Wed Jan 21, 2009 2:34 pm
good question
just wanted to bring up what a good question this is... was hoping it had been answered...
The Wii shop I can't tell you about cause I never use it. Buying the VC games is a waste of money. I've downloaded a bunch of those games (wad files) and used them. I own most of them for NES and SNES, so I'm not going to pay again for them. Wii shop may require firmware 3.4, but don't quote me on that.
The only thing to do is just try going into the Wii shop. If it wants to update, it will prompt you. It won't just update on its own. And even if it does accidentally update, a downgrade is easy to do. So try the Wii shop, and if it asks to update, shut down the Wii.
As far as the rest goes, you're fine. I can use my weather and news channels on my 3.2 Wii with wads and dvdx installed. There's no order to anything really. You'll want to start with the basics though (after you confirm about the wii shop channel). Install the homebrew channel first as installing anything else will require it. To get homebrew, check out the Wii packgen.