All is Right in the World...

We brought our Nintendo Wii to South Africa.  The Wii itself is pretty light and compact, but it has a large amount of paraphernalia associated with it.  We have the Wii-fit board which weighs about 20 pounds and is about 30 by 18 inches big.  I brought the board to Johannesburg back in April on an earlier trip and it was waiting here when we arrived.

Upon our arrival, one of the first things that Alexander wanted to do was to get the Wii up and running.   Minutes after we arrived, we were furiously plugging things into this plug and that plug. Finally, the moment of truth arrived when I plugged the Wii power adaptor into the 220 volt power strip and WHAM! we lost power in all of the outlets in half of the house.  Obviously, not a good sign.   At this point I checked the fine print on the Wii power pack and found that it was 110 volt only! 

Alexander leans into a skate-boarding turn
playing Wii Fit.  Watch-out Tony Hawk!

I remembered that we had packed a small Radio Shack transformer that we had received as a wedding present 17 years earlier and had never used: it was still in its original packaging.  After resetting the circuit breakers I tried this out and it gave off a buzzing sound and a horrible smell--obviously we had exceeded its shelf life.  Our next step was to get a real transformer which I found down at the local hardware store.  It weighs about 25 pounds, but gives a solid assurance that it won't go up in a poof of smoke.  When I plugged the Wii into our new transformer, disappointment all around.

Maharesh Mahesh yogi Quince Bodhisattva shows her intense
concentration as she practices Wii Yoga in an attempt to levitate

They sell Wii in South Africa, but they many multiples the cost of one in the US.  We went to several different stores selling them and asked if we could purchase a replacement power pack, but no go.  I ended up going on to Amazon and locating a replacement power pack for the US model for $10 and had it shipped to Peter, our first US visitor.  Alexander kept track of Peter's arrival as if Santa Claus were coming to town.

Peter arrived this past Sunday and Caroline brought the new power pack back this Wednesday night.  Alexander immediately wanted to try it out and see if it worked.  I reminded him that we might have fried the entire unit when we tried to run it on twice its normal voltage.  Luckily, the Wii gods smiled upon us as the system is working great.  A big shout-out and props to Peter for being our mule!

I have since looked at all of our transformer power packs and only one other (my beard trimmer) is not 110-240 volt.  Even the tiny iPhone power packs are 110-240 volt.  I would have thought that with Wii being a global franchise, they would make these things to work anywhere, like our iPhones or ASUS laptop. What I have learned from this is that Wii's aren't like laptops.  Nintendo disks sold here won't work on our North American Wii either.  Nintendo has segmented its market to make piracy a little harder and also to have more control over pricing.