It has been a frustrating day. I fear that a certain game of mine may be unreadable beyond a certain point, and far worse, my two-year-old Wii could be knocking on heaven's door. Allow me to elaborate.
I awoke this morning around 10:30 or so and went straight to my Wii to play some Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I'm about one third done with it, and am probably at my peak in terms of being engrossed in it. It's been really enjoyable thus far and I was really looking forward to playing it this morning before watching football all day. Unfortunately, the game froze about five minutes into my session of gameplay. This was especially irritating because Echoes had frozen a few nights ago at a separate point in the game. What I had dismissed as a fluke, I now had to accept as a real problem: something about my copy of Echoes on my Wii was not working out. I abandoned my plans for wasting my morning away, but returned to the game earlier tonight. This time, the game froze even sooner. What gave?
I put the game away and opted to work on my progress in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, a WiiWare game that I was really into over the summer. I noticed several flickering flecks on the TV image. Now, these weren't disruptive flecks, and I was able to successfully complete "Porom's Tale" without any incidents. Still, the flecks were annoying, distracting, and obviously nothing anyone would want to see. I assumed the video connection was faulty, or perhaps even the TV. Nope - transferring the Wii to a second TV did not fix the problem. My heart sunk as I realized a terrible prospect: that of a dying Wii.
Some research online has only served to confirm my worst suspicions; my Wii is on its way out, and this is the universal tell-tale first sign. Now, this sucks for a number of reasons, but the $200 pricetag for a new Wii isn't the one I'm most upset about, believe it or not. That honor belongs to the inevitable loss of game data. Most files on the Wii can be transferred onto memory cards and transferred easily between systems. However, two very important and beloved games, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii are incapable of transferring their data. What this means is that I will have to part with hundreds of hours of combined "work" on these two games. This, to me, is the real shame in a dead Wii.
I should really make the most of my Wii's remaining time on Earth. I should prioritize heavily, bumping all of the games stored on my Wii's system memory (After Years and Super Metroid) to the top of the list, followed closely by Wii games whose progress I have begun (Trauma Center: Second Opinion and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz). Perhaps things will be okay. Maybe I can deal with a few flecks of flickering graphics glitches, or even get used to them. And maybe things will get no worse. Still, I'd rather proceed cautiously than optimistically. In fact, if anything, witnessing my Wii on its deathbed has only turned me away from it for the time being; I doubt I'll be in any mood to deal with this situation in the near future. But then, anything is possible.
This isn't the first system to crap out on me, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I just wish Nintendo hadn't handcuffed my most prized game data to a sinking ship. In the mean time, I suppose I should start looking for a SanDisk lifeboat to salvage the data I can. Here's hoping my Echoes copy is compatible with my GameCube back home.
I awoke this morning around 10:30 or so and went straight to my Wii to play some Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. I'm about one third done with it, and am probably at my peak in terms of being engrossed in it. It's been really enjoyable thus far and I was really looking forward to playing it this morning before watching football all day. Unfortunately, the game froze about five minutes into my session of gameplay. This was especially irritating because Echoes had frozen a few nights ago at a separate point in the game. What I had dismissed as a fluke, I now had to accept as a real problem: something about my copy of Echoes on my Wii was not working out. I abandoned my plans for wasting my morning away, but returned to the game earlier tonight. This time, the game froze even sooner. What gave?
I put the game away and opted to work on my progress in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, a WiiWare game that I was really into over the summer. I noticed several flickering flecks on the TV image. Now, these weren't disruptive flecks, and I was able to successfully complete "Porom's Tale" without any incidents. Still, the flecks were annoying, distracting, and obviously nothing anyone would want to see. I assumed the video connection was faulty, or perhaps even the TV. Nope - transferring the Wii to a second TV did not fix the problem. My heart sunk as I realized a terrible prospect: that of a dying Wii.
Some research online has only served to confirm my worst suspicions; my Wii is on its way out, and this is the universal tell-tale first sign. Now, this sucks for a number of reasons, but the $200 pricetag for a new Wii isn't the one I'm most upset about, believe it or not. That honor belongs to the inevitable loss of game data. Most files on the Wii can be transferred onto memory cards and transferred easily between systems. However, two very important and beloved games, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii are incapable of transferring their data. What this means is that I will have to part with hundreds of hours of combined "work" on these two games. This, to me, is the real shame in a dead Wii.
I should really make the most of my Wii's remaining time on Earth. I should prioritize heavily, bumping all of the games stored on my Wii's system memory (After Years and Super Metroid) to the top of the list, followed closely by Wii games whose progress I have begun (Trauma Center: Second Opinion and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz). Perhaps things will be okay. Maybe I can deal with a few flecks of flickering graphics glitches, or even get used to them. And maybe things will get no worse. Still, I'd rather proceed cautiously than optimistically. In fact, if anything, witnessing my Wii on its deathbed has only turned me away from it for the time being; I doubt I'll be in any mood to deal with this situation in the near future. But then, anything is possible.
This isn't the first system to crap out on me, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I just wish Nintendo hadn't handcuffed my most prized game data to a sinking ship. In the mean time, I suppose I should start looking for a SanDisk lifeboat to salvage the data I can. Here's hoping my Echoes copy is compatible with my GameCube back home.
Well, at least I still have my books.
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