The post I planned on bringing you has been put on hold due to a personal tragedy. Yesterday evening, upon return from work, my Nintendo Wii was pronounced dead.
When I started to formulate this piece it was intended to be a warning about backing up your saved games, something I had neglected to do as this is the first console I’ve ever had die on me. This dawned upon me while chatting to a nice guy on Nintendo’s helpline and my heart immediately sank. All those hours I’d put into various games, all were lost like tears in the rain (to paraphrase Blade Runner). On the plus side, if such a tragedy should ever befall you at least any games you might have bought from the Nintendo Shop Channel can be re-downloaded, even if your Wii has to be replaced.
After my conversation with technical support (it looks like it will be repaired for a nominal fee, far fairer than I was expecting) I sat down to contemplate the loss and this post. With little hope I once again powered on the Wii, and to my shock it booted up – something that it had refused to do since this morning. Now was my chance! I flicked through the menus and went to copy all my save games onto my SD card before sitting down to write about this turn of fortune. However another twist was yet to come.
It turns out that some games don’t let you copy the save data to SD card, and my elation once again turned to despair. As I sit here typing this, I find myself distracted with the thought of how I’m going to break it to my girlfriend when she returns home that our combined 60 hours spent on Animal Crossing are irrecoverable. The 21 hours spent completing Endless Ocean are almost worse than the 25 hours of Raving Rabbid madness we have lost due to the nature of the game. My personal frustration is the thought of having to unlock all the additional characters and special features of Tatsunoko VS Capcom. As easy as it will be for me to play it for another 35 hours, the idea of getting back to the stage I am now doesn’t fill me with the greatest of joys.
Out of the 139 save game files I have on the Wii 42 of them cannot be backed up and a dozen or so others warn that not all the information will necessarily be retained.
After this last gasp, the Wii has returned to its eternal slumber and left me with mixed feelings. The most positive thing is Nintendo’s tech support, they were friendly, helpful and able to answer all questions asked. The message to take from this is to back up all the saves that you can, but beware those that you can’t and remember that all the time you spend on them might need to be repeated in the future. But what has annoyed me more than the console itself dying is that even if I had the foresight to backup those files earlier on, for some games such a task is impossible.
I shall keep you posted with updates on the situation, so hopefully this can at least benefit the rest of you.
