VC Games transferred from Wii to Wii U

Brad Bishop

Brad Bishop

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I spent some time trying to figure this out (Google and general forum searching) and it's still a bit of a mystery to me.

I get the, "Let's use an SD card to transfer the account over from the Wii to the Wii U"

Then it loses me.

Do the games that are on my SD card in my Wii now just work on the Wii U?

Do I have to re-download them?

I've read a bit where it sounds like I can or have to upgrade the games at $1-$2 each from the Wii to the Wii U. Is that correct?

I've also read that some VC games, once the account is transferred over, won't work on the Wii U until that same game appears in the Wii U's eShop.

So, it initially seems complicated and it doesn't appear to be explained well, at least in my searching.

Would one of you fill me in on how it works and what's involved?

 
Sure.  I can reply to what's above, at least.

Anything that is on your actual Wii system memory will be transferred.  Anything not on your system memory will have to be redownloaded (or in the case of save data will be gone forever).  All Virtual Console games should transfer, as far as I know.

Once they've transferred, you can play them all through Wii mode on your Wii U.  You can even play the on the gamepad, but sadly, you cannot actually control them with the gamepad.  You'll need to use a Wiimote and whatever attachment for that.  It's still neat, though.

If you pay the $1 or $1.50 to upgrade a Wii NES or SNES VC game (respectively), you then get the Wii U version, but you still retain the Wii version as well (not that it matters much--I guess if you someday transfer your Wii U to a Wii U 2, you can then re-transfer all your Wii VC games to your now blank Wii U...)

Not all games are on the Wii VC at the moment.  In fact, very few are.  Why they ouldn't just port the entire Wii VC immediately, I have no idea.  Guess Nintendo hates success.

As for the transfer itself, it deletes your whole SD card, copies the Wii stuff from the Wii to the SD, erases it all from the Wii, copies it from the SD to the Wii U, erases the SD; meanwhile, it uses the internet to transfer your digital rights to the Wii U so that you can download stuff again from the Wii U Wii Mode shop channel; this ability is then lost on the Wii.

Hope all this makes sense and answers your questions.

 
Given that the Wii only had a piddly 512MB for downloaded content, and also given that you can only transfer what is actually on the actual Wii 512MB memory (if you have more than that, you'll have to redownload the rest), I would say a 512MB card max.  If you didn't actually have anything downloaded, I'm not sure what would happen.  Maybe it would be really fast.

I thought at least I'd be able to download all my stuff and not use an SD at all once I was transferred to Wii U, but nope.  They still limit you to 512MB.  It's annoying using the ancient, clunky interface, too.  I wish Nintendo would have found a better way to do Wii compatibility, but at least it exists!

 
Oh, yeah. That makes sense. We have a bunch of games on SD card, so I guess those I'll have to redownload. I can't rememberer if we have saves on the SD card, but we will have to make sure we move all saves to internal memory before doing the transfer.

 
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Yep!  It is a huge pain, but you've got the right idea.  I found the best strategy was to put as much stuff onto the Wii memory as possible.  Better to have to download 3 big things than 30 little things.

I wish I could just have it all on the Wii U memory without having to use an SD card or swap stuff on/off at all.  Alas.

 
Thanks for the explanation. It seems dumb that this isn't obviously spelled out somewhere.

Maybe it is on the Nintendo site and I just missed where it was.. It seems pretty basic that they'd advertise: Play all of your previously purchased Wii VC games on the new Wii U!!

Then I'd know, "Ok it works.. Just a matter of digging into how to do it.."

 
There must be some political reason.  But who knows.  I'm forever attempting to apply logic to Nintendo when in reality there may be done.

 
Thanks again for the help. I picked up a Wii U this weekend and did the transfer. No problems.

I was thinking about paying the $1-2 for some of the games offered in eShop so it'd all be under the same menu. Just before doing that I ran into, "Oh, the Wii U doesn't have folders? How can that be? The 3DS has folders. Surely I must be missing how to create them."

As you probably already know: No folders.

This seems dumb to me. I ended up just leaving them on the Wii side of things.

 
Yeah, isn't that crazy?  I'm sure they'll implement folders eventually, but why it wasn't done from the beginning, I don't know.

I got a few of the discounted eShop cards from BB, so I went ahead and upgraded all I could upgrade.  My menu is a mess!  Oh well.

 
I'm getting my Wii U today from the $220 Newegg deal. Once I transfer my Wii VC info to Wii U, I lose the ability to play the games on Wii? 

 
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