Tokyo and tech through the eyes of a split pea

Region Unfriendly Wii

So, how were your Christmas and New Year’s celebrations? Did you get anything and everything you were hoping for?  For this year’s winter vacation I decided to get some quiet fresh air in Central Oregon.  Santa did not disappoint, even in this remote part of the U.S.

One of the first things I do after landing on U.S. soil is ransack a newsstand.  I’m a periodical junkie, and have been known to spend as much as $80 on newspapers and magazines in a single purchase.  So as I was doing my periodic periodical catchup, I noticed a number of articles mentioning the deadweight loss that Christmas brings.  Wouldn’t have given it much thought except for the fact that it was mentioned in the obvious – such as the WSJ – to even the New Yorker.  Are we seeing a trickle effect of Al Gore’s global warning message to the fringes?  Speaking of – I just picked up An Inconvenient Truth, and how inconvenient that this DVD should be region encoded.  This is a message that should be region free!

And speaking of region free …

the Nintendo Wii is not!  Yep – Santa Clause got me a Japanese Wii this year (even delivered it to the U.S. – a house with a chimney really worked!), and after having a blast playing Wii Sports, it was time to pick up Zelda along with some US GameCube games.  But I gave Nintendo a little too much credit thinking they wouldn’t cripple the Wii with such ridiculous features as region locking.  A little pre-shopping Internet research would have saved my time and money regarding Wii-specific titles – non-Japanese Wii games are simply not recognized on a Japanese Wii.  But what about GameCube games?

There are a few mods that let all GC games regardless of originating region run on US GameCubes, and Freeloader seems to be the most popular.  Turns out that it even works on the Wii!  So I immediately ordered it online.

What a mistake.

Being an early-adopter has its costs, and this was one of them.  It turns out that when you use Freeloader on the Wii for GameCube games, it only works on the US Wii.  So US GameCube and Wii owners can play GameCube games from any part of the world, but Japanese Wii owners are left heartbroken.  Strange that Nintendo would opt to penalize their Japanese brethren again – the first time being making them buy Wii Sports, whereas US gamers received Wii Sports for free!

So let these Wii caveats be known – a Japanese Wii can only play Japanese Wii and GameCube games, and Freeloader doesn’t help.  Additionally, you’ll need a GameCube controller for GC games – apparently even the Wii Classic controller can’t be used.

Here’s hoping someone figures out a way to nix all this region locking nonsense soon, and let gamers just have fun!