After work today, I stopped at GameStop and picked up the copy of Xenoblade Chronicles I had pre-ordered. Despite having massive amounts of homework to do this weekend, I was really excited about this game and planned on playing it all night. It wasn’t meant to be.

When I put the game in my system I was informed that the Wii couldn’t read the disc. I popped in Skyward Sword to make sure my Wii wasn’t malfunctioning and it loaded fine. Maybe the disc was defective? A quick google revealed that older Wii systems have problems loading Xenoblade. It’s a dual-layer game I guess the lens that reads the game was improved in newer Wii systems. I got my Wii on launch day… There are only about 5 or 6 Wii games that are dual-layer, but they all have a problem playing on older Wiis once the lens gets a little dirty. One of these game is Super Smash Brothers: Brawl. My copy had always played fine, but when I tested it today I got the same message the system gave me when I popped in Xenoblade:

I called Nintendo customer service and was told that it was probably a dirty lens. I could either pay $15 to try a lens cleaning kit from them or pay $90 for an out-of-warranty repair. This didn’t seem fair to me as it wasn’t my fault that my system wouldn’t load the game. It was how the system was made, not anything I did. I got off the phone with Nintendo and decided to call around to local electronic and game stores to see if any of them carried the lens cleaning kit. No one carried one, of course.