Saturday, April 13, 2013

Project: Outlet Wii (13/4/2013)

Project Outlet Wii has been a success! Friday I went to a flea market to pick up some controllers and instead picked up a (official) Wii Power supply for $2! All I needed was to borrow the sensor bar from a friend, but I'm sure I will have my own in no time!

As for now the system works perfectly, I formatted the system right away to give it more of a personal feel to myself. The game that was inside is Madden '09 All-Play, nothing special but it was free! So from here on I will be keeping an eye out for a sensor bar and games to play.

(7/April/2013)

Its been over a year since I've been frequenting the Goodwill Outlet store, through good times and bad. Whenever I have the chance to pick up even a small part of a system I may have a chance of running across somewhere in the distant future, I sometimes pick it up. I say sometimes because often times I think I'll never find this or that and pass up on things that I, usually within a few bin change outs, find the rest of and wish I had originally picked up that other part.

Well today starts the documentation of Project: Outlet Wii, a project I've decided to document after one extremely sad trip to the Goodwill Outlet store. I had scoured the bins as well as I could only to have a couple, who came in while I was waiting for a change out, to find a mint condition black Nintendo Wii with matching controller, somewhere along the items I had clearly overlooked, somehow! I'm still not sure how this slipped my grasp, but rest assured I left defeated that day.

Although I didn't manage to score the black Wii, I have seen a few other people score Nintendo Wii systems there before, so this was something I had always hoped I could piece together. I will be running through some of the items I've managed to find thus far, as well as what is left that I currently need. As I find the items I will also be keeping an updated version of this article (reposted).

It all begins when I found the stand, a simple, silver plastic piece with the round clear bottom that I knew once had a system inside it, it wasn't much but it was part of the overall plan. I'm still unsure of which way I may position my potential Wii, once found, because I've found my PS2 doesn't read games as well when it is up on its side, an issue I'm unsure of whether or not the Wii is plagued with. Either way it was still something I wanted to pick up.

I've picked up countless amounts of the silicone Wii condoms, as I like to call them, but for the purpose of this article I'm going to forego them and move into what I call the Wiils, see what I did there? I found 2, one of which is the official Nintendo Wii Wheel; while playing racing games on a Wii before I never found these attachments necessary, but having them doesn't hurt. The third party wheel is small and less comfortable, but since I've never used them I can't be sure how they will feel until I actually use them during game play.

Next I happened to find something the Nintendo Wii just couldn't work without! Sadly, no, it wasn't the power cable, although I swear I did find one but I was either dreaming or its really good a hiding from me. But I did happen to find the AV cables, official and dirty as hell! It took a long time to clean them, so I hope they work!

Well what is a gaming system without a controller? Sadly the Wii won't allow for Gamecube controllers to work its unique dashboard, so I had to find a Nintendo Wii remote, well I sort of did! This is a Nyko Wand, its supposedly compatible, but it is missing the battery cover and I have no Wii to test it on.

Not only does the Nintendo Wii demand you use a Wiimote or something compatible, often times you need the nunchuck to play some games, and that is exactly what I found next! I had already found a black silicone slip for the nunchuck so I put it on there. It doesn't look bad, but as with everything I seriously hope it even works!

Even if I had a complete Nintendo Wii, what would I need to use its full potential? A game, obviously! So when I came across a soaking wet, but complete, copy of Wii Sports I picked it up. Sure it was soaking wet, the disc looks like it needs resurfaced and the manual is wavy, but it was a Wii game I knew I could play, if I happened to run across the system.

And finally we've reached the end of this article, with great news! I found a Nintendo Wii, although the system looks to be in good shape, the fans don't look dirty, the system was banged around in the bins to the point the face was ripped off. I happened to find the system, with a mystery game inside, and later I found the face in a completely different bin, but they went back together pretty well, but not perfectly.

So at the time I'm originally posting this article (7/April/2013) I need the sensor bar and the AC adapter to even see if the system works. I sincerely hope it does, but if not it won't be the end of the world, because I picked it all up for $.79 a pound. I just never know what I may run across next, hopefully those two last things I just mentioned!

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