Preorder FF Pixel Remasters Physical Copy👇 Switch: bit.ly/3KoJ9F4 Become a channel member: bit.ly/2KeqCuN Recommended Video Game Stuff On Amazon: amzn.to/2yUs8MXShop Play-Asia: bit.ly/2m4xq5c Shop Castle Mania Games: bit.ly/2MsQuFG Shop Stone Age Gamer: bit.ly/33dGaY6

"Sega Genesis and NES are indestructible as long as you don't keep them in a sewer." The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in an absolute panic now...

My takeaway from this is to ensure that your Wii U doesn't brick, you have to hack the system so you can back up the NAND. And if you bothered to hack the system, well, that opens a whole other world of possibilities.

As far as I know this has not been an issue with original Wii (not yet, anyway), so it's real disappointing if this really is a widespread issue with Wii U consoles. I know nothing lasts forever, but the Wii U is not even THAT old. This should not be happening unless Nintendo cheaped out on component quality. We'll probably get a better idea of how big this issue is after the initial hysteria from the news article dies down a little, and we get more input from people who actually know what they are talking about.

Oddly enough, I keep my Wii U plugged up in our main TV. I modded it & we play it frequently. It's still a great way to play Wii & DS games, as well as other systems

I'm filled with dread after hearing of this article. My WiiU console has been boxed and in storage for at least 5 years (maybe more). Going to have to take it out and fire it up with fingers crossed. I really hope it still works. I plan to get some games off the E-Shop before it closes.

Steve Carell: "Is it true that if you don't use it, you lose it?!"

I hope this means the WiiU modding scene is going to find a fix for this.

This got me a little worried, so I pulled out my WiiU and made sure all was well. Works fine. Did an update and then plays just fine.

I know this happens with USB memory sticks also. From what I’ve read was that (in simple paraphrasing) the microchips needed some electric current to keep the data in memory. And if the device wasn’t used in years and no longer had a charge, the memory would be lost.

This is not an issue that affects Wii U exclusively. This affects all modern devices using flash memory: game consoles (and their game cards/cartridges), storage media (thumbdrives, SD cards, SSDs), apliances (microwave ovens, washing machines), TVs, smartphones, cars... Only old devices using good old MaskROMs won't suffer from this issue. Manufacturers lied to us telling that flash memory is non-volatile: data eventually fades over time due to _electron dettrapping_ if not refreshed.

if we can't backup and restore the nand without modding the console, maybe this is a good time to mod the console

Finally I read about similar cases! My Wii U died two years ago. I hadn't used it for months and one day I wanted to play on it and it wouldn't turn on. It never did. Bricked. When I tell people about this they are always surprised. Now I know it's a known issue.

It sounds like the Wii U's memory is lost if it's not receiving any electricity for an extended period of time. Going off of that, I guess you gotta keep the thing plugged in if you want it to last, or at least remember to hook it up a few times a year to ensure the memory's always charged.

I'm not a Wii U owner, but hopefully, some people resolve it.

This is interesting, my brother gave me his Wii U over a year ago and he had not used it in 2 years. When I 1st powered it on the UI was incredibly slow, the store and a few other programs would take forever to load into or had what looked like skips/lag it was different from what I remembered when I had my Wii U. After a week or 2 of use the UI and apps were back to the snappiness I remembered. This may have nothing to do with the issue being discussed but thats my expereince with a Wii U that had been in storage.

When my system bricked, I dug around on the internet for a long while. Found a guy who determined that the specific flash memory they used (I think he said it was Samsung) had a firmware issue that caused corruption that was patched on phones, but not on Wii U. He was guessing all Wii Us would die of this eventually. He figured he could probably push the patch to the Wii U NAND if he had an android dev kit. At that point, he had run out of time/money/interest in doing any additional mods. The corruption issue goes all the way back to when games like Smash/Zelda/Wii U Sports Club first came out, but Nintendo was still repairing them, so it wasn't a big deal. Now, there are no options.

Unfortunately I am one of those victims whose WIi U has died after 5+ years of not turning it on. It happened just last week too when I tried turning it on. I was so confused because I took good care of it and there was no reason for it to have died. It was pure coincidence for me that this article released today shortly after this happened to me, giving me answers when I was just really confused as to why my console with no prior issues just suddenly died when the last time I used it back in 2018 it was perfectly normal and functional.

Just a heads up for anybody that's paying attention I have a Wii U and I keep it plugged in all the time I have rearranged my game room 3 times and every single time I unplug it and plug it back in it tries to not power on I have to pull out the thumb drive and the SD card to get it to power on every time. If you don't know about this you will freak out like I did

This info is not backed up by hardware testing, just some basic understandings of the "moving parts" of a Wii U and why something like this could be happening. - The Wii U is very sensitive to poor data integrity because it is heavily encrypted system. This means that if even one critical file has data integrity issues due to hardware issues, it will throw the infamous error code. - The Wii U has high capacity eMMC from a period of time where high capacity emmc was known to be more prone to failures. Teslas from the time had issues with 8GB NAND flash of the same type, and you might remember Nintendo having a bit of a PR nightmare around the launch of Smash 4 because people were somehow bricking their consoles installing it. This is likely related. - High density eMMC does sometimes lose data integrity when not powered up for extremely long times, ever opened an SD card from a decade ago and found some of the JPGs are corrupt? This is why. So technically speaking, the eMMC isn't "failing" so much as it is losing it's data integrity due to being of relatively poor quality and not receiving power for a long period of time. I have some good news though: the Wii U attempts to phone home to network services for various tasks, even while powered off, so long as it is plugged in. This phoning home powers up the Wii U's eMMC NAND Flash and, this repeated powering up of the eMMC is theoretically good for it's long term maintenance of it's data integrity. So my proposed solution? Keep your Wii U's plugged in!

Reasonable PSA. People have had experiences with SSD’s that are lying around and powered up for the first time in years. A good question would be, when the device is modded, does it still rely on that nand?

Don’t get too scared, if this does become more wide spread the modding community is gonna find a fix for it, also this a great time to mod your Wii U and back it up and do whatever it takes to preserve it, modders are gonna keep finding ways to preserve these older consoles more then some of these goofy ass companies ever will….now I’m gonna hook up my Wii U that I got at a local retro shops months again when I have time to make sure it’s till fine lmao

I haven't used mine in at least 5 years. I'm going to get it and plug it in to see what happens and I'll let you know.

this NAND brick will skyrocket the price of the WII U since I bet many units will be gone in a couple of years.

I currently have a Wii U that wasn’t used for about 3 years. Recently plugged it in and it seems to work fine. It’s possibly referring to people that bought when it released and haven’t played it since recently to find out it’s bricked

This is bit rot. Affects all forms of storage like HDDs and SSDs. It means someone needs to figure out a way to reflash the NAND on the device, bypassing CPU security and encryption methods, because the chip itself is still perfectly good. It's just that the data is degraded from passing time. Otherwise, it's going to become junk.

This is something everyone has to be aware of, data that is stored on nand flash can go corrupt if not plugged in. SSDs can lose stored data within a year of sitting on the shelve. So better keep them running and always do backups of important stuff.

Dam! I never play mine and it’s in its box. I have 60 physical and an external hard drive full of games so this would suck bag. I’m going to pull mine out and giver her a run.

This is truly sad. I sent this video to two of my friends that have a Wii U, and both their systems are dead. They’ve basically been off since the switch came out and they have the error code.

Sounds like standard nand eol issues that plagued cheap / old nand tech. Xbox 360 for instance had similar issues. Personal example of how I would discover this…when you try and rgh it you may get a failure in the flashing process because not enough space is available… not all nand space is useable as the software dump requires slightly more space than what the original software needs and this is how you find out that the entirety of your nand storage has degraded. Some hacking xbox tools can actually confirm this after scanning your storage.

They don't make them like they used to. Planned obsolescence

Hack your Wii U and you will never have an issue with not using it. It is one of the best emulation options for all major retro systems and arcade emulation.

Holy moly! I moved few months back and only touched my WiiU before that once. Pretendo is a thing now which brings back Splatoon 1 splatfests and Miiverse too. I hope my console still functions properly, definitely going to make another NAND backup soon.

This feels like a nail in a coffin for the Wii U. I really hope they didn’t design the switch the same way.

Up until a year ago I hadn't used my Wii U in years. Then last year when they announced ending the e-shop I pulled it out from storage and started buying digital games turning it into my ultimate Nintendo retro console. Never had a problem with my Wii U. This month is Wii U month. I'll be buying the rest of my wishlist til the last day.

Thankfully I got my NAND backed up and still use it often to play my physical wii games Feel bad for those this could effect but the idea of a wii u summoning ritual to make sure it doesn't die is a little funny

Super Nintendos are starting to have issues where their video RAM is no longer working properly and you get weird graphical behaviors or even the console not working properly. Nothing lasts forever, sadly.

The GPU and CPU chips on the SNES can die at any given moment. I have see a lot of bricked Super Nintendo consoles.

It is being frustrating to keep our collections alive.

Absolutely had this happen to me and it's getting more and more frequent on boards. I had gotten a Wii U in a lot as well, tested it, worked great and no problems for a week. Brought it to a reputable store to trade in and it bricked when they went to test it, right in front of me. Just turning it on. Same thing that happens to many reports, just won't get past the initial splash screen. Absolutely blew my mind but due to these failure rates and the ports to the switch, I completely dumped my Wii U accessories, games, and systems. Only Nintendo system I've completely divested from. What a bummer.

I never had this happen to me because I still use my Wii U regularly since I had it back in 2012. It does make sense because while it might or might not be rare to happen, some electronics are like this. I don’t know if this is true, but it’s not a huge worry because from what I heard you probably only need to turn it on and use it like maybe once or twice a year at least to avoid it but who knows? I think one thing that helps is that even though there’s really probably not going to be any more system updates and is probably not needed anymore, I keep the standby feature turned on from the system settings where every set amount of hours the power light turns orange and checks for updates. I’m pretty sure that when that feature is turned on in the OS is still running in the background in some way even if the power light is red because when you turn it on the blue light doesn’t flash once or twice unless if you unplug it and then plug it back in. And if you plug it back in without turning the console on, the standby functions won’t take affect again until you actually turn the console on again from what I think I noticed. But that is just a theory I have with it.

Wow! Great reporting this issue. You are at the forefront in gaming news.

Saw the story yesterday...took down my years old non played Wii U...blew the dust off...no issues...

I literally had a dream last night about my childhood Wii U breaking down with this error, I plugged it in today and thank god...

funny how i heard a rumor that the wii would self-destruct. who would’ve guessed it was actually the wii u that’s gonna self-destruct.

Just turned on my WiiU after almost a year and it still works.

“Warm up that Wii U, stare at it for 5 minutes, Wii U Fridays!” 😂😂 Hilarious, you’re killin’ me, dude. Thanks for making me laugh about this because it sucks and worries me that my Wii U is gonna be toast when I plug it in! I’m certainly no Wii U engineer or NAND specialist either, so…guess I gotta prepare for some Wii U Friday nights, baby, woo! 😂😂😂👍🏻

I'm plugging mine in today and making sure it still works. 🙏

This never happened to me when I haven't used my WiiU for a while. But that's really fucked up for a console to have when it's been sitting there for days or so.

I bit the bullet and finally retired my Wii and use the WiiU in Wii mode. And then there's still the few WiiU games that haven't been or never will be ported to the Switch. So I guess for the time being I'm not too worried.

This is true, i bought a wii U from a couple who said they hadn't plugged it in for years and when I went to plug it up I got an error code. Turned it off and on again still same error message. Nintendo must have cheaped out on the NAND storage for the internal memory.

Damn, I have two Wii U consoles; One I have hooked up, and the other is mint and CIB, stored away - Wondering whether it’s even worth holding on to at this point… 😢

I actually had a video ram chip go bad in a SNES. It was the one I bought from Kmart as a kid back in the day. Ironically I found another one with the case all best to hell and back that worked fine. Did a shell swap and that's the SNES. I use today

my console corrupted in 2019 right before they discontinued the Wii Shop support (not sure if related to this error, but it was a similar memory error after I used the Shovel Knight amiibo in that game out of curiosity). luckily they were able to fix it (unless they just gave me a different refurbished one) and I was able to redownload everything, I cringe thinking about potentially having to go thru that with all the shops down and no official support anymore.

haven't turned mine on since around switch launch. Turned it on today, works great.

As someone who owns 3 Wii Us this is concerning. One I use every week, one I haven't used in almost 1 1/2 years, and one I haven't used in nearly 8 years.

So if the wii u is destined to die, why even buy a new one or used for that matter?

thanks for jumping on the topic, I was just looking into thus

This just made me take my wii u, clean the dust away, and plug it in my messy "setup". Going to keep it on as I do homework. I wonder how often I do have to actually do this, as I don't play wiiu often as much

This tempts me to buy one asap. Ive wanted to since Smash Bros Wii came out. Even saw a deluxe one for 50usd recently and it was claimed like a minute before me 😭

Thanks for the heads up Ron. Hopefully the community can figure out a solution!💪🎮👍

So what is the best option to buy on the eshop before it shuts down completely?

Man! I haven't turned on my WiiU since I got my Switch in 2017! I pray mine still works! I've got a Zelda WiiU and I'd hate for that to be bricked!!!

My SNES was bought day-1 and well cared for. Kept the box and all packaging in mint condition. Had it packed away for years in the closet, safely inside its box. Unpacked it around 2019 and hooked it up... the audio was distorted and staticky on all games. Completely inaudible. Tried the games in a different SNES and they worked just fine. 😕

As an IT professional. It’s true and false. With everything we use today, Solid state drives have errors happening all the time. Even on a system that may seem it’s working perfectly fine. It is not because a system has not been used. It’s because they caused the issue from shutting off a system during an update/upgrade or firmware update Nintendo has periodically pushed to our systems over the years since the Wii. That can possibly cause it to brick because you just can’t install the OS. Lots of variables, but it’s not a system that reads and writes all day and night like a desktop or even enterprise level hard drives. The possibility is so low and don’t worry.

I use my Wii U often as it's still plugged in. Didn't even think about this being an issue anytime soon.

This can be fixed by backing up the nand via hacking the console

Thankfully I still pick up and play both of my Wii Us to make sure they're awake and alive

dang, I did a factory reset on mine thinking I'd sell it to get a Switch but never did. Only bought a couple games from the eshop.

My WiiU game pad at one time bricked. Turned out that it just needed the battery to be replaced. Haven’t had a problem since

I have not used it in 3 years, until this year 2023 when I am buying games in the eshop, so far everything is fine with my Wii U

Homebrew your console and back up the memory so when it crashes you have a reboot disk. Or usb in this case

Just plugged mine up and updated it for the first time in about 3 years, so far so good...

Thank god I sold mine a while back. Barely used it.

I’ve been turning mine on every Monday to log into the e-shop to get my Nintendo points. I guess that won’t be happening any more after this month. I actually have games such as Paper Mario Color Splash and BOTW on it I’d like to revisit some day, so it better not brick.

I have 3 Wii U's 1 modded and 2 stock. Have had no issues with them. I think it might have something to do with how they were stored.

I mostly play Switch now, but I still have the Wii U hooked up to the TV (although turned off at the outlet). Once in a while I still like to play a bit of Minecraft, some of the old VC games that aren't on Switch, or even start it up in Wii mode to play some old WiiWare. After this announcement, I'll probably be powering it up every couple of months!

This happened to me a few months ago. Took the Wii U out of the box for the first time in a couple years and put it on my entertainment center. Plugged it in, turned it on, and it played SM3DW without issue. Turned it on again a week later and it had died completely. It would turn on but had no video signal and didn't respond to any input from the Gamepad. Called Nintendo and of course they didn't offer repairs anymore. Ended up buying another one on eBay for around $60 and it came with a Smash 4 disc inside, so the story doesn't have *too* bad an ending. Still, it was kind of disappointing. Up until that point, I was used to Nintendo hardware being built *like* bricks, not becoming them.

Seems to have happened to me. Never hacked, never opened up the console itself, dusted it off after 5 years and now it’s just stuck on the Wii U logo

Turned mine on last night, first time in a year or so. Ill make sure its on regular - I have my entire wii-library backed up on the wii-u

I had issues with the wiiu sometime ago, games just would not get past the splash screen (except the virtual console titles). I decided to factory reset the console; saw the black screen saying the system memory was corrupted. I was devastated but, oh well, things come and go.

Many years ago our Wii U was working just fine & then suddenly bricked up on us one day during a game of Splatoon. We had been using our Wii U pretty much daily & unfortunately it was past the warranty on it. Recently we tried to have it repaired after it sat bricked & unusable for many years with the Splatoon disc still stuck inside. It could not be repaired so we have bought another used Wii U console which works okay for now but I still have that looming fear that this one will also brick up on us for who knows whatever reason.

Nobody tell Scott the Woz

If Nintendo doesn’t do something with it, they’re basically saying “they aren’t worried about longevity” and that’s a red flag for a lot of us collectors.

I have two Wii U systems, a main one and one I used for hacking. I personally could care less about the system as my only titles that I play on it was Splatoon, Smash for Wii U and Mario Kart Eight. Those where ported to the Switch as Enhanced ports "Mario Kart Eight / Smash Ultimate Deluxe" and acceptable sequels in Splatoon case. I noticed that since I hardly use my Wii U after it's game pad has been fully charged and it's pro controller, after a three days the tablet controller is fully drained with no use and the pro controller is under half charge. I believe it is true that without much use it's components slowly deteriorate.

Early Wii U have faulty eMMC chips that essentially deadlock themselves due to a firmware bug. The issue can be avoided by making a NAND backup (before things go south), flashing it to a good, fresh eMMC and replacing it. Later models got different eMMC that don't have that issue, but the only way to tell for sure us opening the console and checking what chip is on the mainboard. The corruption issue can be avoided by using a USB HDD for installs and save games. However, eMMC is flash storage. If they aren't used in years, they lose charge and the data with it. It's not a Wii U issue, but an issue with flash technology altogether. Even modern SSD can corrupt if they haven't been used for 5+ years. Only problem is that Wii U firmware is encrypted and tied to a hardware key. Means simply replacing the chip and doing a fresh install is not an option. When it corrupts and you got no backup, it's essentially a door stop.

My WiiU did die for not being used it will not pass the starting menu. try everything and anything. Had to pick up another console

Just checked mine. Haven’t played since the Switch was released. Works fine, updating the software as we speak too.

Looks like the Nand back up has to be reverse engineered along with a programer made for this. That seems like the only fix. But the good news is it would be the perfect time to upgrade the Nand memory. I wouldn’t mind a 128gb Wii U console.

What’s the website for pin removal I have 2 Wii U systems but my daughter put a pin on one of them and she doesn’t remember what it is

It's the start of a new holiday, Wii U Play Day.

I bought a Wii U 2 weeks ago, went to plug it in and it was bricked. Just a black screen! Replaced the clock battery still nothing. This explains everything. They said it had been sitting there for over a year.

Mine still works. Everything boots up and behaves as normal! I hadn't turned my WiiU on in around 6 years so... Mine is the Black Zelda edition, so not sure if that makes any difference. I don't think the internals are different, but I don't know for sure, but I just wanted to put that out there just in case.

will the hacked store still work ? Like wii u usb helper ?

Until 2021, I stopped using mine probably around 2018. I am thankful it didn’t get hit with the brick

For all of the collectors who live and die by the ethos "games are meant to be played" The Wii U is your flagship console now. It MUST be played. No shelf collectors for this bad boy.

I was noticing for a long time, that if i hadn't turned on my Wii u in a while, that it wouldn't boot and the game pad wouldn't connect. I was getting a white screen on the TV. I would then hold down the power button on the console and shut it down - turn it back on again and it would work. This happened several times over the past few years always after been left off of long periods, 6 months or more. My Wii u has very little milage, i have it since 2013. It's the 8gb white model.

Yeah I put my Wii U in the original box to save it from scracthes as I wasn't using it actively. It's one of those modern consoles you want to hold to, bit different you know. But it's destroyed now :( The Wii side of things seem to work, but running a WiiU app or disc will crash it to 160-0103. I wanted to keep it original and not do any softmods too, so bummer, no backups either.

I think that as long as you can backup save data that's the most important, you can always get a sequel console that will be eventually backwards compatible. Save data is the most important.

Especially on the OG Xbox, capacitors can fail and/or leak and could lead to a dead console, or, in worst case, damaged motherboard. For that case, I have now 8 OG Xbox consoles in my stock, and I was forced to discard one during the last five years due to bigger problems (still use it for parts). My (hacked WiiU) is now in my collection for around 4 years, connected to the grid, and still works fine.