Update - 3DS Still Not Supply Constrained in My Area

I made sure to check out the day one supplies of the 3DS in my area, and there were plenty. Now, a week later there are still plenty. Just from some asymmetrical shelving arrangements, I'm guessing that a few have been sold in that week. Nintendo has reported that the 3DS was the best selling handheld launch in the U.S. in their history, but I'm not sure that really means huge numbers. It's a shame for the moment because I've only had one wild StreetPass encounter, and even that was from a GameStop employee (she had a very accurate Mii).

I'm not currently worried about the 3DS not being a success, and thus not getting great software support, personally. As seems to be Nintendo's plan, the 3DS will need to sell itself when people show it off to friends and family, which isn't going to happen instantly. It might need a few hard kicks from the likes of Mario Kart to really get that viral spreading started, like the first DS needed Nintendogs and Brain Age to start it on the path of the best selling video game console ever (has it reached that just yet?).

Joy - 3DS Arrival Date Bumped Back to the 29th

Looks like Amazon came through, and my 2 day shipping is really 2 day shipping. I checked it only hours ago, and the status was still Not Yet Shipped or something similar and the arrival date still set for Wednesday (the 30th). But I just checked it and it says "Shipped" and the estimated arrival date is the 29th. That's one less day of sitting and staring at two 3DS games I can't play.

My face when (but not my face)

4 More Days Till the 3DS Stops Haunting My Dreams

You may or may not know that the Nintendo 3DS is releasing in 4 days in the United States. But you definitely don't know that I've had many dreams about the 3DS; more than any game, system, movie, or event in my life. It's almost bizarre to me since on a day to day basis, I'm not daydreaming about the 3DS, but the common theme in my dreams is that I'm finally viewing the 3D screen. That 3D screen that has often been described at "magical" has made it's way into my sleeping thoughts, leading to some great moments of bliss, and great moments of disappointment when I awake to find that, no, I didn't win that 3DS with 15 games.

Now personally, I'll be waiting seven days for my 3DS, despite having 2 day shipping *grumble grumble* so the 3DS will probably get a few more days of haunting in..... But some won't even need to wait 96 hours (24 hours in a day times 4 days) because of midnight launches at places like GameStop. While my pre-order isn't at GameStop, I always try to drive by my two local GameStops (don't ask me why, but they're less than two miles apart <___<) to see how long the lines are. I never expect anything like the kind of lines that get reported on television, but it always gives me a nice feeling to know that most of them love gaming that much. It seems like the weekend rain definitely has a chance to keep up through Saturday night, so I might not see anybody camped out at all (I assume they would be in their cars) but I'll still take a quick trip over.

Anyone else had a dream about having the 3DS in their hands at some point, or am I the only crazy one?

Has Anyone Else Gotten this Message From Their Wii?

The first paragraph might be useless info. You've been warned.

I hit up a local Hastings to check on more PSP game prices (I still haven't bought one), because I remembered how often they have new copies of fairly old current gen games. After scoping out PSP game prices, I decided to look at what they had available for rent. Friend and great person coffeewithgames had an article on his site about Dead Space Extraction for Wii, and it got me considering renting it again or buying it outright. But I noticed something different; a "favorite rentals" section with half-price rentals. Same rental period, just half the price ($4). Maybe I've mentioned it before, but if not, I don't often rent games because it feels like I'm throwing money away if I end up loving the game. When I heard that Redbox was going to start video game rentals, I was pretty interested because of how cheap it would be to just try a game ($2 a day). It was really a great selection, but I picked out We Ski & Snowboard because I was just interested in something with fairly extensive use of motion controls, and I remembered seeing some screen-shots that made the game seem like a visual stunner (still up for debate). The game includes a feature that lets you take photos/screenshots taken in the game and post them to your Wii's Message Board, where you can then send them to friends. Funnily enough, this was the only game with this feature that I've ever seen with a warning about posting too many pictures for the sake of filling up your built-in flash memory. I posted one and didn't give it a second thought.

Later that day, I turned on my Wii, looking forward to playing Bit.Trip BEAT for that series of pieces I've been talking about, and my Wii had determined that my Wii's Message Board was full (must have been that photo that did it). It asked me if I wanted to move Message Board data to the SD card. Without thinking I said yes because I wasn't sure if it would ever ask again. If I had been thinking, I would have popped in my bigger SD card that I started using because demos were filling up the one I had been using since they opened up the SD Card Menu on the Wii. I'm honestly surprised that they put this procedure into place. I had figured that they set aside part of the Wii's built-in 512 MB flash memory right from the beginning for Message Board applications, but when it was full it would delete the oldest stuff as needed to accommodate the new stuff.

Proof of my first day owning the Wii, still intact.

Sorry for the wavy noise.

Unfortunately, this process took almost 30 minutes (I whipped out a timer as quickly as I could, got 27 minutes), and I could be wrong, but I think it knocked off a few dozen usable blocks from the area of the memory that I was using for Channels. I specifically remember trying to keep enough space open to load up anything from the SD Card Menu (325+ blocks or so), but when I tried to play BEAT it gave me the old "Manage your Wii System Memory to launch this channel" message which prompted me to see how much space I had open: 257 blocks; not enough for any of the Bit.Trip games, and many other delightful WiiWare games. I could definitely be remembering it incorrectly, though, since I was swapping things out while paying attention to a podcast. As you can see, the messages that are stored on the SD card now have an image of an SD card on them, since they are stored on an SD card.

The last day of SD card stored messages, from 2009.

With a lucky guess, this took less than two minutes to find.

Has anyone else's Wii given them this message? Did you accept the transfer? Let me know in the comments.

Argh! This snow!

Going to ruin my brother's birthday.