How To: Give the gift of WiiWare and Virtual Console games

It’s the holiday season, which means its prime time for shopping for gifts. Online shopping always makes things easier, and choosing an option where the place you’re buying from automatically sends the recipient your gift is even better. Its even easier if you decide to buy your favorite Wii owner a Virtual Console or WiiWare game from the Wii Shop Channel.

Nintendo created the Wii Shop channel so there are two options when browsing a game’s listing. You can either buy the game you’re looking at for yourself, or for your friend. The past few weeks have seen an extraordinary number of WiiWare and Virtual Console games added to the Wii Shop Channel, so there’s a great chance you can do some of your Hanukkah and Christmas shopping online.

If you both have Wiis, then the gift giving procedure is much easier. Now, since you two are already friends, you’ll likely have registered your Wiis with your friend codes. If you haven’t click the bottom right envelope icon on the Wii home screen, bring up the address book and enter your friend’s code. Then call your friend to make sure he or she has registered your code as well. Be sure to check your console’s Parental Controls as well, to make sure both of you can send and receive messages.

Also, for this to work, you and your friend must live in the same country. So you can’t buy Wii Shop games for friends in Europe or Japan if you have a North American Wii. It’s sad, but understandable. The offerings in each region’s Wii Shop Channels are different, so there’s a good chance the game you’d want to gift wouldn’t even be available in that region. Or, if the game was there, it could be a different number of Nintendo Points.

The final part of our pre-Wii Shop Channel gifting preparations is funding. Make sure you have at least 1,500 Wii Points credited to your Wii Shop Channel account. That should be more than enough to cover any Virtual Console or WiiWare games you’re interested in sending as a gift. I mean, it’s not like Nintendo is going to allow you to give the games away for free.

So, now that you and the friend you want to send a gift to have registered each other as friends and you’ve made sure you have Wii Points, let’s get into the actual gift-giving process.

Step One: Sending the Gift

Yup, sending a gift to someone through the Wii Shop Channel is so easy it only takes one step. If you’ve been keeping up with the Gamertell Nintendo Downloads Update, you probably have an idea of what games you might want to get for your friend. So the first thing you should do is head to the Wii Shop Channel, go to the appropriate section (WiiWare or Virtual Console) and check the listing for the game you want to send. Double check the description, screenshots and controller requirements to make sure you’ve picked the right game. Once you’ve decided, click the gift button on the right to send your gift.

An address book will then pop up, showing all of the friends whose Wiis you have registered that have also registered you. Find your friend’s name and click on it. You’ll then be taken to a page where you can add a little message that will be included in the gift notification your friend will receive. It might be a good idea to use this part to tell your friend why you’re sending a gift. Click OK. Nintendo will then check your friend’s account to make sure that he or she doesn’t own the game you want to send. If your friend already owns it, the process will be halted and the purchase won’t go through. If your friend doesn’t, then the gift will be sent.

Step Two: Receiving the Gift

If all went well, your friend should now have a message on his or her Wii stating that you generously gifted a WiiWare or Virtual Console game. The message will also include the brief message you entered in step one, which presumably stated the reason you sent the gift. Your friend will then be able to reject or accept your gift. If the gift is accepted, your friend will be prompted to write a quick thank you note to you. You will then receive a mail from Nintendo stating that your friend successfully received and accepted the gift that also includes a brief thank you message from your friend.

But, what if you friend already has the game? Or just never touches his or her Wii and didn’t accept the game? There’s no need to worry. If your friend went out and purchased the game already, then you’d have received a message saying your friend already has the game before the gifting process depicted in step one even finished and the purchase won’t go through. You’ll also get your Nintendo Points back if you friend chooses to reject your gift or if your gift isn’t accepted within 45 days.

What if you have a friend with a Wii who really wants Pokemon Rumble, but you don’t have a Wii. The best way to get that “game” for your friend is to go to your local Walmart or navigate to your favorite online store, order up a $20 2,000 Nintendo Points card, put it in a nice card and give it to your friend.

Image Source: Nintendo

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