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Warning - Wii U console *could* die by itself if not used

coffinbirth

Member
Ooooooof, that's a kick to the nuts. My Wii U is buried in a closet behind a six foot shelf, and I have no intentions of moving that bastard until I buy a new house.

Anyone here tried Wii U gamepad emulation in CEMU yet? It's been a long time since I checked in on that progress, and It's looking like might be my best bet at getting around to my Wii U backlog before I keel over.
 

skyfall

Member
The question is why would anyone still play Wii U in 2023 when most of the game that matters already ported to Switch?

Kirby rainbow curse
nintendo land
paper mario color splash
xenoblade chronicles x
star fox zero
mario party 10
mario & sonic olympics 2014
mario tennis ultra smash
Twilight Princess HD
Wind Waker HD

All good games imo - can only be played on wii u

And of course its fully backwards compatible with the original wii through hdmi. A lot of people have tvs with only hdmi connections now
 
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TLZ

Banned
Love the console. My most played console that gen. I turn it on every once in a while. I have haxchi on it and want to update to Tiramisu but I haven't turned it on since last year. Hopefully it's still ok.

Damn, and I just bought Devil's Third for it. Hope my 8GB (with attached hard drive) keep running until I get around to playing it.
It's ok but performance is bad.
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
Kirby rainbow curse
nintendo land
paper mario color splash
xenoblade chronicles x
star fox zero
mario party 10
mario & sonic olympics 2014
mario tennis ultra smash
Twilight Princess HD
Wind Waker HD

All good games imo - can only be played on wii u

And of course its fully backwards compatible with the original wii through hdmi. A lot of people have tvs with only hdmi connections now
Twilight Princess and Wind Waker will be ported for sure. The rest is average at best in my opinion.
 

Leonidas

Member
Not all is lost.

My USB stick games still work.

I got eShop working long enough to download my library into my USB stick, so I should at least be able to play those.

At this point I should probably just move on to Cemu...
 

LordOfChaos

Member
NAND life being worn out? They only used some shit eMMC controller internally after all, almost as slow as a hdd

So used or not, would anything really help?
 

supernova8

Banned
Best way as in getting the best picture, the internal conversion/upscaling to HDMI of the Wii U is better than the component/composite signal the Wii sends out. With an mClassic(dongle > cable) you can improve the picture even more.

Here's what an mClassic can do with 480p content(diminishing returns the higher the res of the source)





mclassic.jpg


As for worthwhile Wii exclusive games, surely you can you can put in some work of looking that up yourself since that's very subjective.

It also seems to have a positive impact on the Switch played in TV mode but in Japan those mclassic cables are so pricey (I think someone is hoarding them), I may as well as just upgrade my graphics card and emulate the damn thing instead.
 

ahtlas7

Member
I still have my Zelda themed Wii U stored in a box with lots of other old gaming gear, hopefully, the company keeps it happy. I don’t know if it’ll ever get used again anyway and that makes me sad.
 

cireza

Member
If it’s plugged into power all the time is that ok?
It doesn't look like it, but difficult to tell for sure 100%. Being powered doesn't seem to affect this type of storage as suggested by LordOfChaos LordOfChaos .

So I guess everyone who has a console from the bad batch is fucked ? How large this batch is is the real question.

There were many reports of people keeping the console stored and discovering the issue though. Would they still have gotten the issue had they used their console regularly ? Hard to tell.
 
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Cosmonal

Neo Member
Voultar is looking the Wii U issue and I think its worthwhile to wait someone like him checks if it's really a console flaw. His tweet about it:
 

cireza

Member
It should be noted that if the NAND gets corrupted, it might be possible one day to bypass the NAND through some other device at boot. This is why making a backup before it gets bad is useful. And again, no idea on how many consoles are affected.

I updated the first post a little bit. I am quite surprised at the attention this topic suddenly got...
 
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I hear this is less of an issue with the black model. Similar to the issues the white Wii had that the black model didn't as well.
 

Mozza

Member
Am I missing something, I thought the Wii U died years ago. :messenger_grinning:

Loved the console by the way, massive shame about it's sales imho.
 
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stranno

Member
I did a NAND backup yesterday (the best way to check every byte in the NAND), after ~3 years in a plastic box, and it was perfectly fine.

I wish Tiramisu and Aroma would have appeared before. Nowadays they seem like a waste, since nobody is using them creatively (aside the IOSU patches for piracy). The DRC and screenshots plugins are great tho.

Love Wii U since it is a very weird and obsolete, yet a bit capable, hardware for the year it came out. The Gamecube CPU architecture, the XBOX 360 GPU architecture and broken WIFI/BR/DVD standars left and right. It's pure Nintendo :messenger_heart:
 
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Quasicat

Member
Ya but ultimately a good PC will play all these games with even more options like shaders etc.
Mine still runs, but overheats occasionally. I’m really tempted to get a Steam Deck for this as TV time is more limited with the kids staying up later as they get older.
 

stranno

Member
Didn‘t Switch kill the Wii U?
Switch still lacks many of the Wii U hot features.

- Wii/Gamecube native support. Switch has like 3-5 Wii/Gamecube ports?
- DS emulation. DS VC emulation is absolutely wonderful and it plays like a dream in the Gamepad, even lacking DSi support. Switch has no DS emulation whatsoever and melonDS, on homebrew-capable units, it's not quite there in terms of performance.
- N64 emulation. This is getting better and bigger on Switch, but some games didn't look quite right and still long way to catch the full roster of Wii U.
- Wiimote support. I still don't know why Nintendo didn't include this. Since Joy-Cons are basically improved Wiimotes, it would have been really easy.
 

nush

Member
I've just packed my Wii U for a trip half way round the world and left my PS4 behind to die alone. Make of that what you will.

I'm going to be honest, Nintendo's online services and account management are shit and all I need for the PS4 is username and password.
 

Tams

Member
Finally got around to firing up my Wii U after over four years (and it getting shipped half way around the world).

Thankfully, all is working as much as it can in 2023.

The gamepad stick caps have suffered severe rubber reversion, and the console itself is quite loud (possibly damage from the shipping).

I think I'll hack it and backup the NAND.
 
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Doczu

Member
I turned on mine the other day after years of keeping it disconnected from power. It works, thankfully.
Make a NAND backup then.

I need to turn on mine and check. It is soft modded, but i'm sure i don't have the nand backup. Gonna do it now, cause i was about to let my kid play on it
 

Killer8

Member
Dusted mine off tonight to see if it works. First impressions were that the console boots fine but as soon as I try to start up a game I get the error code. Fuck.
 

DavJay

Member
Going to be interesting to see the price of working Wii U price rocket upwards. I check with seven friends to see if their Wii U is still working and all but one got that error. This is actually quite scary.
 
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