Recently, Nintendo has been taking a lot of flack for the Wii’s lack of appropriate data storage. 512mB of internal flash memory just isn’t enough now that WiiWare is offering downloadable games. In a recent interview with Club Nintendo, Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime said that they have a storage solution in mind, and that it’s better than a hard drive.

So what exactly is a better solution than a hard drive? It seems likely that they’re working on a way to make downloaded games playable directly from a SD card. This way, you could move your copy of TV Show King or Ninja JaJaMaru-kun onto a flash card, and play it directly from the card without the hassle of having to copy the game back onto the Wii’s internal memory first.

Still, I’ve come up with some storage solutions that I think are a bit more creative. What’s better than a hard drive? Here are my ideas:

The Gigabyte Wiimote
Currently, you can store Miis on your Wii remote, and bring them to your friends’ houses, where you can use them while playing Wii Sports or transfer them into your friend’s Mii channel. But the classic Wii remote has very little memory. Introducing the Gigabyte Wiimote! Within this controller, you can store twice as much as you can in the Wii’s internal memory! All the data is transmitted by Bluetooth, and you can play games directly from the Wiimote.

USB 8-track storage

With the plug and play Wii 8-track storage peripheral, you can store your games on archival quality magnetic tape. Since it can read all 8 tracks simultaneously, it accesses data at a rate nearly ten times that of traditional tape drives! Plus, since all Wii 8-tracks are 100% recycled products, you’re helping to save the planet.

WiiFun Card
The WiiFun Card is a kind of virtual punch card. But forget the hassle of having to feed cards manually into a reader or of accidentally shuffling the cards. The WiiFun cards are completely virtual. In an idea inspired by the save system of old Castlevania games, you can now save data from any game on a WiiFun card, freeing up internal memory for more WiiWare. Just enter the punches on WiiWare cards with your Wii remote. Most game save files only require you to fill out 32 WiiFun cards, although certain WiiWare titles may require as many as 128.

Wiimote Ham’n’Cheese Attachment
My personal favorite is the edible device. Inspired by Valve’s sandvich, the Ham’n’Cheese add-on to the Wii remote is inexpensive and delicious.