wiibles wobble

as it turns out, wii’s are going for $300ish plus shipping on ebay, or about $100 more than retail price. this is actually not bad, given that to get a wii at freddies last weekend i’d have had to go down on sunday morning and enter a raffle.

at least now we know where they all are. and it’s nice that the supply has lowered the price to something reasonable. it’s still a bit much, but it’s something worth thinking about for the near future. phantom maybe i can find one vs i could get one at any time by paying a bit more. (still less than the ps3…) there’s that stimulus check coming, so we’ll see this summer.

here’s a silly math thing to tide us over until then.

new gameboy player on amazon, in black only - $150 after shipping

new japanese gameboy player on ebay, in japanese exclusive ’spice’ orange - $70 after shipping
used japanese gamecube on ebay, in japanese exclusive ’spice’ orange - $50 after shipping
new orange player + used orange gamecube = $120 after shipping

now, japanese gamecubes are region-locked, so i can’t play american gamecube games on a japanese gamecube. but gameboy advance games are NOT region locked, which means i can play american gameboy advance games on the japanese gameboy player via the japanese gamecube. (and vice versa; the japanese bit generations games actually use all english text already, so all you have to do is plug them in and you’re on.) maybe not on vintage gameboy games, but i can live without vintage tetris, i think, if i can plug in aladdin from the snes, or yoshi’s island, or final fantasy whatnot, or dotstream.

ntsc-j is the japanese video standard, but it’s only barely different from ntsc here in the states. japan uses the same electrical outlets and component inputs, just with a slightly different video signal.

so it’s $30 cheaper to import a japanese gameboy player, and a japanese gamecube to plug it into, in the orange color i prefer that never got a us release, and hotswap that with my american gamecube when i want to play gameboy games, then to buy the plain black american player to plug into my plain silver american gamecube.

also, swapping out the main body of the gamecube case is as simple as four (specialized) screws on the bottom. the baseplate would still be silver, but with the nice orange shell on the front, top, and sides. (although i still prefer the indigo/blue color, so i’ll probably pick up one of those broken on ebay eventually and just steal the casing. maybe in a year or however long the warranty lasts on the new gamecube.)

you can probably see where this is going.

while i was doing that, i also found a totally sweet alternate layout n64 controller by a japanese third-party controller maker, which i will absolutely try on quake 64 when that also arrives. instant quake deathmatch, just by turning on the 64? yes please!

also, i totally want a psp again. i don’t need that kind of thinking right now.

if i pick up the retroport adapter that lets you plug a snes controller into a gamecube port, developed for the wii’s virtual console, that will also work with the gameboy player. you can also get a retroport snes-to-usb, which is equally tempting.