In the beginning things
It seemed like a good idea to turn on WiiConnect24. I have cable internet and a lot of bandwidth to spare. Automatic system updates sounds nice so why not? Well, it slowly cooks up the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) in your Wii, that’s why!
Ever since my first PSX overheated I’ve been very careful to make sure that this would never happen again and still I managed to fry my Wii in about three weeks time. I followed Nintendo’s placing instructions very carefully and read the manual maybe five times. It is fully expected that these things will overheat when you don’t use the stand placing them on their side or don’t allow for enough room to breathe but I used the official stand and there was more than enough room on all sides for the heat to dissipate.
What going is wrong?
I first noticed problems when I was watching my brother play Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. During the animation that shows Samus entering her ship there are plenty of smoke effects around the lift platform and these looked pretty fucked up. At this time I still attributed it to a glitch in the game.
A short while later, during a session of Link’s Crossbow Training the graphics artifacts returned in some of the stages. Again, mainly in the areas with particle and smoke effects. At this time it started to become really annoying. It’s like when you just washed your car and then some bird shits on it. No matter how clean it looks, the only thing you can see is that piece of birdshit that’s messing up the picture.
When I later popped in Resident Evil 4 the glitches were all over the place (thanks to all the fog effects) and it became painfully apparent that there was something very wrong. Below is a YouTube movie that also shows Resident Evil 4 on the Wii with the exact same glitches.
You can see bands of light green pixels appearing accross the screen. Especially to the left and right and on the fog effects. Maybe my Wii is not that far gone yet but otherwise it looks exactly the same.
What is happens?
From what I have gathered so far the earliest warning sings are graphics clipping and texture stretching artifacts. This is the first signal that your GPU is overheating and at this point it is not too late to save it by turning power off. Though if you follow Nintendo’s placing instructions the chances are that you will never ever notice this because the cooking happens slowly when you’re not playing.
You see, one of the main culprits is WiiConnect24. When you turn this on your Wii will start to build up heat much like how it would when the Wii is active. Unlike in active mode though, the cooling fan is disabled in WiiConnect24 mode so it will not spin periodically to blow away excess heat. So the early warning sings do not apply, there will be no clipping graphics or stretching textures. There will be just one otherwise beatiful sunday morning when you turn on your Wii to find it suddenly sports a shitload of green pixel bands on the particle effects in your games.
As far as I understand it, the same thing can happen when you are playing virtual console games. Even though the system is active and working the fan will not be activated so heat will builld up and eventually damage the GPU. If this is really so then that really sucks because I’m a huge fan of these games and having to quit just to let the system cool off is lame.
In the end things
Well the Wii is currently back to Nintendo to get it fixed or replaced. Whatever they decide to do. They assured me that the virtual console games would be transferred and I’m assuming my save games and the rest of my system state will be too. I could live with losing my save games but I’m not going to pay again for those virtual console downloads – already spend way too much money on that stuff!
Nintendo service is apparently aiming to get my Wii replaced or fixed in three weeks but with christmas and newyear just around the corner things might take a while longer… Geez, a really nice time for the Wii to break down. Got a short vacation around new year and planned to get some gaming done. Got some new games too but they will have to wait.
Planning on getting one next month the PS3 arrived sooner than expected. At first I seriously set out to get another Wii but that proved very hard on a sunday. Before traveling beyond the city a PS3 proved to be an even better alternative. Got good games (and one lesser one) for it and now I have even more gaming to do.
I really hate not having the Wii around though. Now that my good brother is also heavily into gaming it really becomes very obvious how the Wii is so much better suited for two or more players. It is so much a core part of the system that it almost feels awkward when dealing with the PS3 in similar scenarios. More on that in a next post though for a comparison between the Wii and PS3.