Ambient techno has never sounded so good. Mixing the kind of bassline that wouldn't go amiss in a 1990s Detroit club with space pads and a very quite trance-inspired beat, it's a delightful little number. Reading the news has never been so funky.

The first sounds you heard after you finally managed to stick the flimsy motion-sensor bar onto your telly. It takes you back to a simpler time of accessible gaming, and feels like you're going to embark on a period of spiritual awakening rather than wreck your uncle at Wii Boxing. The perfect tune for insomniac gamers.

Flecked with the kind of four-to-the-floor beat and jazz hooks that Louie Vega would groove to, this accompanied a pretty shit idea for a channel TBH. Just answering questions like "Do you usually turn your computer off or leave it on after using it?" with your Miis isn't much in the way of entertainment, in hindsight. Yet for some reason, it was so bloody exciting at the time, getting your Mii to hold up a prediction balloon and all that. Looking back, it's the kind of cheesy failure that Nintendo occasionally shit-out. The tune's a banger, though.

Ah yes, those days where you tried so hard to get your Mii onto the featured page. "WHY IS MY SHREK SO MUCH WORSE?" Relive the pain with this one. It's got a sad little '80s intro that sounds ridiculously like the opening of a lost Italo disco track. It's annoyingly short, this one (the extended repetition of the video aside), but that serves to make it even more of an absolute earworm.

Vaporwave before kids started commenting "a e s t h e t i c" on every video on YouTube and worshipping Saint Pepsi. No one can argue that the Check Mii Out channel didn't have a great soundtrack: this and the previous one are two of the best compositions on the whole console, and a perfect place to end this little rummage around our memories.

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