If there's one thing that's worse than something freezing...

...it's something freezing and you being unable to figure out why.

Yes, I posted yesterday about my poor, scratched up Animal Crossing: City Folk. But was that really the problem with the disc? I'm not sure anymore. Don't get me wrong, the disc's label has a nasty looking scratch on it, but I'm wondering if it isn't a problem with the disc at all.

I'll admit, I haven't been playing a huge quantity of Wii games lately, so my assumption that Animal Crossing was the only one with issues might have been more of a fluke than anything. I have a feeling hat Animal Crossing loads a lot of data at the same general time when you start up the game. And I have a feeling that therein lies my cause of freezing, coupled with a classic Wii issue...

Overheating. I've always been worried about it. I've never quite been sure whether to lie my Wii horizontally or vertically, and I've always been worried when it gets pretty hot in WiiConnect24 mode. And there lies my problem, I think. I think that it is VERY possible that Animal Crossing: City Folk was instead freezing because of my Wii overheating rather than any disc problems. Let me explain how I hit that conclusion.

The moment it hit me that it might be a Wii issue was when I tried to play Zack and Wiki (great game, btw) right after Animal Crossing freezing. Three times in a row it refused to even start! And that game wasn't scratched in the least! What the heck?!

Anyway, this brought me to the realization that my Wii was probably overheating and causing a sort of chain reaction with Animal Crossing than the disc being broken. This correlated nicely with the fact that my Wii is transported weekly and doesn't start failing to play Animal Crossing until about Wednesday. Thus, the Wii has the time to heat up from WiiConnect24! Bam! There was my problem. So it all comes down to the Wii having an issue. This was pretty much confirmed when I tried Animal Crossing again after unplugging and cooling the Wii to have it work just fine.

The question then becomes whether that's better or not. On one hand I won't need to buy another copy of Animal Crossing, while on the other hand Nintendo's feature continues to mess stuff up. Sigh. Whatever, I guess. At least the situation seems to be cleared up. At least, for now.

Note to self: DON'T LEAVE DISCS IN CONSOLE

Ever since the video game era changed from cartridges to discs (ie when I got my Gamecube) I've always been careful to remove the discs from the console after I was done. This has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine, mostly because I hate having to remove the disc previously used before playing a game. Beyond my laziness/easily annoyed-ness, though, usually leaving discs in a console didn't cause any problems.

Or so I thought.

Okay, so yeah, it usually doesn't to my knowledge. But the occasional error of leaving a disc in has caused an extremely annoying, stressful, and annoying situation that I've been dealing with for a while now: a certain game of mine freezing. Repeatedly. For no discernible in-game reason. Specifically, it's a game I've recently gotten rather into (ie kind of obsessed with), Animal Crossing: City Folk.

Now, City Folk isn't very much of an evolution in the Animal Crossing series. Heck, it's a complete shame that Nintendo didn't do more to evolve the series! It really is! Buuuut... I'm a sucker for Animal Crossing so of course I bought it. And it has been great. Even with the lack of evolution it's still easily the best Animal Crossing title! But this isn't a review. This is a cautionary tale of caution about lazily leaving your discs in. Which, as I've said, usually shouldn't cause any issues.

BUT

It has to me. And it will to you if you're not careful. My Animal Crossing: City Folk disc got scratched up, and there is no doubt in my mind about how: I accidentally left the disc in while transporting my Wii. Think about that and you'll no doubt see the issue: disc is in, Wii bounces around, disc bounces around inside Wii, disc hits things and gets scratched. The moral? Don't leave your disc in while moving a console! Heck, don't leave 'em in at all in case the console gets bumped or something! Why am I writing about this? Because Animal Crossing has been absolutely infuriating about it! It's one thing to freeze, but another thing entirely to work perfectly for several days after having been "fixed" (in this case, resurfaced) only to freeze again. It is so. Unbelievably. Frustrating.

...I just want my game back, that's all... *sniff*