Nintendo support recommends Wiimote abuse to puzzled caller
By Paul Miller 
posted December 31st 2007 2:20PM
posted December 31st 2007 2:20PM
Controller abuse has always been a mainstay of the video gaming existence -- no need to blame your thumbs when there's this hunk of plastic to chuck at the floor -- but who knew Nintendo was working such violence into its own official support curriculum? Wired's Russ Neumeier gave Nintendo support a ring when one of his Wiimotes stopped sensing motion and none of the usual fixes seemed to work. After explaining his situation, the Nintendo rep asked Russ smack the controller into his hand, button side down, two or three times. After being assured that she wasn't kidding, Russ did as he was told and was awarded with a fully functional Wiimote. We could see why Nintendo wouldn't go shouting about this "fix" on its official support literature, but it has us wondering if "blow into the cartridge, whack side of NES, insert cartridge, repeat" was the Nintendo-approved method all along.
BLOW THIS!*
*Cartridge
they need to make a t-shirt that says that. BLOW THIS and with an arrow pointing down at a old nes cartridge
next time my 360 starts overheating, i'll place it in th fridge... buy only if MS tells me to do so
Nintendo is simply genius.
You can also just wack your opponents up the backside of their head. It gives you time to recover as well.
The "technical tap" is a long-honored tradition.
I think I'm confused by this post. Is the author trying to say we should all blow our Wii? I find that a different kind of abuse entirely.
Haha... anyone owned a Rio Karma? HDD would always get stuck and a flat slap into the palm would make it good as new again.
...trick also worked on my 4G iPod, when it got stuck after a nasty snowboard spill.
Same thing happened to me. I was really worried, but this worked perfectly.
Well, I think their official stance would be that you're supposed to get their cleaning kit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NES_Cleaning_Kit). I had one back in the day, though I think I lost the part for the games and went back to blowing in the cartridge, and you just felt stupid using the console thing...
weird...last night i got blown AND smacked.
just like how i fixed my ipod!
This stupid Sony camera we use at work is fixed when we bang it against something. Matter of fact- the customer support suggests it as well!
The unofficial fix for all BlackBerry JVM errors is to drop them from about four feet in the air.
It's true, but as mentioned, it's an unofficial solution.
"blow into the cartridge, whack side of NES, insert cartridge, repeat"
Dude, it practically was! When I was about 6 my grandmother called the NES people and they instructed us to blow into the cartridge then shift the cartridge in the NES back and forth fifty times, pressing "reset" when done. Man, we really wanted to play some Duck Hunt, and I remember sitting there counting to fifty while shimmying the cart.
I remember we had to put the NES upside down so that the game was pushed back. Worked everytime.
Heh. That brings me back to my youth with Nintendo.
Fixing Nintendo glitches back then was almost a form of Mysticism.
You could blow on the cartridge, do some really funky things. I can't remember, but there was like 5 things I did and I could get it to work every single time.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
How is this Wii abuse?
I also KNOW engadget posted something like this before.
The Wii tells you when the batteries are low in a certain controller :] so atleast one more thing they have taken the guess work out of for us :]
Thanks Nintendo for building on tradition :]
This happened to me once. The gyro got jammed in a full left position and my dude kept running sideways. Smacked it hard against my hand and unstuck it.
Bashing things works like a charm everytime.
Fortunately the Wiimote has never given me problems yet.
Does this fix work on... Oh shi.......
How is this "news"? This fix is over a year old.
It's been SOP at Nintendo since the thing was released in 2006. My second Wiimote was replaced two weeks after we got it and "gently, but firmly slapping it" failed to fix the problem with the mass and the microsprings in the accelerometer.
Pretty lame that it's suddenly "news". What? No new releases of any Apple devices lately?
1.) They do make a "blow me" T.
http://www.bustedtees.com/shirt/blowme/male
2.) Sometimes I used to have to wedge a second NES cartridge in on top of the one I was playing to get it all to work right...and I had a friend back in the day who would jam a flip-flop in to the NES and the cartridges worked like a charm.