If It's Not One Thing...

Microsoft reports that my 360--or a 360, anyway--is en route back to me and scheduled for delivery on Friday. I'm looking forward to finally getting in some time with Burnout Paradise. A bunch of people I know are still playing online pretty regularly so it seems I haven't totally missed the boat on that one.

But that's still a few days off, and I was hoping to spend some of that time with Lords of Thunder, truly one of the rockin'est shooters of all time. This TurboGrafx 16 classic, with some of the most smoldering guitar licks ever heard in a video game, hit the Wii's Virtual Console on Monday, and the game is a blast. The whole thing is like the notebook doodles of a big-haired 14-year-old ACDC fan circa 1988 brought to life, with an awesomely cheesy soundtrack to match.

Unfortunately, my Wii has started doing something very unusual. All of my Virtual Console games, including Lords of Thunder, have suddenly started behaving as if I am constantly holding down the 1 button on my Wii remote. At first I thought the problem was with the remote itself, but it's not. I've tested it with a number of Wii disc games--No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, and so on--and they all respond perfectly each time I hit the 1 button. Yet every last Virtual Console game on my system seems to think the 1 button is in a permanent state of pressnitude, and this makes playing the games pretty much impossible.

I emailed Nintendo about this using the link on their tech support web page. After submitting my email, I got this statement:

"Due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii, we're currently experiencing extremely high email volumes and it may take several days before we are able to respond."

Just a thought--maybe y'all could take some of the truckloads of money that are coming in every day due to the unprecedented popularity of the Wii and use it to hire a few new reps so that your customers who are contributing to said unprecedented popularity don't have to wait several days for a response.

Oh well. I guess for the time being I'll have to continue spending my free time the same way I have been for the past few weeks: watching way too much Law & Order: Criminal Intent on my computer via Netflix. The funny thing is that I don't even think it's a particularly outstanding show, not like The Shield or Six Feet Under, and I wouldn't even bother putting it on my Netflix queue and watching the DVDs. (I certainly wouldn't bother watching it as it airs. Watching TV on TV is for suckers.) But there's just something compulsively watchable about Vincent D'Onofrio as Det. Robert Goren, and Netflix has just made it so damn easy with this Watch Instantly feature, that I find myself sometimes watching two or three 43-minute episodes a day.

By the way, I have an interview tomorrow morning for a technical writer position. I'm hoping it goes well, as I'd really like to get out of the whole customer service racket, and I'm confident about my ability to do this job and do it well. But I hate job interviews, and thinking about it is already giving me the jitters. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Contrary to what they said, Nintendo responded to my email in a matter of hours, not days. However, the response is basically a non-response, saying that they can't help me by email and that I should call them. So I'll call them tomorrow.

Also, I've determined that the issue isn't with the remote at all. I disconnected the remote altogether in the middle of a Virtual Console game and the game continued to behave as if the 1 button was being held down. Something's gone screwy in the part of my Wii's brain that handled VC games, it seems.

UPDATE TWO: I just called Nintendo. The rep I spoke to obviously had never heard of this issue before and had no idea what might be causing it. She quickly scheduled a callback, presumably with someone who might actually be able to help me, and I should be hearing from them in 24-72 hours. Terrific.