UPDATE -- Thanks to everyone who has responded to this; however, while Topher has made it clear that he's very appreciative for the effort, he requests that we don't keep going with this. Because that is clearly his wish, I'm going to honor his request and stop the "Get Topher A Wii" campain.

At least some good has come out of this for him. This got enough publicity that someone is sending a game from play-asia.com that Topher was hoping to get. :)

I am incredibly proud of how the Destructoid community has come together so quickly with this and other such efforts, and I'm very happy to be part of that global family. But this particular quest needs to be abandoned.

Thanks, everyone! Game on!

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I was listening to Podtoid #143 when Topher mentioned that he doesn't have a Wii, and I know that in previous Podtoid's he's mentioned that he has ... well ... employment difficulties right now.

This seems like a damned shame, especially for someone who has lamented that he doesn't have a Wii and would also (probably more so) have a lot of fun with the Virtual Console. So, I thought about what could be done to get Topher a Wii and I made a semi-serious comment about a "Get Topher A Wii" fund. I thought about it some more and figured "Well, why the hell not?"

As one of the older Dtoid members and a proud member of the first true generation of gamers (being Atari 2600/Commodore 64 era) I've been a gamer since many of you were gleams in your parents' eyes. So, I have a personal love for the ol' 8-bit games. I've also been on that unemployment line twice, so I know what that's like.

In the interest of transparency, I'll be glad to put a list of donors and the amounts on a public web site (I own several) as well as and photos of the purchase, mailing, etc. Also, I have to say that I've never met Topher nor even spoken to him. A few e-mails is about it. But he's always been one of those Dtoid personalities that always seemed to strike a familiar chord with me.

So, what do you say, everyone? If I can get some kind of fund going to help to get Topher a Wii, would you be willing to contribute?