Fool me once: Nintendo's policy on tranferring content purchased from Wii Shop

I purchased a Wii back in early 2007. Since then, over time, I had purchased a few things from the Wii Shop channel -- mostly old NES titles like the original The Legend of Zelda, to show my kids and nephews what Dad / Uncle Jon played while he was growing up.

When making those purchases, I didn't give much thought to Nintendo's policy regarding purchased downloadable content. I purchased the games, they downloaded, they were playable on my Wii, no problem.

Fast-forward to November 2010: This Wii purchased in 2007 had a few hardware problems over the years.

• First, a series of problems with the Wii overheating which cased the Wii to power off in the middle of gameplay. I eventually diagnosed this was due to the Wii's rear fan being stuck, and repaired myself.
  
• Second, throughout 2009 the Wii had gone from being near-silent while powered on to making an increasingly loud buzzing/grinding noise while spinning discs in the drive (i.e. at all times during gameplay of most games); I once again disassembled my Wii but was unable to resolve this issue.
  
• Finally, and most most seriously, the Wii had started occasionally giving a disc read error when trying to read various game discs inserted into the drive.
  

Even at the time of the initial overheating issues, the Wii was out of warranty, so getting a warranty repair was not an option. So, being unable to repair the disc read issue myself, the options for getting a household Wii up and running again essentially boiled down to either purchasing a repair from Nintendo, or purchasing a new Wii.

On Black Friday weekend, the latter option seemed pretty attractive: Rather than pay around US $80-100 to send my old white Wii to Nintendo for a repair, Amazon.com was running a deal for a new Black Wii, including the game Wii Sports Resort and a "Wii Remote Plus" controller, for $170. With the Wii Sports Resort game alone going for almost $50, and not including an entire additional Wii Remote controller, springing for the new Black Wii seemed like a pretty good deal -- so I went ahead and jumped on it.

It did occur to me that I would need to transfer the content from my old Wii -- save game files, created Mii avatars, and purchased Wii Shop content -- from the old Wii to the new one. I was also aware of the purchased Wii Shop content being associated with a specific Wii console, i.e. a purchased game can't be copied onto an SD card, copied onto another Wii, and played on that second Wii, for obvious anti-piracy reasons. However, I figured that my situation must be pretty common -- a person replacing an old, broken Wii and/or upgrading to the new Black or Red Wii from the old white one -- and so I'd just need to call Nintendo, provide the serial numbers of the old Wii and the new one, and have them transfer my content over.

Before first calling, I did check the Nintendo support website; however, despite the design and comprehensiveness of the site seeming pretty good, there was no information to be found about transferring purchased downloaded Wii Shop content from one Wii console to another.

So, I called the Nintendo support line, and explained my situation. The representative I talked to was very friendly. Given the serial number of my old (white) Wii, she was able to look up my account and see all of the Wii Shop content that I had purchased. Unfortunately, even after talking to a supervisor, she explained that Nintendo has a policy of never transferring purchased Wii Shop content from one Wii to another, and that they were unwilling to make an exception in my situation. (The one permitted exception to the policy that the rep mentioned was that in the event that a Wii was sent in to Nintendo for a purchased repair or warranty repair, and the Wii was found to be completely unrepairable, Nintendo would transfer the Wii Shop account to a different Wii console, and return that second console to the customer.)

Even though I didn't have a great deal of money invested in Wii Shop content, I was pretty upset by this. Other major DRM systems for games, such as Steam on the PC, or (as far as I understand them) the systems employed on the XBox 360 and Playstation 3, do allow purchased content to be transferred to, and played on, hardware other that on which the content was originally purchased. When consumers increasingly become aware that, contrary to expectations that have been established by other vendors, Wii Shop purchased content cannot be moved to other hardware, I can't help but wonder whether Nintendo will revise their existing policy and come up with a way that consumers can transfer their purchased content onto another Wii console -- or to the next-generation Nintendo console when that inevitably is announced and released at some point in the future.

In the meantime, though, I would advise all current Wii owners to consider carefully before purchasing any content from the Wii Shop channel. Certainly, in my case, having been "fooled once" -- and now not having access to any of the Wii Shop content I've previously purchased from Nintendo on my new Wii console, also purchased from Nintendo -- I will not be "fooled again" into purchasing any more content from the Wii Shop, until such time that Nintendo revises their DRM policy.

Middle-click taskbar button to close application – Windows 7 edition

As I’ve previously posted for Windows XP, a user interface convention that I really wish would become a universal standard for applications that support multiple tabs (such as modern web browsers) is upon middle mouse button click on a tab, the application would close that tab.  This is the standard behavior in Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, and Chrome (and probably other browsers, too).

I also wish Microsoft would match the IE8 behavior and make “close application” the default behavior for a middle-click on an application taskbar button in Windows, since the Windows taskbar is essentially just a tab bar for open applications.  Unfortunately, in Windows 7, middle-click on an application’s taskbar button is mapped to “launch new instance of application,” not to “close application.”  Furthermore, there seems to be no out-of-the-box way to change this behavior.

To the rescue: 7 Taskbar Tweaker by “RaMMicHaeL.”  Among a few other available features, this utility does exactly what I’m looking for: On a PC running Windows 7, it remaps a middle-click on a taskbar application button to close that application.  I’ve been using version 1.1 of the utility on my primary home PC running Windows 7 for months now, with no problems at all.  Highly recommended if you’re a fan of the middle-click-to-close UI convention!

Workaround: Blank screen upon lid open (Lenovo ThinkPad laptop)

Occasionally when I open the lid of my Lenovo ThinkPad T500 laptop, I get a blank screen – nothing at all is visible on the laptop’s display, even though the machine is powered on.  In particular, this tends to happen after I undock the computer from the docking station, close the lid, wait a short time (i.e. carry the laptop with the lid closed into another room), and then open the lid again.

I’m not sure what the root cause of this issue is.  However, I’ve found a workaround to get the display to come back on after I’ve opened the lid and the display is blank: Press Fn+F7.  (This is the same keystroke that switches display modes when multiple monitors, or a projector, are connected to the PC.)

(Note: I don’t have the Lenovo Presentation Director application installed on my machine, because it doesn’t seem to work very well with the 3-monitor configuration I have at my desk.  Presentation Director overrides the Fn+F7 keystroke; thus, I’m not sure whether this workaround would work on machines with Presentation Director installed.)

HTPC remote control review: Lenovo N5901 multimedia remote with keyboard

A couple of months ago, to use as a remote control for my Windows 7 HTPC, I purchased a Lenovo N5901 multimedia remote with keyboard (part no. 57Y6336).  The remote control easily fits in one hand, yet it combines a QWERTY keyboard, a trackball and two mouse buttons, and volume / playback buttons.  Following are my comments on the different aspects of the device, based on my experience with it so far.

Setup: The trackball and keyboard both worked fine “out of the box” for me with Windows 7 upon plugging in the (tiny!) USB wireless receiver to the PC, both in Windows Media Center and on the normal Windows 7 desktop – no software install was needed.

Keyboard: The keyboard is a “mostly-full” keyboard.  It isn’t suitable for touch-typing; I’m a pretty good typist on a standard QWERTY keyboard, but I can’t use the keyboard on the N5901 without looking down at it as I type.  The keyboard also has no function keys (F1, F2, … F12). 

The N5901 keyboard isn’t really suitable for use for any heavy-duty typing (e.g. composing emails) but it works well enough for keying in a Windows password at boot time, or for entering a few characters of the name of a show to search for in Windows Media Center.

Trackball: The included trackball and two mouse buttons work just fine.  One-handed use is possible, but I’ve found that it works best to use it with two hands; using the controller with only my left hand, I occasionally accidentally nudge the trackball with my thumb as I reach around the trackball to left-click.  It works better for me to hold the remote with both hands and use right thumb for the trackball, and left thumb to left-click.

Battery Life: The battery life is at the very least “okay,” as I’m on my 3rd month of using the remote, and it’s still on its original set of two AAA batteries.

Wireless Connectivity: The wireless connectivity for me was slightly suspect – when I first used the remote, it would usually work fine, but it would occasionally “drop” a split second of my trackball use, or a single key press using the keyboard.  (The latter was particularly frustrating when entering my password logging in to Windows following a reboot.)  My couch where I would typically sit and use the remote is located around 15 feet from the HTPC – well within the device’s specified operational range of 10 meters.

In my living room configuration, the couch is “L” shaped, with one side of the “L” extending along a wall toward the TV and the HTPC.  I was therefore able to work around the occasional wireless connectivity issues by purchasing a 10-foot USB extension cable (for less than $5 shipped off eBay), running that cable from the PC under my couch to underneath the place I usually sit in the middle of the couch, and plugging the N5901’s USB wireless receiver into the extension cable under the couch.  Having done this, the wireless connectivity now works with no problems.

Playback Controls: The N5901 features “play”, “stop”, “fast forward”, “rewind”, “previous”, and “next” multimedia playback control buttons.  All work just fine and as expected out of the box with Windows Media Center on Windows 7.

Volume Controls: The N5901 also features “volume up” and “volume down” buttons.  For some reason, at least for TV playback, although when I press these buttons Windows Media Center reports the volume level going up and down (minimum 0, maximum 50), the actual sound output level from my TV speakers doesn’t change, unless I turn the volume all the way down to 0, at which point the sound does cut out entirely (mute). 

Since the volume button presses on the remote are being received successfully by Windows Media Center, the problem apparently is with some other aspect of my hardware configuration, not the N5901 itself.  I’ve just been using the TV’s own remote instead to control the volume, which works fine.

Orange Button: The N5901 features a prominent, but unlabeled “orange button” in the top-left corner of the control (visible in the above image).  On my Windows 7 machine, pressing this button results in the somewhat odd behavior of bringing up a Windows Explorer window with the location set to “My Computer.”  Neither Windows 7 nor the N5901 itself provides any way (that I could figure out) to change this behavior.

What I really wanted this button to do was to act similarly to the “TiVo” button on a TiVo remote – that is, in the case of my setup, as a “Go to Windows Media Center Home screen” button.  Specifically, I wanted this behavior:

1. If Windows Media Center (WMC) is not currently running, run it.
2. If WMC is already running, but is not the active window, make it the active window.
3. If WMC is the active window, navigate to the WMC front page / main menu.
4. Suppress the default behavior of bringing up "My Computer."

The “green button” on “designed for Windows Media Center” remote controls might have this behavior as well; however, I’m not sure, never having had the chance to use one.

After some research, I was able to come up with a script for the free AutoHotKey utility to accomplish this behavior.  This is the script:

VKB6::  ;On a press of the Lenovo N5901 orange button:
  if WinActive("Windows Media Center")  ;Is WMC the current active window? 
    Send #!{Enter}  ;Act like a "green button" press (go to WMC main menu) 
  else 
    run c:\windows\ehome\ehshell.exe  ;Run/activate WMC 
  return

The complete details of how I created this script are available in a superuser.com post.

Backlight: Probably the biggest drawback of the N5901 is that the buttons are not backlit.  In a completely dark room, the QWERTY keyboard is pretty much unusable, and the playback control buttons are pretty difficult to use.  The trackball and mouse buttons are no problem to use in the dark, though.

Conclusion

Based on my positive experience with the device over the past couple of months, I would recommend the N5901 as a reasonably inexpensive “all-in-one” (mouse + keyboard + playback buttons) HTPC remote control.

Bad eBay experience – Inadvertently buying a bootleg DS game

A couple of weeks ago, I had a hankering to play a classic RPG game.  After looking around at the available options for systems that I own, I decided to pick up a copy of Dragon Quest V for the Nintendo DS.

Unfortunately, even though the game was released in the U.S. just last year (2009), it’s already out of print, so I went to eBay.  There were just a few copies of the game for sale; most were going for around $30, but one “cartridge only” auction was going for a “buy it now” price of $17.  The auction was from a seller in New York and nothing about the auction at the time made me suspicious (though perhaps it should have – keep reading), so I went ahead and bought the auction.

I got the game in the mail a few days later, and played it.  The game didn’t slide particularly smoothly into my DS Lite – it was a slight “pressure fit” – but I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.  The game started up with no problems.

After viewing the introductory sequence (showing the main character’s birth) and proceeding to the first playable portion of the game (where the main character, now a child, is travelling on a small ship), I ran into a problem: I couldn’t figure out how to get off the boat or otherwise advance the plot.  I’d talked to all of the NPCs on the ship several times each, and explored everywhere that I could; after doing that, there just seemed to be nothing else to do, and no enemies at all to fight.

Eventually I consulted gamefaqs, but none of the FAQs gave any special attention to the boat scene – they all just seemed to assume that advancing past the scene would present no problem at all. 

I searched Google for terms like “dragon quest v boat stuck,” and got my first obvious clue that something was not right.  Apparently the programmers at Square Enix, the game’s developer/publisher, included code in the game that when playing a counterfeit copy of the game, the player would experience game behavior exactly matching the problem I was having – the game would just never advance past the boat scene, and the player would basically be stuck. 

However, all of the references to this behavior that I found were in reference to players playing an unauthorized copy of the game via an emulator.  I, on the other hand, was playing what I had thought to be a legitimately-purchased copy of the game, on actual physical Nintendo DS Lite hardware.  Still, the behavior I was seeing made me strongly suspect that I’d been sold an unauthorized, or “bootleg,” copy of the game.

Researching further, the copy of the game that I’d been sent had a serial number on the front of the cartridge of “NTR-CDXP-EUR.”  Googling on that, I found two things:

1. That serial number actually apparently was assigned to some game called “Driving Theory Training” (and not to Dragon Quest V);
2. A few forum posts from other people saying that they had a DS cartridge with that serial number (of various other games, neither Dragon Quest V nor “Driving Theory Training”) and they were suspicious that the cartridge was a bootleg. 

This convinced me that I did have a bootleg cartridge on my hands.  This made me pretty unhappy – I purchase all of my games legitimately, and don’t “pirate” games.  If a particular game costs more than I’m willing to pay to play it, then I simply don’t play it.

I contacted the seller, and he agreed to refund my money upon my shipping the cartridge back to him.  He claimed to be unaware that he was selling bootleg copies of games, and said that he would take the issue up with his supplier.  Ultimately I’m not sure exactly how honest he was being, but he did end up refunding my money (less the the $3 and change that I paid to ship the game back to him).

So: What should I have done to avoid buying this game to begin with, and what should I do to avoid buying counterfeit game cartridges in the future?  None of the following points taken on its own is a certain indication of a bootleg game; however, all together, they may be adequate cause for being suspicious of a particular auction:

• Price: The low sell price of this game relative to other auctions for the same (somewhat rare) game should perhaps have been cause for suspicion.
• Contents: The fact that the game was “cartridge only,” rather than including case and manual, should perhaps have been cause for concern.  (Again, certainly there are many legitimate “cartridge only” auctions, but this taken in combination with other factors should have raised a red flag.)
• Origin: This particular auction was shipping from New York rather than from China; I have seen, though, some other sales of unusually low-priced games originating in China that are pretty obviously for counterfeit copies.
• Image: The auction listing included an image of the cartridge, but it was blurry, and the serial number on the front of the cartridge was unreadable.

I couldn’t have determined this from looking at the auction online, but when I tried physically lining up the counterfeit game next to a few of my legitimate DS games, the difference was fairly obvious.  Although the counterfeit cartridge on its own was pretty legitimate-looking upon a casual inspection, the size and shape of the cartridge were just barely “off” compared to the other legitimate cartridges, which were all identical to one another.  (This was the cause of the issue I mentioned of the bootleg cartridge not quite being an easy fit into my DS Lite, like legitimate games all are.)

At least this incident was a learning experience -- that bootleg console game software is out there and is being sold.  In the future I will likely take one or both of the following steps before bidding on an auction that seems like it might be suspect:

• Just ask the seller if the game is a genuine copy.  If the answer is anything other than an honest-seeming answer along the lines of “yes, absolutely,” then don’t bid.
• Ask the seller what the serial number on the front of the cartridge is (if it isn’t visible in a photo on the auction).  If it isn’t what it should be, then certainly do not bid.

I might never have realized that I was playing a counterfeit copy if there hadn’t been this particular variety of DRM built into the game.  I’m not normally a big fan of DRM (who is?), but I understand the necessity of it; still, I wish this DRM had been of a “fail fast” nature (i.e. have the game refuse to run at all if it identified itself as being counterfeit) – then I wouldn’t have lost a couple of hours of my evening to playing a broken game and researching the problem.  I’d much rather have just had the opportunity to honestly purchase a legitimate copy of the game (and avoid supporting whatever pirate created this unauthorized copy) the first time.