We bought a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. We bought it in the US and had planned on bringing it to Ireland with us, tucked in one of our suitcases, but didn't have room and had it shipped over with some other things that were coming later. We got the Wii Sports with it, and had wanted to get the Wii Fit, but couldn't find one. We tried to find one here in Ireland but couldn't, so we bought Mario Kart and even bought an extra wheel. What we didn't know, but found out real soon on Christmas Day, was that the Irish Nintendo games will not play on US Nintendos! This is not indicated on the box. When you buy a DVD here, you can look on the back for a code to see if it is able to be played on US DVD players. Some are, some aren't. But we've been looking on the back of the DVDs and have bought some and they have played fine. We called Nintendo and told them our problem. They said, "Sorry", but would not help us. They would not let us send this one back and trade it for a US Mario Kart. They even said, they have had many calls about it but cannot help the people with the problem. So not only are we out the money for the Mario Kart, we have no games to play until we can make a visit back to the US to purchase one. I am going to check on Amazon.comuk to see if they might have any. Here's my question though - Nintendo makes the games and the machines. Why do they have to make them different? Why can't them make them so there is ONE machine and ONE type of games sold in both countries, or all over the world for that matter?
8 comments:
that sucks!!! you should try returning the game to the store you bought it from, explain it to them and see if they'll take it back. I agree with you, and think the same thing about the dvds, WHY do they have to be different?
We bought our Wii with an extra remote and extra nun-Chuk (You need this for some games like boxing) We have just played the sports that came with our edition, and we have had a ball! I understand and empathize with your frustration though.
I don't know...but you could always order from amazon.com (the US version) and buy some games...it sucks but thats how you're going to have to do it because if you intend on playing it a few years from now then when you bring it home, you can keep buying games here...it really won't cost much to ship the games quickly to you, and if you order a couple it'll cost even less because they are high in price but low in weight...the only reason it took so long for me to send you my order through the US amazon was because I did the cheapest shipping available...at least go and check on the US amazon and when you get to the last screen where the costs are totalled for shipping and you don't like it, you can still backout...hope that helps...
Also, did you connect your wii to the internet yet? It has wi-fi capabilities so all you should have to do is give it access if you have wireless internet in your house...once, you connect to the internet, you can access what is called the Virtual Console...the Virtual Console (or it might be called the Wii Shop Channel) allows you to download old Nintendo games for a small fee...I know all of the Super Mario games are on there as well as the Legend of Zelda which I know you liked to play...I know this doesn't help with your Mario Kart problem but at least those old games can hold you over until your other games get there...
Stick, we also bought the extra remote and the double charger (so we don't have to keep putting batteries in the remotes. We do need the extra nun-chuk though, but I'll just order it when I order the games. Thanks for the suggestions, Babs, we'll do that. In fact, I'll see how much it costs to ship the Wii Fit. We're really bored here at night and get tired of watching movies.
It's called Regional Lockout. It's a practice that has been going on for the last 25+ years. Many industries practice it. They claim a bunch of self-righteous reasons for doing it, but it mostly comes down to them being able to make more money off of a particular product. A price equivalent product sold in a another country may be significantly cheaper than the one you buy in the US. Or vice versa. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region_encoding
You can always sell your game on ebay or amazon too, and hopefully get most of your money back. That still sucks. I knew that about the DVDs, but not about video games.
That is sad, but I also was with someone that learned that the hard way when we visited Scotland a few years ago. I LOVE our Wii Fit, our entire family does. Except when it mocks me.... but I can laugh along with it. Maybe one of us here can buy it and mail it for you? There are some evelopes the post office has that is a flat rate, if you can fit it in the box, the shipping is like 7.95 or so....
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