Things I've noticed: Nintendo Customer Service ROCKS!!!!

Due to a consistent disc error with my Wii console, I contacted the folks at Nintendo Customer Services and was told to mail my console in (I blogged about it here). 11 days after I mailed it to their offices in Vancouver, I got it back.

It works like new! In the end the cost of $89 (CDN), was fine by me - they even put the machine under a new warranty, so if anything goes wrong for the next year it's all covered.

The folks on the phone were great, the service was reasonably priced and prompt.

Now I'm off to play!

Things I've noticed: My love affair with board games

We're basically at the one-week mark of me living without my Wii console - and its time I start exploring my board game collection. We've got all the standards, Monopoly (Star Wars), Settlers of Cattan (with most of the expansions), and even a board game based on the Vampire the Requiem Role Playing Game.

The game I think I'm going to focus on over the next week, however, is Puerto Rico. I've heard a lot of good things about it, and since it was given to me about six months ago, I haven't taken it out of the box.

Apparently you play plantation owners in 1700s Puerto Rico and try to create the best plantation. It sounds kind of like Settlers, but at the same time I've heard it compared to Chess in the strategic nature of the game.

It's kind of funny, just like I've got a "To Be Read" shelf of books and a "To Be Seen" shelf of movies. I've got a "To Be Played" shelf of games (both Board and Video), and yet I'll often wander around my house looking for things to do...

Anyway, I've clearly started to ramble, so good night everybody!

Genre Character of the Week: Mega Man

It's been almost half a week since I sent my Wii console away, and even though I don't play a lot of games, I can't help but think about what I would be playing if I had access to the machine. This of course leads me to thinking back to my favourite games and specifically my favourite characters in games. This week, a little robot called Mega Man.

I first came across the character in Mega Man 2 at a video store and after one hour of play I knew he would end up being one of my favourite characters of the classic Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). His back story in a nutshell - created by Dr. Light, Mega Man began as a robotic lab assistant. After treachery by Dr. Light's partner, Dr. Willy, Mega Man is converted into a fighting robot and must fight through multiple worlds to get to Dr. Willy.

The main part of what I love about Mega Man is the structure of the game - as the player you can select any game world you like to start in. All of the bosses are also robots and tough to beat, but if you defeat them in a certain order, you make your job much simpler. So the game is kind of a cross between a standard platformer (in which a character jumps from platform to platform), a puzzle game, and an open world game (where you get to pick the order in which you do things.) Also as Mega Man defeats each world boss, he gets that boss's power as well, something which can be used in many different ways throughout the rest of the game.

I think my favourite part of Mega Man is that after decades of playing the original game I still come across references to him today, whether in an a capella version of his theme song, references to the old Captain N: The Game Master cartoon, or one of my favouite online games StinkoMan 20X6.

Recently Mega Man 10 has come out for the Wii virtual console and I've got to say, once I get my machine back, I really want to give a try to this new game with an old school feel.

Trouble with my Wii Counsole

Last week we had our young niece and nephew over for a visit and were informed that our Wii wasn't working so well. Regardless of which game disc the kids tried to use, they got a "Unable to Read Disc" message. So on Tuesday I went online and found a suggestion to use the Wii Lens Cleaner to fix my problem.

I bought the cleaner - it had simple instructions and the cleaning pad came out more than a little dirty when I finished, but unfortunately the disc error did not go away. Our Wii is three years old so we are definitely past the warranty coverage, but as the machine didn't work I decided to give the folks at Nintendo Customer Service a try.

After a 15 minute phone call, we had a solution. The very helpful customer service guy I chatted to explained that while the Wii Lens Cleaner is a great preventative tool, in my console's case it was a little too late. I would have to send the machine away for a repair.

The charge broke down as follows:

$75 for the repair

$10 for shipping (there and back), and

$5 for tax (all in Canadian funds)

In return they promise to have my console back to me within 12 business days of them receiving it (they should get it in Vancouver around Wednesday), and if the machine is irreparable they will replace my console. Either way I'll have a new machine with another year of warranty by the end of this month.

I'm hoping that this post will begin my very positive experience of how the good folks at Nintendo care for their customers, but we'll see - either way I'll keep you posted.