Wii / Wii U System Transfer Preparations

Hey there, everybody! ...this is not your regularly-scheduled program! It is, in fact... horrible, horrible filler! (It's also possibly self-indulgent non-video content just for the excuse of alleged "posterity"... don't be fooled by my excuses when I try to excuse myself for being inexcusable!)

So let me tell you a horrible story... it was around the end of the year and I was fooling around with Wii games, as usual... content, really. I didn't even have much reason to consider upgrading, because there are SO MANY Wii games just by themselves that I haven't finished (or even begun) devouring properly. However, a weird thing started happening... I'd encounter a disc read error once in awhile.

At first it was kinda funny and weirdly infrequent... a good example would be how my next-to-most-recent Fortune Street game unfolded (which you can actually find wayyyy in the backlogs of my video highlights on Twitch TV) and abruptly derailed on the very LAST turn before I could roll the dice and (perhaps) win the game before another competitor trying to do the very same thing... it was really close, suffice to say. Then apparently it decided to stop reading the disc before that turn ended and it even SKIPPED my turn entirely before letting the AI take over, having obviously lost the initiative by that point and the results proceeded as you might expect.

After that point, it just became painfully more frequent until no discs (Wii or GameCube) would read at all. It was a truly sad day that I reckoned with that day, and I spent the following weeks doing research and trying whatever fixes that I believed to be within my means and technical expertise (here's a hint... my comfort level getting hands-on with delicate machinery and computer innards is not very high) until finally realizing that it'd be a far cry more than I considered "worthwhile" to fix the ultimate likely diagnosis, so sadly the "best" idea I could come up with would be to wait things out... eventually I'd find an attractive enough deal on the Wii U to upgrade.

So, as you might presume, that eventuality has come along and now not only can I play my Wii library again, I can also play other, newer games!

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On to more relevant details, this is just a basic outline of the... slightly convoluted and not quite as trivial as one would hope procedure to transfer the vital data from a Wii to a Wii U. I'll admit that I got the order wrong a couple times along the way and had to stumble my way through when it stopped holding my hand a couple times... and thus, this is that story!

So it's not ENTIRELY about fake posterity, it's also pseudo-demonstrative/instructional content, if you want to be overly generous. (Please do?)

The first step is to engage the Wii U's "Wii Mode" and click the default channel tile leading you to the Wii Shop Channel to download a very particular application, the "Wii System Transfer," that will ultimately do two things, but the first thing we need it to do in order to kick the whole process off is to set up an SD card for the transfer process.

Then, you have to go to the source Wii and access the Wii Shop Channel to download a distinct application (color-coded blue instead of orange) called the "Wii U Transfer Tool"... which surely won't be confusing at all for anybody ever.

This second tool will be able to transfer data from the source Wii onto an SD card prepared in the very particular way that the first tool did and the process will begin immediately from that point...

I applaud their descriptive thoroughness... but they really could've created a shorter overview version that you can expand for more information as needed.

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In that spirit, here's a shorter version of what's going on in this video:

0:00 - Wii U menu, activating Wii Mode
0:54 - I realize that I hadn't connected the Sensor Bar yet
1:43 - Wii Mode starts up on the Wii U
2:08 - this is already on the Wii U's Wii Mode Wii Menu
2:19 - the first of many explanations of what's going to unfold
3:26 - this app only actually takes us to the Wii Shop Channel, though
(likely creates new data to which your existing Shop data will be linked/migrated)
3:53 - I fail to navigate the flip-flopping multiple-confirmation "buy" process
5:02 - the REAL Wii System Transfer is now available
5:23 - more warnings and explanations as to how the process unfolds
9:15 - it connects to the Internet to verify and validate the process on the Wii U
9:38 - SD card is prepared
10:22 - phase one complete, more instructions follow!
10:54 - switching to the Wii
11:06 - starting the Wii's Shop Channel
11:48 - you can find the Wii U Transfer Tool application under "Wii Channels"

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Anyway, surprisingly little will change, really, but it seems like a nontrivial thing in the long run.

(Also, between the technology bringing you this footage, that brought on the NUNS 2 gameplay videos, and this... Christmas is really and truly over. Seriously. It only took until February. No more. Get out.)