Nintendo, Wii have a problem.

Thanks to our web site, I can pin point the exact day that I realized there was something wrong with our Wii.  It was on August 4, 2007, and I was playing Super Mario Strikers.  It was at this time when I noticed that there were patches of red and green blotches on the screen while I was playing the game.  

At first I thought it might be the game itself, however, at the time I was still working at the video store and I was the first person to rent the game, so there was a slim chance that it would be scratched or anything.  Since I hadn’t seen any other game do this before, I just assumed there was a glitch in the game and left it at that.

Shortly after that incident, I realized a few other games doing this as well, with some having red and green blotches and some having random black pixels scattered around the screen.  Since it wasn’t just Super Mario Strikers that was having the problem, it removed the possibility that it was a glitch in the game.  My next two guesses was that it was either my TV, which was getting up there in years, or my Wii needed to be cleaned.  

As we wrote about earlier on this site, this past Christmas we bought ourselves a new 42” HDTV to finally replace the old 27” TV that I had bought nearly 10 years ago.  With the new HDTV hooked up to the Wii, the problem still persisted, thus narrowing down my thoughts to the console just needing a good cleaning.

In May, we received Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure from Gamefly and it was at that moment when the black pixels that scattered around the screen almost got to be too unbearable.  Not knowing what to clean it with, I decided to do a search on Google with the search phrase “wii black pixels on screen,” and what I found out was something that I didn’t want to hear – we had a defective system.

I was able to find out that other Wii users were experiencing the same problem, which was being caused by the Wii console overheating, thus causing damage the video card.  It was also written that Nintendo is aware of the problem and was allowing people to send in their Wii consoles to be fixed.

Not really wanting to part with my Wii for any long period of time, I waited for a while before finally getting around to calling Nintendo about three weeks ago.  When I called I talked to Renee who asked what problems I was having.  I told her about the black dots and the red and green blotches that I was seeing and she asked me to tell her what games this was happening on.  The first game that popped in my head was Resident Evil 4, which apparently is one of her favorite games.

The next 10 minutes or so of the call had nothing to do with my defective Wii at all, but of the different areas of the game, things to look for and things she liked about it.  I didn’t want to be rude so I began limiting my responses to one or two words in the hopes that she would take a hint and guide her back to the problem at hand.  

When we finally got back onto the subject of the problems with my Wii console, she asked me the standard questions like when and where I bought it.  When I told her we purchased it in February of 2007, she was nice enough to inform me that my warranty had expired and I would need to pay for the repairs myself… you know, for a product that they knew was defective but failed to let their customers know about.

In the end, I was charged $82.50 to have my machine repaired and I finally parted ways with it today as I dropped it off FedEx.  Renee told me on the phone that it would take anywhere from 13-16 days to get my console back, so I’ll be counting down the days until then.

As luck would have it, this wasn’t the first time we had a little problem with our Wii, however, the other time it wasn’t due to the hardware, but the software.  Being as we had to buy Guitar Hero III the day that it came out for the Wii, we ended up getting a version of the game that wasn’t in Dolby Digital Surround Sound like the game case stated, but in one audio channel mono sound.  

To avoid a class action lawsuit against all of the people that bought this version of the game, Activision decided to allow people to send in their bad copies of the game in exchange for the true stereo version.  I received the envelope and form to fill out to exchange the game, but much like me having to part with my Wii system, I put it off as long as possible.

With the Wii out of the house, what better time than now to send Guitar Hero III back as well?  It will be interesting to see what makes it back first, the console or the game.

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