So, apparently the videogame gods are not happy with me. Why, do you ask? Well, looks like I'll be getting my Wii replaced... again.

I got one at launch, way back in November, and all was fine until the first one died due to the internal memory cooking itself. Which meant bye bye save games. Luckily this time I have an SD card, however it's still a pain in the ass.

The story this time 'round seems to be that I have a defective and/or cooked GPU. All was going fine until Saturday, when Meghan decided to play through the last dungeon of Twilight Princess and we started noticing these odd green/red artifacts on the screen. At first it wasn't too bad, but by the time she was slaughtering the final boss it was getting pretty bad. So, after extensive testing of my Wii (hah hah) using component and composite cables, trying different games, checking to see it wasn't the TV by using the PS2 and DVD player, it was determined that yes, I did end up with a second bad Wii.

In any case, it's still under warrenty, so I have to send it in for repair as soon as my free UPS label from Nintendo turns up, and hopefully it should be back in a week or two. It does kind of worry me that this is the second screwup I've had in less than a year though. Whatever happened to Nintendo products being indestructible? Seriously. I've seen pictures of Game Boys that survived warzones, and I still have the infamous video of a GameCube that still works after being dragged down a dirt road by a speeding car. I know a guy whose Nintendo 64 was submerged in raw sewage for over 24 hours and lived to tell the tale. And yet somehow, my first DS fell victim to dead pixels, my DS Lite has the well documented "hairline crack" and this will be my third Wii. And I could almost understand this if it was as a result of more moving parts or high-end hardware that easily overheats... but it's a Wii. I didn't buy this thing for high end graphical capabilities. How bloody hard do you have to work to screw up what is essentially a souped up six year old GPU? At least when a 360 dies, it kind of makes sense... but a Wii? Flash memory and an old GPU are not things that should die this easily. It doesn't exactly inspire much faith in durability, especially since Nintendo went from lifetime warranties on all products to the standard 1-year deal a few years back. I sincerely hope I'm just incredibly unlucky and this isn't a sign of things to come, and if it is, Nintendo better be ready to pull a Microsoft and offer some kickass warranty revisions.

Mostly, I just want it back before July 30th, so then I can play Mario Strikers Charged with some of you suckers online.