I’ve been debating getting a video game system for a while, and decided to pick up a Nintendo Wii. I wanted to get an XBox 360 (primarily for Street Fighter IV and Katamari), but it costs significantly more, and a lot of the great 360 stuff is online which from my understanding is either inaccessible or a pain in the ass to access from China. Also, if I were to fork out for a 360, I’d have to get an HDTV to really enjoy it.

You can buy Japanese or Korean Wii systems at little shops around the city (every neighborhood has at least one mom ‘n pop – or gangster and cronie – video game shop), and right now they seem to be selling for 1250 RMB or so with one controller. “Backup” games are pretty standard at 5 RMB. Since Nintendo doesn’t officially sell its products in China, I don’t think it’s possible to purchase originals.

However, I decided to go the extra cheap route and pick up a used Japanese model Wii on craigslist. It was a pretty decent deal: mint unit with two controllers and guards, nunchucks, original and overseas power supply, a few games, and uh, lovely bright pink carrying case, for 1000 RMB (around $150 CAD).

The unit I purchased had an older version mod installed, meaning it wouldn’t play some of the newer games. I checked online a bit to find a solution, but the process to upgrade the latest version seemed to involve a lot of downloading and CD-R burning with a great possibility of bricking the Wii. So, I brought it into a video game shop on Beijing Xi Lu 北京西路 to see how much the store would charge to do it.

The kid at the shop said they could do the new mod and get it back to me the next afternoon for 50 RMB (around $7). Something tells me that this mod only required a software update, so 50 RMB was probably way too much. That said, I didn’t buy the system from their store, and I wasn’t in a bargaining mood, so I said ‘what the hell’.

The next afternoon, I went back to the shop and tested it out. The Japanese menu system was now in English, and it worked with a copy of Super Mario Galaxy I picked up at another shop. After confirming everything was good to go, I browsed through a few binders of 5 RMB games; it felt like I was back in Dragon City in Toronto’s Chinatown.

Other than Wii games, if you have an SD card laying around, this site has a bunch of great utilities that allow you to run NES, Genesis, MAME, etc. emulators and ROMs on the Wii. And I’m probably the only person without a DVD player (especially in China), but this site explains how to set up support for watching DVDs.