Wiis and RegionLocking
 

I'll be moving to America and then to Scotland in a bit over a month and was deciding whether to take my wii.
Does anyone know anything about removing region-locking on the wii? I don't want anything illegal or anything modchips but I ask because over here it's illegal to sell most electronics that are hardware region locked (because of our consumer guarantee act). As in it can be regionlocked out of the box but there has be some way to unregionlock it that doesn't involve opening up (this usually involves putting codes into a remote, for a dvd player for example). So I assume thier should be a similar way to do so with my wii. I'm reluctant to search for it online first because I'll probably just pull up lots of illegal tampering and was wondering if anyone had any experience with it?

Alternatively, how easy is it to get out of region games in America/Scotland? Specifically PAL region, English games.

i THINK your only way would be using the Homebrew channel. It's the only Non-Hardware solution i know of. But even that is far from perfect and 100% sure.

You might have better luck selling your wii now and getting a new one before X-mas

Oh dear, Kotaku.
 

Just to mention selling not really an option as unlike the rest of the world (from what I here) we have too many Wiis here so not really a big demand for them and I won't get a lot of money. And I would have to rebuy all my games.

Thanks for the suggestion though, I'll defineatly check that out.

All you have to do is get a copy of Twilight Princess, do the Twilight Hack, install the Homebrew Channel, and presto. It doesn't take more than ten minutes.

If you can't sell it where you live, then E-Bay is always in option, you can sell the Wii for quite a bit of money over there.

I dunno if I understand your question correctly because the answer seems so obvious, but the UK is a PAL region. Unless they're also locked by geographical areas (you're in New Zealand, right?) you should have no problems at all in Scotland.

Hah, I googled for a map of NTSC and PAL regions to make sure and found one in a Wii FAQ thread.

I never cared for regionlocking, it's a terrible idea.

ooh
 

Hey, this is a good point/topic.
How long will you be in America before heading to Scotland? It's not like your unit will stop working -- just the ability to play games bought over here. If it's a relatively short time, that's not really a huge deal, though you still might enjoy the homebrew solution. Otherwise, it seems that Europe and Oceania are considered the same region, and you won't have to worry about. Nice catch, Meister.

Oh thanks a lot Meister. I didn't realise that Europe was PAL as well. I just assumed it was different.
Nice catch.