Tag: Nintendo

Wii would like to sentence you

A Florida man whose home was notoriously raided by undercover detectives who stopped to play Wii bowling (who were subsequently sanctioned for their actions) has agreed to a plea bargain that will send him to prison for three years.

Michael Difalco, of Lakeland, Florida was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in the state pen and surrendered a ton of property under civil asset forfeiture laws. He was the drug dealer who caught narcotics detectives on camera playing his Wii, 20 minutes into a raid on his home.

The officers received “retraining” and a letter of reprimand. Though Difalco’s lawyer and other defense attorneys in the area raised objections to the police conduct, the search was not invalidated. DENIED. The worst it got for law enforcement was a viral video of one rather large and in charge detective jumping up and down after nailing two strikes in a row on Wii Sports’ bowling mini-game.

Apple not in the pesticide business … yet

This time it isn’t an employee falling off a roof or out of a window. This time, it’s pesticide.

Foxconn, the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics, is responsible for assembling the Xbox 360, the PS3, the Wii, the iPhone and more. Another thing it’s famous for: the death of its employees by suicide, along with “alleged” pressuring by industry giants regarding their products.

After 250 workers at the company’s Chennai, India plant were hospitalized, Foxconn had no choice but to shut the facility down. Workers experienced what has been described as “sensations of giddiness and nausea”. According to Foxconn, this “may have been caused by the routine spraying of pesticide at the production facility.” Whoops.

Out of the 250 hospitalized workers, 28 are still in the hospital. The plant is responsible for mobile phone parts.

For Bryan McBournie, it might be more prudent to exclaim, “Where Is Your Clean Air Now?”

Wii would like to get robbed

We’re not quite out of this recession stuff yet. As such, we all need some extra money every now and then. A pair of women from Toledo, Ohio thought it would be a good idea to try and sell their Nintendo Wii consoles via Craigslist. Ladies: it is never a good idea to conduct video game business over Craigslist.

For that matter, it’s never a good idea to conduct any business over Craigslist.

In two completely unrelated incidents, one woman was assaulted when a prospective “purchaser” came to her home.

“As I kind of went to close the screen door, he then proceeded to come in,” she said. “He punched me in the face, grabbed the Wii off the end of the table and was gone before I even knew it.”

The other lady’s transaction went by without a hitch. Or so she thought. After the buyer had left with the console, however, the lady noticed they’d paid in counterfeit bills. Double burn!

A bump on the noggin will get your engine going

Welcome to one of the best headlines in a long time. According the news wire, 24 year-old Briton Amanda Flowers has become a “sex addict” after falling off her Wii Fit board.

That’s just rich.

It seems that, courtesy of the fall, she’s developed persistent sexual arousal syndrome. Now any time Amanda is around anything vibrating or pulsing, like a mobile phone or blender, she becomes aroused. Like I said, her engine is going.

“It began as a twinge down below before surging through my body”, she says of the onset of an attack.

Provided this is actually and truly a real story, this isn’t one hundred percent great for Amanda. On the one hand, she went from playing Wii Fit to developing a serious condition. On the other, most people that fall off things get hurt, not a bunch of unprovoked orgasms.

I can easily see the confusion

It’s so very easy to get a Wii controller confused with a hand gun. I mean, just think of it:

  • One’s metal, the other’s plastic.
  • Their unique and distinctive shapes are so very similar to each other.
  • Wiimotes are well known for containing bullets.

Yup, if a child has easy access and reach to an already loaded handgun with the safety off and thus ends up fatally shooting him or herself with said gun, with the mother of said child in the same room as this is happening but not noticing any of it going on, it’s clearly because the child mistook the gun for a Wiimote … and certainly not bad parenting, right? Right?

But are the prison outfits colored plaid?

We’ve heard all the reports of prisoners getting totally sweet perks like cable television, satellite, game consoles and other luxuries that a lot people not in jail normally can’t afford to have. If you’re one of those people that feels righteous indignation about those events, hold onto your hat. There is a plan by the Scottish prison system to raise “literacy” and “numeracy” skills among its prison population by giving the inmates access to Nintendo DS systems. DUM DUM DUM.

The program would be tested in a small number of prison libraries and would involve literacy experts working with the prisoners. Prison officials note that inmates already have access to PlayStations, so going with the DS is seen as consistent and, perhaps, an improvement.

The devices, fitted with “brain training” software, will be put on trial on the advice of Scottish government officials who believe they will reduce the chances of the prisoners reoffending after they have served their sentences by improving their employment prospects. A government study into the education of prisoners, Learning in Custody: Report of the Offender Learning in Custody Workstream, concluded that convicts would benefit from the devices, which are currently being used in many primary schools to raise attainment.

However, not everyone is hunkey dorey with this plan. A Scottish group representing taxpayers calls the plan “ridiculous,” given that many Sottish citizens can’t even afford DSes for their kids in this current economic climate. If they stopped serving haggis, they might get somewhere,  though.

Wii would like to bust your drugs

Guns drawn, cops busted down the door of a suspected south Florida drug dealer, then proceeded to rock it out – on Wii bowling. A security cam captured some playing video games while others searched for drugs and weapons.

A sheriff’s detective assigned to catalog the goods repeatedly bowled frames – and when she nailed strikes on two in a row, she raised her arms triumphantly, jumping and kicking.

Chiefs of police in three other jurisdictions forming the task force that performed the raid likewise bemoaned the bad publicity. But it could have been much worse than that. At least those two Japanese guys in the Nintendo commercials didn’t show up at the door while the cop was making some strikes.

The pirate life be a turbulent one

Yar! It be hard out there for a pirate!

Joining former Grokster exec Wayne Rosso, Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde is abandoning the BitTorrent site he co-founded.

In a blog post (truly a most demonic contraption attached to a witch’s teet), Sunde stated:

“I have decided to not be the spokes person for The Pirate Bay anymore. The reasons are many but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read.”

Oh sure, ye be ready to have plenty o’ fun, but when the sharks be a-comin’ for ya, you decide to turn tail and escape on the only deck-boat available? You not be a pirate, but a landlubber through and through! In fact, what you should do is take a lesson from Matthew Crippen.

Crippen, a student at California State University, be facing 10 years in prison for modding multiple consoles, not to hide treasure and booty, but to play modded games. At only 27 and a student, the 10 years in prison might be the social equivalent of the hangman’s noose for that lad. Yar! Perhaps he should’ve used a bit less book smarts and bit more sea smarts and modded himself a boat to sail away to Secret Pirate Island!

Sigh. Clearly, there be far too many constabularies after simple privateers such as us.

Even genies in bottles get bruises

Oh no! Song singer Christina Aguilera hit her hand while playing the Nintendo Wii. It gets worse. She apparently bruised herself. The horror.

I don’t think you heard me.

THE HORROR!

Ahem. Yes. Well. Showbiz Spy brings us this tragic, tragic story, wrought with pain and suffering and even more pain:

“Christina loves her Wii as a fun way to do a little work out,” a source said. “Now she’s a mother, it’s perfect for her. On this one occasion she and Joel were in the middle of a particularly heated game of tennis and Christina came off a little worse for wear in a run-in with a table lamp. She has a bruised hand but is more upset that she lost the game!”

Cancel her cameo appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards! All tour dates have been canceled! Whatever our we to do?! Christina needs some serious recovery time. She doesn’t only have a bruised hand, but a bruised heart for losing that game.

You know what happened when Bryan McBournie hurt his hand playing with his Wii? He used the other hand. You know what happened when I hit my hand against a wall while playing Wii Sports a year or two ago? I shrugged it off. ZOMG OH SNAP I JUST THREW THE DRUMSTICKS DOWN ON YA CHRISTINA!

We’ll take that back, thank you

The corporate world can get down right nasty. The trademark and copyright industry can be even nastier. If you take something that belongs to someone, be prepared to pay, no matter who it is. Even a company that’s currently putting an image of “Happy Fun Time We Are Nonthreatening.”

Like Nintendo.

Nintendo found out that a small dental firm in Malmö, Sweden, “Wii Smile”, had been using the name, and threw their lawyers of doom at the partners, forcing a change. One of the firm’s two partners, Christer Wihlborg, claims innocence, saying that his name starts with “Wi” and there are two owners, which apparently led to a completely independent and innocent decision being made about the surgery’s name. Of course, that doesn’t really work, considering that “Wii” has been a trademarked name since 2006, a year before the firm came into existence.

The weirdest part though? Nintendo says that the only reason they’re taking legal action is (other than the whole trademark and the total same names thing) because they claim the original 2006 trademark applied to not only home video game consoles, but dentistry as well. Yes, you read that right: dentistry.

Be prepared in late 2009 for the next great party game, “Super Mario Cavity Search.”