First of all, yes, I do think it is possible that some straps went out the door a little tauter, a little weaker than most. A bad run of twine that day. That's just the reality of mass production. So I don't think it's impossible that some people playing entirely normally may have had a strap break. But I do think that total legitimate faulty straps is going to be a very, very, very small number. And anybody affected by a genuine factory flaw probably wouldn't have thought much about it... if they didn't hear on the evening news that "Nintendo has to recall Wii straps" and see all the internet hype from drunken college students who smashed their hands into light bulbs.

The vast majority of people complaining about their straps breaking or their black eyes or their bloody fists were playing Wii Sports and went out of control. Done. There's three ways to play Wii Sports Tennis, for example. You can do little, truncated hand gestures all based around quick wrist flicks. You can do wide, sweeping arm movements that feel like actual tennis movements. Or you can do totally flip out and swing your arm as hard as you possibly can, because you're an immortal internet superstar.

Me, I play on the middle level.

Little kids will get crazy and toss it no matter what's going on with the wrist strap (interestingly, Clark is still at this feral huntsman level, where he grips the thing so tightly that you can't pry the thing out of his young fist). Drunken college kids will be throwing them at walls and TVs because that's what drunken college kids do. You can't stop that. People with small living rooms will accidentally crack somebody else in the head. Accidents happen, but there's no way that this is Nintendo's fault because they didn't include a steel-laced tether on the remote.

If start actually hitting the TV glass when I'm playing Wii Sports Boxing, can I initiate a class-action lawsuit as well?

Nintendo made a good PR move to offer a free New Strap By Mail Order plan. Not a "recall" as you probably heard on the news. Just enter your Wii serial number and they'll send you one to four new-style straps. Nintendo is good about things like this, and it pays off for them. They have a good customer service perception. Sony and Microsoft, famously, do not. Dead pixels on your DS? Here's your replacement. Post Office eat your Nintendo Power? Here's a new one. Nintendo once sent out free gloves when the first Mario Party was burning holes in peoples' palms.

Nintendo could very easily have continued to brush this off with more antiseptic warnings and mass email press releases, but they chose to take the classy route, lump the cost, and offer free replacement straps. But they had no obligation to do so.

And anyway, I doubt it will take long before some Intarnets choad finds a way to snap one of the new handstraps.

Moving on. Went in search of a second Nunchuk over the weekend. Toys R Us was sold out of them on Saturday, but then the Sunday Nintendo Shipment arrived, replete with new gear. Nintendo has steadfastly delivered Wiis and Wii accessories every Sunday since launch, while Sony has done a Shelob and crawled back into the crags of the mountain, bubbling in their misery. When I walked into TRU Sunday morning, around 3pm, I was directly behind a trio of white trash homeys - unwashed hair, dirty t-shirts, on the edge of beer flab - who thought they could stomp into the store and stomp out with a PS3. They gathered at the glass case like crows on carrion, vowing to find an employee to sell them the (empty) display box. What kind of simpleton thinks you can just waltz on into any store whenever you want and pick up a brand new PS3?

But I got my Nunchuk. In case minor mold variations interest you, I'll note that my new one does not have the Nintendo logo on the plug top. Old on left, new on right.

It's on the reverse, under the plastic hook that is intended to hook your strap cord. I also think the indenting on the C and Z isn't as deep as my Day One Wii Nunchuk. Neat, eh? No?

Toys R Us also recently saw the light on their Wii Points card pricing and decided to stop ripping people off by selling the $20 card for $25.

So if you bought one a couple weeks ago, maybe you can go get pissy with the manager about it.

Although it's been slow going, Nintendo is doing the right thing by introducing rare and acclaimed titles into the Virtual Console... rather than junking it up with Donkey Kong Jr Math and Clu-Clu Land. I bought Gunstar Heroes and Alien Crush last week. Having never played Gunstar Heroes but well aware of the cult status of it, I thought that a good option. And Alien Crush is a well-done pinball game with a strange H. R. Giger look to it.

Good stuff, but Nintendo is going to have trouble maintaining the VC's momentum unless they start popping in some NEW games, some BIGGER games, or some UPDATED FOR INTERNET PLAY games in short order. If they just keep to NES "classics" and the occasional rare game, XBLA is going to win the mindshare war.

The Forecast Channel launched today. Not the copyrighted Weather Channel, as I see lots of people naturally call it. Although I bet they both get their weather data from the same source. It's cute. It defaults to your local temps and lets you zoom out and spin a globe to find the weather at hundreds of other locations across the planet. Hardly a mammoth inclusion, but a nice little gimme.

It's pretty obnoxious that the globe screen has to carry an "image copyright NASA" message, though. Could NASA be bigger dicks about that? Geez. It's Earth. You don't own it.

Internet Channel shows up in a free beta this Friday, which will be super-cool. I'm looking forward to seeing how fourhman.com looks and acts inside of it. The final web browser is expected in the spring, and it will remain a free download until the summer, when it will be tagged at $5. Which is pretty much free anyway, really.

Finally, here's how we decided to store the Wii Remotes in an awesome way:

We put two removable hooks on the interior of the entertainment center. When I get to four remotes - and I have no doubt that will happen - they will either go on the other side, or staggered with these two.

Still not sure what to do with the Nunchuks. They're just tossed in the supply drawer along with all the GameCube/PS2 stuff.