My wii just got back from being repaired. The graphics are fixed, and in fact everything just "looks better" than I remember. Whether this is because the defective console was just rendering everything a bit wrong (in addition to the obvious sparkles in certain parts of certain games), or whether it's just my imagination, I don't know.

The returned console had all my savegames on it, and remembered the location of all my channels, but "downloaded" software was all removed and the system didn't have the latest shopping channel. In the shopping channel it still lists the VC games I've bought, so I can download them later when the itch strikes.

Oh, and the savegames included the Twilight Hack. I had intended to remove it before sending, just in case having it there would put me on Nintendo's bad side. But apparently they don't care.

Now that I got the console back I got down to about 5 Stray Beads in Okami, and also checked out the Homebrew Channel. Honestly, it looks great, but I wish there was (GPL or LGPL, of course) source for the important infrastructural parts like the .wad installer that make a Homebrew Channel possible. I know they have concerns about bricking and piracy, but I think that sitting on the source code and information is the wrong approach. For that reason, I'll throw in a free link to these keys which have long been out of the bag anyway.