Growing up I was always told that if you threw a penny off the Empire State Building it would make a huge crater upon hitting the ground. Naturally, such a claim needs tested first hand. Unfortunately, I can assure you that it is absolutely impossible to discover the results of this test when the security guard is handcuffing you because some tourist who witnessed the experiment was a tattletale. This story proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a Wiimote is denser then a skyscraper window…

On Sunday July 23rd 2007, a Wii Remote committed suicide by launching itself through the blinds and through the window of John Doe's apartment. No one was injured as the glass and controller landed on the roof of the restaurant 12 stories below. There are now alleged reports that this may be an involuntary manslaughter case due to INNOCENT PROTECTED's fingerprints being found on the controller. The controller wrist strap broke off of the primary suspect's wrist and Wii Bowling was believed to be playing at the time of the incident. Witnesses could not be immediately contacted for comment.

Those poor restaurant patrons had no idea how close death was that day. It was there... on the 12th floor... Stalking them! Moral of the story? Take as many awesome photos covering the event as this reader did. It's like Carmen San Diego adventure all over again!

Here's another round of overseas strap breaking. Once again, it's on purpose in the name of science...

"After hearing all the stuff about Wiimotes smashing tvs and injuring people, I figured i'd need a couple of stronger straps, just incase. I reveiced my straps today so I thought, "lets test the old one!" and I snapped it (fairly easily I might add) then my older brother had the idea to test the new ones so I did. it didn't break. so i handed it over to my older brother to test out and him being stonger than me he... well, just look at the pic attached... -Alan and Stephen in Scotland, UK"

Alan and Steve, I hate to tell you, but we've seen this sort of behavior before. It's true that straps break when you pull on them, and yes the new straps will break your Wii remote. Don't do this anymore, I mean it. I will whip you with a rubber hose if you break anymore Wii remotes on purpose, unless it's a fancy new way that we haven't seen before.

Since this guy broke his Wii remote and strap on purpose instead of being careless it doesn't seem right making fun of him at first. But then when I thought about it, it seems even more appropriate to make fun of him. Oh sure, I appreciate the research he's done, but at what cost did we get it? I'm going to stick to playing video games on my Wii instead of treating it like a crash test dummy.

"Ok, so the other day I received my new Wii-straps. I thought that I would try and break my old Wii-straps, just to see how much pressure they could take. I had them still tied to the Wii-mote and wrapped around my wrist. I gave them a good, long, slow pull and it snapped.

Since I received four new straps from Nintendo (the max that they allowed), I thought I would test them as well. The result? I grabbed firmly on the controller and wrapped the Wii-strap around my wrist and gave it a good slow pull..... SNAP! I then looked down expecting my fresh new Wii-strap to be broken. But to my surprise, it wasn't the Wii-strap that was broken, it was the Wii-mote that was broken. Right where you stick the Wii-strap in and around, the Wii-strap totally ate up that piece of plastic. So now I am left with a Wii-mote that is Wii-strapless from now on. For anyone wondering, I had to use a little more oomph with the new Wii-strap."

There you have it, even though the new straps are tougher, they are not magical protection against destructive behavior. So for now I guess you will just have to behave like a rational human being if you want to avoid the destruction your playthings.

Here's a nice furniture damage story. This time it's a china cabinet. Quincy shares his pain with us...

"i was playing wii sport baseball... The wii remote slipped from my hands, snapped the wrist cord, and flew into my mother in law china cabinet. I really couldn't believe people were breaking the straps, I thought they must be drunk and throwing the Wii-motes without using the straps correctly, but then it happened. few days ago I was telling the store manager and EB game how dumb you must be to throw your wii remote into the tv. i enter the dumb static... -Quincy"

Admitting that he has a problem is the first step. As a second step, I think Quincy should take a look at that last sentence. "I enter the dumb static." I don't know what he means there, is he trying to say "dumb statistic" because he's grouped in with a new demographic? Or is he saying that he's statically dumb as opposed to dynamically dumb? Who can say? All I know is his round of crazy antics just cost him a china cabinet.

What we have here is strap breakage of the after market, third party variety. Leigh tells us the story of flailing arms and swings gone wrong...

"I thought maybe...just maybe the newer straps that come with the sleeves would be a little stronger. Also, the sleeves dont help you hold on any better, just lull you into a false sense of safety.

i was playing baseball and was getting pretty sweaty when I made a big pitch and mid pitch i decided to aim a little more left. At this point I went for the directional pad, this caused the wiimote to slip from my hand and smash into the ground around as hard as i can possibly throw it, luckily i hit no-one or anything of value (And didnt break the wiimote) but one thing is for sure... that strap didnt stop a thing, if i released earlier it probably woulda gone through the window. Cheers -Leigh"

Yes Leigh it's true, no matter who's strap you buy, when you swing like crazy and let go in mid swing... Your strap is going to break. I'm going to take this opportunity to avoid making the obvious joke about girls playing baseball and getting pretty sweaty and instead I'm going to jump straight to the compliment on sleeve color. Frankly, I bet that bluish color really brings out your eyes Leigh. Not that I can see them, but I'm still betting it does.

A dented wall and a loss in "status" a sad day all the way around for our friend here. He explains that it was a combination of Rayman and Bowling that caused his downfall. Well mainly it was his friends inability to behave like a human being instead of one of the raving rabbids, but Rayman and Bowling are in there somewhere...

Me and my buddy were playing Wii Sports Bowling just after a rousing session of Rayman (so our arms were pretty tired). It was only the first frame when my friend managed to chuck the Wiimote into the wall above the TV. All I saw was a little white bullet with a vendetta against my wall. The strap is utterly toast. Thank god I have a replacement since I got one of the Wiimote covers. Oh, that game of bowling was pretty well cursed: I lost Pro status because I scored too low.

Snapped strap? Check! Dented Wall? Check! Wii remote still working even though you just threw it at the side of a dwelling? Check! The durability of the Wii remote shines through again.

Well we can clearly see what happened here. This guy's fiancee threw the Wii remote into the picture and then probably said "Oops... Sorry sweetie, looks the Wii broke that ugly photo your Dad gave you. I guess we will just have to burn it or stick it in the basement where no one will see it ever again." It looks like Ryan is blind to the fact that his fiancee obviously did this on purpose. Just listen to his side of the story and how makes it sound like it was some sort of accident...

"my fiance's controller strap broke while playing tennis the other night and the controller flew out of her hand to the right on the backswing and cracked the glass covering a framed photo that my dad gave me. the controller survived no problems and we finished our match. i beat her 3 games to 2. We got new glass right away for the photo frame, for $25. My friend actually tied the strap in a bunch of knots to put it back together, but we're gonna head out to get a recall replacement sometime soon. -Ryan"

Ryan, trust me on this one buddy. Your fiancee hates the picture. She's just going to find more and more ways to destroy it until you finally hide it. Throwing a Wii remote is a woman's idea of subtle communication. Just the other day, my date threw a potted plant at me towards the end of our date. This was her way of saying that she had a really great time and wanted to do it again soon. In your case, the Wii remote means she hates the picture. That's how it works. "Potted plants" = "I had a good time," while "Wii remote" = "your father has poor taste in art work." I don't make the rules, that's just how this works.

Broken windows have always been something that goes hand in hand with playing baseball. Except it's usually the ball that goes through the window instead of the bat. Kevin here will explain to us just how this window shattering happened...

"I was playing my wii with my friend Joe were playing wii baseball and he was batting. So he swung, the remote cord snapped and the wii remote flew into the window. The only that saved the wii remote from going outside was that it hit the curtain and kept it in side. There was a big hole in the window after. -Kevin"

The curtain stopping the Wii remote has given me an idea. Maybe we need to put this brand of out of control players inside some sort of mosquito net tent. Oh sure, it would look like they would be ostracized like some sort of plague or malaria victim, but c'mon they are flinging remotes around. You don't want to catch that brand of stupidity do you?

Jeff here has apparently decided to go for shear acreage of TV screen destroyed. 65 inches of TV viewing space is now small number my friends. I let Jeff pout verbally to you for just a second before I add some more comments to belittle him publicly.

"I was playing Wii Bowling in the last frame when the Wii-mote slipped out of my hand and the strap broke at the same time. It hit my 65 in Sony tv and put a serious crack in the screen. Originally we thought it was just the glass on the outside. Then my friend pointed out that in his opinion I toar the screen behind the glass also. Thanks Nintendo. -Jeff"

My favorite part is where he says "Thanks Nintendo" as if they had anything to do with Jeff throwing things at his TV screen. For those of us who've witnessed the throwing of Wii remotes or have seen some of the strap weight tests that have been done, you can see that breaking a strap requires Jeff to take trip to crazytown before it will break. Jeff, even though I'm shaming you for taking a shot at Nintendo, I'm going to say thanks for the pictures of destruction. It's the little things in life like this that brighten my day.

A combo move is what we call this particular situation. Not only did this Wii Sports Hero collide with a household object, he chain-reactioned a throwing of the remote across the room, and ended with a triple flip and nailed the landing. Our international panel of judges would usually give this high marks, but our judge from Greece wasn't really paying attention and only gave him a 9.2 which is going to drag Eric's composite down. Now that I'm completely off topic, I'm going to let Eric tell you what actually happened...

"We were bowling, when my friend was kinda getting in my view of the tv, so i kinda repositioned myself to another angle of the room. I forgot to check for objects around the room that might mess up my swing. I took a pretty hard swing and ended up hitting a chair. Because my swing was so hard, the wii remote slipped out of my hand, strap breaks, and the controller ricochets off four walls, including the ceiling, leaving a trail of batteries, batteries, battery case, and the top of my wii remote. Luckily, I just missed his tv, but my controller doesn't work anymore. It doesn't sync up with the Wii at all. -Eric"

After bouncing off of four walls and a chair, you may as well have driven a truck over the poor remote. Eric, I am stunned that your remote doesn't worked. F'n shocked, as it were.