(Note: The "Disc Read Error" screens looked nothing like this when they happened to me. When they did show up, I didn't have a camera handy so I just pulled this image off of the first GIS.)

So I picked up Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core for the Wii today from GameStop. When I got home, I immediately put it in and booted it up. I entered Practice Mode and started trying out "Order Sol," the new character in GGXX:AC. I felt somewhat comfortable using him after a while, so I exited Practice Mode to go try him out in Arcade. But instead of moving to the main menu, the screen stayed black. A few seconds later, a message popped up: "Trouble reading disc. Please remove the disc and restart the system. The second it happened, my heart sank. Worried, I rebooted the system and tried again entering and exiting Practice Mode. This time, it loaded the menu, so I went into arcade mode. During my first battle, the music didn't play. And after the match was over, the error popped up again instead of loading the next round. I was a combination of pissed and worried.

I shut the Wii down and grabbed Wii Sports, Wii Play, Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime 3 and started almost force feeding them into my Wii. All of them loaded and played fine. In RE4 and MP3, I went around to different levels to check specific loading points and see if there was any unusual "background pop-ups" to make sure everything was loading correctly. As it turns out, everything was A-OK. It became clear to me that I have a bum-copy of GGXX:AC. I was a bit of a relief...but still...anger.

The irony: The only reason I even entertained the idea of getting GGXX:AC for the Wii was because my PS2's only 2 functions right now are 1) scratching up discs and 2) handing out "disc read errors" like grandmas handing out granola bars on Halloween. Now, my Wii is pulling the same thing. I keep trying to have fun, but for every "Baby Ruth" I pull out of the bag, I pull out a "Nature Valley Health Bar".

So here's my one sentence review: My copy of Guilty Gear XX: Accent Core is a mind-numbing adventure game where the object is to maneuver past "DRE" obstacles and return it to the store in order to get a (hopefully) decent copy.

Hooray.