So I bought a Wii U....

[matsuki]

WTF is this region BS??? Japaneeeeze game selection sucks

[james]

I bought one for my sons for the holidays, and it was a rage-inducing series of headaches, fuckery and frustration.

A note about the Wii U. In order to use it to its full functionality, there's a day one update that must be installed. Without the critical update, you'll neither be able to play regular Wii games (Wii U games will work, however), nor use a lot of the other features. You are warned upon purchase that the update will take at least one hour, typically longer.

First unit was purchased around December 21st. I decided that so my kids could use it out of the box I'd do the update then box it back up. An hour or so, I figure, no big deal. It took me that long before I finally got the POS to connect to the net over my wireless connection. It would not connect using DHCP so I figured I'd entered some stuff wrong, dug up my router password so I could check some settings from my PC. No dice. I eventually stumbled on other people having the same problem, so I set the IP, DNS etc manually and I was finally online. Proceeded to do the download, which rumour has is on the order of 4GB. WTF is Nintendo thinking?! 4GB over wireless?! Once the download completed and update installed, it went back to the main Wii U menu and I thought I was in the clear. Boxed it back up. Kids opened it on Xmas day and I hooked it up and whaddya know? The POS was bricked, right out of the box, wouldn't play games after displaying the Wii menu. Accessing any application or trying to play a game just briought up a black screen of death.

We wasted time and money calling Nintendo's technical support and after running through their script they agreed, that yes, it is in fact bricked, we'll send you a new unit. No need to box everything up, just throw the console and the gamepad in a plastic bag and the delivery guy will take care of it. My wife was a little pissed by that as we'd bought and applied the protective film already. They can't do anything for us on that, we're told. Sorry.

Second unit arrived a couple of days later, I tested it with Mario Bros U, played fine but the update still needed to be done. I told the kids to have at it and that I'd bite the bullet that night after they go to bed. This time, it connected to my wireless router right out of the box and I figured things would go much more smoothly. Downloaded the update, which again took forever. The download stalled at 90%, some server disconnect or a WiFi barf or whatever. Much to my pleasant surprise though, the update resumed rather than starting over once the connection was reestablished. It completed, installed. I put in a game to try and the damn thing didn't work. Instead of just a black screen though, it displayed "更新の準備を待っています。" on the game pad for 10 mins then eventually threw up something along the lines of "Error: 108-xxxx" (unknown error), displayed an option to continue anyway, then displayed a black screen. I went to bed pissed.

Following day, we wasted yet more time with Nintendo's technical support and we were put on hold. It was during our call that after staring at a black screen for 15 minutes after the error that the game started to play. So this time it was crippled, not completely bricked. Tech agreed that yeah, 20+ minutes before you can play a game isn't normal.. Ya think?! They told us they'd send out another unit, no need to change out the game pad this time. I asked if they could send us a unit that's been updated and tested but am told, sorry, we can't do that, you could send your existing unit in for repair but the factory will be closed until Jan 7th. We decide to take a replacement unit which arrived a couple of days later but hold off on the update.

So I've had our 3rd unit here for about 10 days, and haven't updated it yet. Bought an SD card today so that I can back up the kids' savegame data. I might try the update tomorrow night if I can pick up a compatible USB Ethernet adaptor rather than muck around with the wireless.

Why the hell can't Nintendo, instead of wasting time, money and alienating its customers, flash the mammoth update before shipping the consoles out or at least throw in a DVD with the update image as an afterthought? It would take them very little time to do this instead of foisting an hour download, which, if interrupted, seems to install a corrupted update and brick or cripple the system. Do they not even perform a checksum on the download file before attempting to install? You can't even force a download restart or attempt to redo the update. You either have to get a replacement console or send it off for "repair".

This isn't just horrible customer relations, it's mind-bogglingly asinine.

And yeah, region coding in this day and age is BS. What is it to Nintendo if I want to play a North American market game on my Japanese console (or vice-versa)?

[Coligny]

the next sony... whatch out for the fall...

[matsuki]

Wow James! I wasn't even warned about the update, the regi guy was just like "you know this is the Japaneeeze version right? Japaneeze onree!"

Mine took about a day to D/L the update. Connecting to my router was easy but the connection kept dropping and erroring and the only consolation was, as you mentioned, it resumed the D/L rather than starting from zero. ( I heard the servers Nintendo setup for these updates were totally overloaded) Once the update was D/Led and installed, though, mine worked fine. I got the Monster Hunter version and Mario Wii U+extra controllers. I haven't really played games or owned a gaming system since the original Playstation so this region bullshit is new to me and I was surprised at how there aren't many games in Japan but loads are available in the U.S. Even the fucking gamepads are region locked! WTF? I'm guessing this will be like cell phones and such though...give it some time and it'll be hacked to be region free, allow homebrew, etc. I'm more dissapointed with the lack of Wii U games....I don't want to shell out money for older Wii games either. (though I guess I can buy some used?)

[gaijinpunch]

Damn, that's fucked. I'm waiting for Pikmin 3 to even bother (why the fuck did this not cum out ton the normal Wii?) and then hopefully a Mario or Zelda to follow. The rest of the line up is rather lackluster. Glad to know I will get a headache upon opening the box (that's what she said).

[Coligny]

Damn, that's fucked. I'm waiting for Pikmin 3 to even bother (why the fuck did this not cum out ton the normal Wii?) and then hopefully a Mario or Zelda to follow. The rest of the line up is rather lackluster. Glad to know I will get a headache upon opening the box (that's what she said).

yeah... like i waited for granturismo 5 to buy a ps3 and stop giving a fuck before it was out... even with the price drop, still not caring...

[matsuki]

Damn, that's fucked. I'm waiting for Pikmin 3 to even bother (why the fuck did this not cum out ton the normal Wii?) and then hopefully a Mario or Zelda to follow. The rest of the line up is rather lackluster. Glad to know I will get a headache upon opening the box (that's what she said).

yeah... like i waited for granturismo 5 to buy a ps3 and stop giving a fuck before it was out... even with the price drop, still not caring...

...and this is why I never bought a PS3

[sublight]

Can you still get the old Wii at the stores? I've been thinking about getting a game system sometime soon. My son wants to play Mario games, I want the Wii Fit, and both of us want Taiko Tatsujin. So far, nothing about the Wii U looks better even when it's working perfectly, and I don't give a shit about keeping up with the new game releases.

[matsuki]

Can you still get the old Wii at the stores? I've been thinking about getting a game system sometime soon. My son wants to play Mario games, I want the Wii Fit, and both of us want Taiko Tatsujin. So far, nothing about the Wii U looks better even when it's working perfectly, and I don't give a shit about keeping up with the new game releases.

Get a used Wii or just pay more for a Wii U as it plays all the old titles anyway and lets you keep playing on the loo with a screen built into the controller.

[wuchan]

wii.....

[gaijinpunch]

Truth be told, I'm quite fine with ancient games. I have an arcade monitor in a wooden box in my study, an da 15khz video card hooked up to it for emulation. Needless to say, I'm no stranger to games... but the current gen was just awful, and it doesn't look like the next one was going to be any better.

Warning to anyone w/ kids. I took my Wii to my son's place. He loves playing Mario Galaxy 2. However, he deleted my game which had all 242 stars on it. I figured he might though, but now he hates it b/c he can't go to any stage he wants.

[james]

Truth be told, I'm quite fine with ancient games.

Me too. My gaming experience stops somewhere around Tetris, which is still by far my favourite. I'm actually thinking of picking that up for the Wii as it seems to be fairly well done and allows for four simultaneous players. Plus, it's likely the only game in which this old man would have an advantage (however fleeting) over the young'uns.

My gaming repertoire consists mostly of emulators / MAME to run old ColecoVision games, which my kids love, and the occasional arcade game from the days of yore. Also have a few of the old consoles and a pile of cartridges here but nothing to which they can be hooked up. Couple of Atari systems and an Intellivision. I have a Nabu PC and a ColecoVision Adam, and these at least has composite out so I can hook them up to a TV.

[james]

Update: (Error 108-0170)

Yesterday, the USB Lan Adaptor I ordered arrived so I bit the bullet and did the update on the third system. Download went smoothly enough, was noticeably faster than the wireless and the install completed without any fuss.

I did however have the same problem after the update. Finally got a guy at tech support who was able to help me trace it to a conflict with a setting on my router. As it turns out, the MTU on the Wii U is set to 1500 and for whatever reason, at some point, I'd set it to 1400 on the router. After dropping it to 1300 on the Wii U, everything was fine, it was able to perform its stupid validation to appease the DRM daemons. I'm a little pissed off with myself as this is something I should have been clued in on.

I'm wondering now how much faster the actual update download also would have gone had I not been such an idiot..

[gaijinpunch]

My gaming repertoire consists mostly of emulators / MAME to run old ColecoVision games, which my kids love, and the occasional arcade game from the days of yore. Also have a few of the old consoles and a pile of cartridges here but nothing to which they can be hooked up. Couple of Atari systems and an Intellivision. I have a Nabu PC and a ColecoVision Adam, and these at least has composite out so I can hook them up to a TV.

[/quote]

You may have seen my site. I've not added content in a while, but it focuses mainly on 16-bit and 32-bit games. I started it to showcase stuff I was punting on Yahoo. Then, it kind of spawned into what it is. I'm not playing much now, as the genre I prefer (arcade action games) takes a lot of wits, practice, and time... none of which I have much of these days. But, I do try to throw out a credit every now and again.

[sublight]

Will US-bought games work on a Japan system? I'm assuming they won't, but since I'll be back in the States for Xmas I may as well check.

[gaijinpunch]

No. Pretty sure all Nintendo consoles (including Wii U) are region-blocked. PS3 and 360 left it up to the developer, so there's a mish-mash of region blocked and region free games. In the good old days, hand helds had no region protection, but that's changing.

[sublight]

Thanks, I figured as much.