Nintendo forced me to make a few hard decisions yesterday.

I had to decide what games would make the cut on my Wii.

See, I’m a frequent Virtual Console buyer with an almost full system memory, and with the introduction of the new WiiWare service, I had to figure out just how I could download just two of the newly released titles. Surprisingly, it took almost an hour.

First I had to get onto the Wii Shop and see how many free blocks of memory I needed tin order to download “LostWinds” and “Defend Your Castle.” They’re 259 and 121 respectively, totaling 380 free memory blocks. My Wii only had 27 free since last week’s “Nintendo Channel” download, which I had to make space for by removing the “Check Mii Out Channel” (clearing up 123 blocks).

My options were slim since I really wanted to avoid removing any of my VC games, but I also had to make room for these new WiiWare games.

So some tough decisions had to be made, and I learned some interesting things about my Wii along the way…

I started with my save files. I figured that I could nickel and dime some space to start, and then go for the big stuff to push me over the edge. Unfortunately, I ran into two problems; I had a wealth of save files that I didn’t want to remove, and the ones I wanted to get rid of couldn’t be copied. In other words, I wasn’t able to make up any space from clearing out save files, which only left me with removing channels and games.

There were a few interesting things I discovered when I cleared out my channels. The “Weather,” “News,” “Photo,” and “Mii” channels could not be removed at all. These four channels are taking up precious space on my Wii, and I no longer use them. I understand needing to keep the Mii channel around, but everything else should be optional. I was, however, able to bump two channels; the “Mario Kart Wii Channel” (since I’ve made my feelings on that game abundantly clear) and the marketing-heavy “Nintendo Channel.” This cleared away 201 blocks; add that to my original 27 and I could download “Defend Your Castle,” but still not “LostWinds.” It was beginning to look like some of my games were going to have to get moved.

“Mario Kart 64” hurt the most, but it had to be done; 123 precious blocks were up for grabs, and I had to take them. I also removed the one Virtual Console game that I’ve actually beaten completely, “New Adventure Island,” and I scored 27 blocks. With only a few more blocks to go, I had to drop a game that surprisingly hasn’t held up against the test of time — one of my original VC purchases, “SimCity,” for another 33 blocks. I finally had 408 blocks free, and it was time to do some WiiWare downloading.

So far, the two WiiWare titles that I’ve purchased have been completely worth the sacrifices. However, my only problem is that I fear this is going to become a weekly ritual. I’m positive it’s going to happen at least once more in the next few weeks when “Dr. Mario” is released. I really hope that Nintendo has something in store for all us frequent downloaders soon, or else I may just need to start spending my money elsewhere.