As much as people just love to vertically stand their game consoles nowadays, I am just not one of them. I am just a believer that any disc drive that reads in a vertical position is prone to failure sooner than a horizontal position...gravity just does not play nicely with drives that read discs in a vertical motion. Or at least that is my thought behind it as I have always had issues with PC drives that were in the case vertically as opposed to horizontally. Other than that, I like the look of my consoles "laying down" so to speak
Now that I have my reasoning out of the way, I really wanted to get my Wii placed horizontally, but still be protected by some sort of stand. I did some searching, and found this online:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/790/790446p1.html
Sounds good, nice review score. Ok, so let me find it. Damn, after hours of searching, nothing. Some websites even say that it has been discontinued. I called Pelican (or PDP now) and even the customer service guy didn't know what the story was....didn't even know if they were still producing it. Heh. So, I decided to just call around my area. I called a gamestop, and the guy said they didn't had it but he thought he saw it at a Software ETC locally. I called them and they said they had it.
I went there and was presented with the Mad Katz Stacker. Not quite what I was looking for. They said they didn't have it, but on the way out I saw ONE behind some stuff on a shelf in the back! Woohoo!
I just set it up. Man, it is great. The plastic is the same color as the Wii of course, and even the same sort of smooth, mirror-like plastic. It is built solid, and fits the Wii like a glove. Much attention to detail is here, with Wii foot notches and the like built in. There is a spot of the sensor bar in front (although I am not using this), a nice compartment for a Wii remotre and Nunchuk, full access to the GC joypad/memory doors. When the unit is in the stand, it looks like one solid unit....like the Wii was just meant to look this way.
Needless to say, very happy with the purchase. It looks so good in my entertainment center. Best accessory purchase I made for my beloved Wii thus far.
Just figured I'd let you guys and gals in on a great third party product (that is Nintendo approved too). Those of you that are like me and actually like their consoles horizontally (all four of us!), this stand is a must buy.
EDIT: If you want to see what it looks like with the top closed, hit Pelican's site and go to Wii on the bottom:
http://www.pelicanperformance.com/index.html