Finally, a Wii

January 28, 2007

The long national nightmare is over–I finally found a Nintendo Wii this morning.  It’s been a month-long quest to secure one of these consoles, every weekend (and some weeknights) prowling the Targets and Walmarts and Gamestops of Louisville trying to find one of these little white boxes.  And at last, the quest has ended.

Wasn’t quite as arduous a quest as Bilbo Baggins’ journey thru Middle Earth but towards the end there it did feel epic.  I was beginning to think I might not ever find one, and this morning when I saw Walmart’s circular in the Sunday paper I thought I might be too late. 

But Walmart is not the first place most gamers would go looking, and a Walmart circular in the Sunday paper is quite rare.  So I figured there was a small chance some of the systems would still be in the store.  I drove over at 9 a.m. this morning to the Hurstbourne Walmart, lo and behold they had four units left.  I snatched one up and am going to install it this afternoon.

First I need to decide what to unhook from my television.  Because there’s only two component inputs, one already goes to the DVD player and the other to my PS2.  Meaning until I can secure some kind of component video switch I will have to replace one of those two with the Wii.

Oh, and speaking of component cables–don’t buy the one from Nintendo.  They want a king’s ransom for what is essentially just some wire wrapped in fancy plastic.  Their model goes for $60, whereas Walmart has a third-party component cable for just $20.