For Hyrule

Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria

Hi gang.

Some time ago I mentioned that I was taking another EF group to France, Germany and the Alps in March.

Remember that?  Well, I'd been thinking about it more and more, and honestly - I wasn't as excited about the trip as I probably should've been.  I mean, yes, I really wanted to see Neuschwanstein Castle (however the hell you spell that), but that was about it.  Half the tour was in Paris, and I really, really despise the French.

EF Tours

So, after talking it over with the Mrs., I decided to hand over my Group Leader duties to one of the teachers that was going to be chaperoning on the tour and bow out of the tour.  This freed up a chaperone spot for another teacher - the same one that had gotten sick a year earlier and had given me Group Leader duties for the Italy trip.  It was my way of paying her back, I guess.  Plus, this way, I can now start planning for next year's epic 2015 trip. . . which I'm really looking forward to (more to come on that later.)

. . .so long as it's not France.  F*** the French.

Anyway, since I was no long going to Europe in March, I decided to treat myself to an irresponsible purchase.  The timing was perfect, too.  Recently, our Nintendo Wii had stopped playing certain games.  At first, it was just dual-layered discs like Super Mario Smash Bros Brawl. and The Last Story. . . but then nearly every other disc wouldn't play on the system:

The Screen of Death.

As it turns out, the lasers in Wii consoles that read the game discs burn out after five or six years.  This makes total sense, as we were one of the early Wii users, buying our system back in November of 2007.  So now, as it were, it was time to replace the system.

But how?

I had two choices:  I could either a.) buy a refurbished Wii system, at a tune of about $100, or b.) spend $300 and upgrade to the dismal-selling Wii U.

These guys always make me cringe.

I put weeks and weeks of research into this decision.  I spoke with relatives, friends and coworkers, I sought counsel from nerds in video games stores, and I stared at websites for hours and hours.  In the end, I realized that the overall consensus made sense:  it would be better to upgrade to a better system, that was backwards compatible (it would play all of our old games), had better graphics and gameplay, would allow us to play our games much longer than buying another old Wii system, and give us a ton of new features and games to utilize.

The problem was, however, tracking down the one I wanted.

Nintendo dropped the ball releasing this system.  It had nearly a two-year drop on the PS4 and X-Box1, but the chimps in its marketing department barely sold the damn thing, and it remains one of Nintendo's worst console releases to date.  This fortunately forced the unit drop in price to $250 for the Basic 8gb console and $300 for the Deluxe 32gb console.

Legend of Zelda Deluxe 32gb Wii U Bundle

In addition, there were two 'bundle' options for the 32gb release - a Super Mario Bros. bundle (that came with included a Super Mario Bros. game and a limited edition GamePad controller) and a Legend of Zelda bundle (that came with an HD re-release of LOZ Windwaker and a limited edition GamePad controller.)  You could find the Mario one practically everywhere, but the damn Zelda one - the one I was after - was ridiculously overpriced on Amazon  (my go-to shopping site) and unavailable in major retailers.

So I decided to play the Waiting Game.

Showing how WindWaker looks on either gaming console. . .

After a few weeks of prowling around online and poking my head into stores, I was finally able to reserve a Zelda Bundle Wii U at a local GameStop.  Yesterday on my way home from work I swung in and, for $300, upgraded my nerd gear:

BAM

Last night I spent a couple hours hooking the damn thing up, installing all the software, registering a user account, and updating all the data that was needed in order to operate the system.

Wii U GamePad

This console is much more complicated than the original, but as long as you're not completely technologically retarded you can manage it.  The system basically uses a tablet (called a GamePad, mentioned earlier) as the main controller.

The tablet's screen serves as a secondary screen while playing a game on one's TV (most commonly employed as a map screen, item screen, etc.)  However - and this was a selling point for me - if you're in the middle of playing a game and someone (say, your wife or children) want to watch something on the TV, at the press of a button you can transfer your game onto the GamePad wirelessly and continue playing as if you were on a handheld device.

The GamePad itself - and this feature especially - is practically worth the $300 in my opinion.

This process was a pain in the ass. . .

Anyway, after work tonight I decided I'd undertake the long, pain-in-the-ass process of trans-ferring all my old virtual games (old school NES and SNES games you can download to play on the Wii), save data, Miis (the animated characters you design on the Wii in order to play certain games), and other data from my original Wii system to my new Wii U system.  This process took hours, and you can tell the geniuses at Nintendo hadn't thought this through initially - this was definitely an "oh shit" afterthought on their part.

Basically the process involved installing software from the Wii U on an SD card, installing software on the old Wii, reinserting the SD card into the Wii, transferring all the old data onto the SD card, removing the SD card and inserting it into the Wii U, and offloading all the data into the new system.  If it sounds easy enough, it's because I'm omitting, like, a billion little steps that were written by jargon-freaks.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Anyway, long story short, everything's up and running and the console was by far the best purchase I've made in a long, long time.  True, it doesn't have a lot of third party titles out yet, but, as an original Nintendo fan from way back, I'm not buying a Nintendo to play EA Sports games - I'm buying a Nintendo to play my favorite franchise, the Legend of Zelda, as well as other old favorites like Mario, Metroid, etc. etc. etc.

Alayna fell sick yesterday with whatever the hell Abby had last week (it was only a matter of time), so Kris took yesterday off and took her into the doctor, etc.  Today, I took the day off, and fortunately Alayna just wanted to sit around watching movies in our bedroom. . .

. . .which of course freed up Yours Truly to do the one thing he'd been looking forward to doing for a long, long time.

Saving Hyrule from the forces of evil.

- Brian