Wii-less

Hey ladies, its Josh again. And you may have noticed that I'm going by Josh now because it has come to my attention that silly surnames and pseudonyms such as J-9 simply aren't cool. But enough chatter about that, I'm talking about something far more serious than that.

A couple weeks ago, my brother Eugene and I were enjoying a nice session of Dragonball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3 for the Wii. All of sudden, we noticed that there were these multicolored splotches that sort of resembled pixels from the Golden Age of gaming appearing in the corner left and middle of the screen. At that point, we already knew what the problem was, and what needed to be done.

We needed to ship our Wii to Nintendo to cure this ailment.

Now for those of you who have no idea what I'm actually talking about, listen up! These splotches are called artifacts. They can be as small as specks or as large as a giant streak running down your TV. This is a scene from Zelda: Twilight Princess with this very issue. Not very appealing is it? (Un)fortunately This only happens on Wiis that are set to display in 480(p), so if you don't have an HDTV, then don't worry about it.

This issue apparently happens when the Wii Connect24 fries the GPU or CPU or something like that. Since its always on, you can see how the GP-whatever I just said gets fried.

And so to play visual masterpieces such as Zelda or Metroid Prime 3 and Super Mario Galaxy with this horrendous affliction makes me sick to my stomach that it can't look as good as it should because of a couple splotches. This is why I am currently Wii-less. Though it is coming back today (hopefully), the past two weeks have been nothing but anguish. I've stared at that Xbox 360 in my brother's room and in my own, and the sheer weght of the truth that I can't play anything I have been playing for the past EVERSINCETHEWIICAMEOUT makes me very sad inside.

So how can you avoid being Wii-less? For one, buy a fan! I can't emphasis this enough. You have no idea how much that would actually help. There's no cooling unit for the Wii-Connect24 while its on 24/7 so I would recommend you go out and pick one up today. And make it Nyko. That's the only 3rd party I would trust, and so should you. They're the ones responsible for the awesome Wii Charge decks and the Perfect Shot after all! (I'm not counting the infamous Xbox360 intercooler. You know, the one that caused your unit to perform Hari-Kari.)

Another tip is to simply turn Wii-Connect24 off. Yeah, I know its cool to receive messages late at night and have the Wii glow an ominous, yet soothing shade of blue but in the long run, its just not worth the hassle I'm going through for the SECOND time. So yeah, just turn it off. Unplug it if you're that cautious. You'll receive messages and updates when you boot the system online for the sake of sanity.

Oh well, I've seemed to run out of things to say. And I still have 40 minutes left until my train departs. Well, I'm off today to pick up where I left off in Metroid Prime 3. There's some Metroids that need freezin.

See ya around!