The Wii That Wasn't

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My gorgeous 13 year old boy wanted a Wii for Christmas.

He’s asked for a Wii and nothing else for months. He’s dropped subtle and unsubtle hints. He’s downright begged. I couldn’t afford it, and told him so.

Now, he’s fortunate to have many grandparents and another set of parents, and I communicated this to all of them, got their agreement that we should all go in together, gathered up the resulting cash, and was able to get him:

A brand new Wii (on a REALLY good sale price with a discount I get from work added in, score!)
Another Wiimote
A charger for the Wiimote
Another game (it came with two for a total of three, the Sports game, that stupid 25 Mario game one, and the next Metroid Prime, which he had for Gamecube and loved, loved, loved.)

Anyway, Wii happens, kid’s face lights up brighter than the tree, all is good. I’m The Best Mom Ever for making this happen (all relatives besides me and stepdad are in another country, it’s pretty obvious even to a 13 year old that I had to organise the whole thing, plus of course I contributed a chunk of cash, too.) I should also mention he’s usually with his dad in the US for Christmas, so I normally miss this part - it’s a long story but he didn’t get to go this year. So he was pretty bummed anyway and this was going to go a long way towards making it all better.

Plug the Wii in, all’s good. Makes his avatar, gets it on the wireless net, still good.

Put in disk.

Disk cannot be read

Reset, try again, try other disks (including Gamecube ones), Google problem, discover it has to be taken back. :frowning: Apparently it’s a problem that does happen from time to time with the Wii.

He was good, really. He said, “That’s ok, Mom.” But he said it with the biggest, saddest eyes you ever saw.

Of course he’ll get it replaced - can’t say WHEN, cause it’s likely to be out of stock where I bought it, but basically everything he got for Christmas was Wii related, so in essence, he had nothing he could use for Christmas. You know, the day you usually break out whatever it is you got and have a play with it when you’re a kid. It was just the three of us, so there wasn’t the whole traipse to family and back, we were hoping he’d get to spend the day figuring out his Wii and having a blast. So it really sucked for him today, his present didn’t work and he didn’t get to be with his dad. We let him watch the movie his stepdad got (Batman) and we all hung out and watched it with him, but yanno, damn that sucked.

Broke my heart, too. Poor kid. I love him to distraction and I hate for him to be sad.

Pointless, yeah. Merry Christmas.

(I know, lots of folks are worse off and didn’t get Christmas presents and so on, and he’s a lucky kid to get one in the first place, but still…)

2

Aw,** Gleena**, that does suck!

Wishing you and your son good luck in speedily finding a replacement tomorrow.

3

This may be obvious but – did you try putting the disc in the other way? It took me a few tries to get used to how the Wii is oriented. I forget now, sitting in front of the computer, whether the label side of the disc goes to the left or the right (i.e., which side of the Wii console is “up” if you were to lay it on its side, as opposed to vertically upright), but I do remember that I had a few rounds of “disc cannot be read” errors before figuring out “Maybe I’m basically sticking the disc in upside-down”.

4

Yes, the “shiny” side of the disc goes to the left (the biggest side of the unit). Took us a while to figure that one out as well.

5

Yeah, I did try that. Every orientation, different disks. Was pretty desperate for it to work, plus I Googled it.

Back to the store today!

Thanks for sympathy guys, it was prettys sucky yesterday.

6

Aww, that was gut-wrenching. It was soooo close. And all the work you put into it. Great writing, too.

But it’s good that your child was so good about it. I guess it’s a good lesson that sometimes things don’t turn out exactly the way you want them to despite everyone’s best intentions. But it would have been so awesome if it worked.

Good luck getting it replaced.

7

That bites.

However. The Wii, once you get it working, is frikkin’ awesome, so a month from now he’ll hardly remember the tribulations at the beginning.

–Cliffy

8

Wait, it shouldn’t take anywhere near a month. Gleena, have you not tried calling Nintendo? They have a service called “Advance Replacement” where they’ll ship you a replacement console to your door in 3-4 days (before you even have to return yours, via the box they send you)! I used to work there and must say they offer some of the best customer service in the industry.

Their number: 1-800-255-3700
Press “0” at the man menu to skip everything and get right to a rep–they may be busy, but the wait shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.

9

Hi thanks - I’m actually in Australia, so that won’t help here.

I took it back and it behaved badly at the store, too - I’ll have a replacement tomorrow when they get a shipment in. (So I’m told, I’m betting it’s more like Friday or Monday.)

I sent the kid to the movies a lot with his mates, so he was happyish. He’s still looking forward to getting a new one.

Cheers,
G

10

I thought this thread was about that cheapo Wii knock off I’ve seen for sale in some stores. There were probably a few kids disappointed when their Wii turned out to be about as powerful as an Atari 2600.

11

Here it is, the Vii.