Thanks to Kombo reader Adam Sorice, we have a doozy of a story to end your 2008 with.

A NeoGAF poster by the name of HUELEN10 tells of his neighbors who recently got their kids a Wii for Christmas. Asked for gaming recommendations, he names a few no-brainers: Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart Wii, etc. He also names a few Virtual Console games, and that is where things get interesting...

Intrigued by the prospect of downloading new and classic games from home, she presses on for details, and he explains the ease of the process to her, instructing her to "put in her credit card when prompted on the Shop Channel, and get the amount of points she wanted."

Simple, right? Even a child could do it.

Well, perhaps she should have handed over her cards to her kids, because she actually messed it up by literally putting in her credit card.

Naturally, this doesn't work. So what does she do?

She tries again with two more cards.

Makes perfect sense to me. "If at first you don't succeed," right?

HUELEN10 explains to her that she now needs to cancel her credit cards and send the unit to Nintendo for a $75 repair (I wonder if they would waive the charges out of sheer amusement/pity?), not to mention where she cracked her sensor bar open trying to install WiiSpeak. And she expects HUELEN10 to foot the bill.

Fortunately, her husband seems to be a bit smarter, and has taken HUELEN10's side as they attempt to free the cards from their $250 prison. So far, they seem to have retrieved two of the cards, but the drive is fragged. Merry Christmas, kids! Now go back to your PS2.

Pics can be found here of the unit in question, and their use of canned air to remove the cards. And for those of you wondering, here's what a Wii running a credit card looks like:



And here's a New Year's resolution for the wife: "Try think harder more."

In related stupidity, there's apparently someone else who installed the New Xbox Experience on their 360, installed their games... and then sold his games to GameStop.

Oy.