The year's 2007. After months of searching for stock up and down the country, your family has finally gotten their hands on Nintendo's new Wii console, complete with a copy of Wii Sports, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz.
Despite picking up these new games, you've actually spent your first twenty hours with the system in the Mii creation tool, recreating familiar faces like Darth Vader and getting far too much pleasure out of doing so. Then, out of nowhere, Dad comes in and tries his hand at Wii Tennis. He ignores the wrist strap warnings on-screen, goes for a killer swing of the racket, and sends the Wii Remote flying through the TV, simultaneously destroy both it, and the family's fun, for the rest of summer. Ah, simpler times.
Capturing this exact kind of moment perfectly, which was perhaps more common than you'd think judging by news articles published at the time, is this wonderful LEGO build created by Ian Summers. Complete with a Wii console, TV, and a Wii Remote firmly lodged into the poor TV's screen, the build has been on display at Brick Rodeo, a LEGO fan convention based in Texas that was up and running over the weekend.
Check it out in photo and video form thanks to the folks at @BeyondtheBrick:
Did you ever experience any Wii Remote mishaps back in the day? Any broken TVs or windows?
We'll leave you with this comment provided to the BBC by a disgruntled reader back in 2006 – is it just us, or does this sound like their imagination got the better of them as they tried to make their story a little more exciting?
"I got one of the first Wii but after a few minutes playing the strap broke and the controller shot off and hit my partner in the face resulting in two broken teeth. She slipped at the same time falling into the TV set and smashing the screen. The TV was plugged into the surround sound system and consequently pulled it over and smashing into my CD and DVD collection."
And then a tiger jumped through the window as well, scaring the kids and stealing my copy of Excite Truck.
[source twitter.com]
Comments (28)
Not a TV, but I did have a friend take off his wrist strap to perform some "trick bowling". He launched the Wiimote at the TV and luckily it just bounced off it. Unluckily it also broke something inside the controller and I had to send it to Nintendo to get repaired.
I remember scouring all my local Argos stores and having about 50 Wii consoles stacked up in my dining room. Think I made about 5 grand profit that December!
Never used one, and I still haven't seen this happen in real life.
But I may still recover eyesight, the doctor said.
No in all seriousness, never used one, never had an accident.
@HamatoYoshi Ok, i dont think bragging about being a Wii scalper is the best thing to do on this site
@Bunkerneath it was over 14 years ago!
When I was younger, I was playing Wii Sports bowling at my friend's house. I pulled the wiimote back which resulted in the remote smashing my friend in the face. Good times.
This meme! Lol. Did this ever actually happen to people? I always thought it was just a joke back then. XD
Wiimotes. What a faff. Took a while to get them right. You had the Wiimote, then an extra bit of hardware that plugged into the bottom. Then you had to pull on the condom cover over both bits, add a nunchuck, then muck around with a wrist strap. I used the Pro Controller whenever the game allowed it.
I loved the Wii. Wii Sports is just so fun even to this day. I actually rigged up my DualShock 4 to work with Dolphin so I was playing Wii Sports with my Playstation controller. It worked alright to be honest.
there's something weirdly satisfying about the build tbh, specifically the wii breaking the tv screen
I manged to cut myself on the finger using a wii remote once . Think finger got whacked between nuchuk and remote in some intense waggling.
Think everyone drop or flung it once or clocked someone nearby but near saw the broken TV cliche
Playing darts I see
No broken stuff, but this joke is still memorable. Nice choice
This isn’t a distant memory for me. My son was playing the Wii just a couple of months ago and smashed the TV by flinging a Wii Remote at it. Fortunately, it was a TV that we were about to replace anyway, but I make sure he uses the wrist strap when he plays now.
"Exciting"!? I think that person was angling for some primo cash damages!
I was lucky enough to not do that, but I swear there were times where it almost hit the TV, and it wasn't just Wii Sports. It included Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8 and Mario and Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Ah, those were the days...
Ahh, good times. Most people never launched their remote into the television, but Nintendo was sure convinced everyone would! Especially Fi. Oh, boy, she'd tell me like every 10 minutes.
I never really loved the Wii, it didn't get many games that really were games I wanted to play, but I do remember the child-like magic of getting it the first time and it was just so different and nostalgic all at the same time. It was one last flash back to the feeling of the way things used to be fore a brief 2-4 month period that is priceless, but I don't think will ever return.
I do remember that little infographic though. The one clearly reminding you to do a super spin and upper-cut somebody nearby in the face with a Wiimote. Good safety advice!
My mates kid did this, it was unrepairable and he had to buy a new tv. I laughed loads, but he didn't!!
Oh yeah, I never saw the tv getting hit, but my god my newphews nearly took my head off with a wii remote on several occasions
@Yas Could have been worse, I'd still like an &knuckles adaption for it as well.
@HamatoYoshi Clown.
That's a really nice use of pieces for the broken screen. What a fantastic build!
Love this Lego build! Brings back good memories. First time I playted it was with Twilight Princess and Wii Sports. There were some great games I really enjoyed. Not too many really deep experiences, but thankfully Xenoblade, Skyward Sword, the Galaxy games, and a few others made it a system worth owning. I will be honest, PS3 was my go to during that time.
Still love having my Virtual Console games hooked up and available. Definitely the best Virtual Console for SNES games.
None of my wiimotes flew across the room, I always made sure me and my friends always had the wrist strap on. But the room we were playing in had an overhead fan, so every now and then someone would smash the wiimote into the fan. Oh and one time we were playing Tiger Woods and my friend wasn't watching where he was swinging and smashed the wiimote into my knee at full speed while trying to tee off.
I’ll admit to once throwing my Wii remote deliberately into a giant, fluffy pillow out of frustration. But that’s it.
I personally never lost grip of the Wii Remote.
I'd like to call for a poll. Cause it seems to me that a lot of you guys have filthy greasy hands
A: You have filthy hands and your controllers are greasy
B: You always clean your hands before use and never let anyone else use your controller, but keep spare ones for the mob to use.
Awesome concept! Love it. Minor improvements to make it really awesome: red light in the power button and blue ring around the disc slot.
Most of the time with a Wii I had a CRT, so even of it got hit (which it didn't), it would probably survive. But my friends got hit by WiiMotes plenty of times, haha.
Also, that warning graphic of someone smacking another in the face with a WiiMote always made me laugh. Ah, the times..
I have a WiiU and my brother threw the Gamepad and the Wiimotes all the time. The remotes never broke, luckily, but the Gamepad stopped working for a little while. It’s fine now, but it’s annoying that he never used the wrist strap.
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