Smoking in the presence of your Nintendo Wii can be seriously detrimental to its health. Yep, Nintendo has admitted that the residues in cigarette smoke can build up on the components inside the Wii console and stop it from working properly.

It’s always been a bit of a no-no to smoke around children. And the link between smoking tobacco and getting lung cancer is long established. But who knew that passive smoking could also cause harm to a games console?

Wii blinded by cigarette smoke

Nintendo’s confession came after a number of Wii gamers complained that their consoles were not able to read some game discs properly. Many of them reported that their consoles were having a particularly hard time reading the Super Smash Bros. Brawl (SSBB) game, which comes on a dual-layer disc.

And so it turns out that the tobacco deposits in cigarette smoke can build up on the lens inside the disc drive of the Wii, causing it to lose its focus. This lack of focus doesn’t seem to be a problem with single-layer discs, but with the SSBB dual-layer disc, some smokers are having real problems.

So what is Nintendo going to do about it? Well, far from just blaming gamers for smoking around their consoles, Ninty is offering to give Japanese Wiis a spring clean – for free.

The game isn’t out in the UK yet, and won’t be for at least few months yet. So its unclear how this problem will affect UK Wii gamers who’re partial to smoking cigarettes while playing Wii Tennis.

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