So, today I received my copy of the Japan-only Gamecube game, Gundam: The Ace Pilot(supposedly one of the best Gundam games, and only $30 on Play-asia). I planned on using the Swap-disk trick I had heard about that supposedly lets you play import GC games on the Wii. After many futile attempts at doing just that this morning, I looked online to discover that Nintendo disabled this exploit in the latest firmware update.

Needless to say, I'm pretty pissed off. I really don't see what major harm could come to Nintendo from keeping the damn thing region free. This just encourages more people to mod their systems, and simultaneously be tempted to pirate games, given that they now have the ability to do so.

Whatever happened to the good ol' days of cartridges? Back then the only thing stopping us from playing any weird, exotic games from foreign lands was the language barrier. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait for a homebrew app that unlocks the region coding on GC games much like the one that has been released that does the same for Wii games. Either that, or buy Datel's Wii Freeloader which I hear is compatible with some GC games, but that would be a bit pointless seeing as how I already have a homebrew alternative to that in regards to Wii games and Datel's Freeloader wouldn't be guaranteed to work with every GC game.

Right now, I just hope I don't end up having to buy/borrow a Gamecube just to play this one game.