Ben's 12 Days of Christmas Memories - Day 11: The Wii U

This Christmas is both a good, and horrible memory. I didn't realize just how much things would change after that year, but that's just how things go...

(Early Wii U Promo Video)

The year 2012 was a major turning point for me. That December I finished college, and was about to be forced out into the real world. I didn't know where to find a job, or what I was exactly going to do with my life, but I figured everything would work out fine. I still had my job at the bakery, and things seemed to be going pretty good. This blog was keeping me busy in my free time, and I was spending time with friends whenever I got the chance. Most of them were in the same boat as me, so we knew things would be changing before long -- so we made the most of what time we had. I guess my parents wanted to make my last Christmas as a college kid special as well.

Leading up to Christmas one of my reviews here won a review of the month contest over at GameFAQs, and I was given a pretty nice cash reward for it. Using that I decided I would finally give the game Borderlands 2 a try. It looked fun enough, but it wasn't something I wanted to spend my hard earned money on. Now free money? That was a different story. Once the gift card arrived I added it to my Amazon account, and bought the game that was currently on sale. I didn't think much else about it, but once it arrived I noticed something was wrong. First of all the game had been left outside all day and looked like it was frozen. This scared the heck out of me, but thankfully after leaving it inside for awhile the white splotches on the underside of the disc vanished. That was when I noticed the second problem however. The copy Amazon sent me? It was was the Asian release. Yep, that meant if I kept it I couldn't download any of the DLC/expansions the game was well known for having. So disappointed me had to contact the Amazon seller, and send the game back. The good news was I was able to get a refund, but the bad news was no one else had the game on sale. So I had to settle for something else... Or rather, three somethings.

Thanks to my refund of Borderlands 2, I was able to buy 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, Golden Sun Dark Dawn, and Doctor Lautrec. Now I didn't care for Doctor Lautrec, nor did I even open Golden Sun (still sitting on my shelf), but 999 was something special. I've mentioned this many times here, but 999 will always be one of my all time favorites. I love the escape rooms, and it's dark plot twist filled story is something I'll never forget. This is the game I played leading up to Christmas, and the game I finished on Christmas Eve. Between helping out at the bakery and talking with friends, 999 was pretty much my life. But then Christmas came...

It wasn't a surprise that I got it (as I was the one who tracked it down on release weekend), but the Wii U was basically my "final" major Christmas gift before I entered the real world. I managed to find the basic white model at a local Walmart, and my parents willingly paid for it. They also picked me up a few games to go along with it (Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge, Scribblenauts, and New Super Mario Bros U), while my uncle gave me a copy of Transformers Fall of Cybertron (the first gift he had given me in years, and the final gift I'd ever receive from him). My dad also found me a copy of Zelda Phantom Hourglass (which was something I had been searching for), so overall I was loaded with games that year. It was pretty amazing, and I really appreciated everything they had given me; however what came next wasn't the happiest of memories.

Remember the launch of the Wii U? Well let me explain. When that thing came out it released only with it's basic OS and features. It could play Wii U games, but that's about it. Everything advertised like the Miiverse, online play, etc were locked behind the day one update, and that made the Wii U mostly unusable until you did it. So first thing in the morning I turned the Wii U on and got that started, but then something went wrong. Error, update failed. This is something I would see time and time again throughout the entire day. The update would get to roughly 90%, and then stop. My Wii u was pretty much bricked...

The next day I was able to return it at Walmart for another one, but it too ended up the same way. I ran home, hooked it up, waited an hour for the download, and once again got the error message. Went on to try a few more times before taking it back once again, only to have a 3rd Wii U brick on me as well. Of course I called customer support to ask for help, but the news I received there wasn't the greatest. Apparently the issue was with my ISP having issues with the download, and that in return caused a corrupt download file. According to customer service it could be easily fixed by deleting the corrupt download and trying again, but there was one problem. The download manager needed to do that? Well... It was included in the day one update! Yep, I couldn't fix it without having the very update I was trying to install. So how could I fix it? Well the rep I was speaking to was required to tell me to send it in for repairs, but he strongly urged me to just return it to the store. He wasn't allowed to flat out say it, but when I brought it up he gave me a round about answer along the lines of "I can't say it, but you know what you should do." So once again I took it back.

This time I went to a different Walmart to return the console, and strangely the tax was different there. I got more money back than what I originally spent, and because of that (along with some extra cash I already had) I was able to upgrade to the deluxe model with more storage. This ended up being a really good move on my part, as many games on the Wii U would require storage my previous Wii U did not have. Also instead of taking my console home to install the update, I brought it over to my grandparent's house instead. They had a different ISP, and it had no problem downloading the update. So after three days of running around, I finally had myself a Wii U. That night some friends of mine would come over to play it, and everything turned out fine. Since that day I have ran into the same problem again, but thanks to the download manager it wasn't an issue. Just had to delete the corrupt install, and attempt to redownload. Eventually my ISP got things together as well, so the problem did stop happening eventually.

What kills me about the whole Wii U ordeal was what I thought to myself as it happened. At the time it had "ruined" Christmas for me, and I remembered thinking "well, at least next year can't be any worse." Yeah... Christmas 2013? That was the day before my uncle died...