This is going to be a lengthy post, but I wanted to get a discussion going about these issues, because just doing a little bit of research in the past couple of days has really blown my mind as someone who has always thought that we was a system of pretty good quality. I have a system with custom firmware, and I don’t have that many physical games that I even play on it in the first place.
However, the other day, I wanted to show my girlfriend my completed file on breath of the wild, since I owned it on the Wii U first and finished that version 100%. It had been a few years since I played the game on my system, but I put the disc in, everything loaded up, normally, and I loaded my most recent save. I was just about to show her all the different Amiibo outfits when the game suddenly froze and I got an error code, telling me that the disc could not be read, and that it may be dirty.
I’ve never had anything like that happen on my Wii U before. I looked at the disc and it is in pretty much mint condition. fingerprints, nothing of the sort.
So, of course, I went to Google looking for answers. And Google has given me a hodgepodge of potential problems, but the one thing I’ve noticed is that they all seem to be inconsistent, and without any sure concrete answers. A disturbingly large number of people seem to have reported disc rot in their games. Opening games of that are only a few years or even a few months old and finding small pinholes in the disc that make it unplayable. People have reported this happening with older systems like the Sega Saturn, but the difference there is that the Saturn is a far older system and I don’t suppose it’s too uncommon for media that old to begin to break down over time. Although I will say, I own many PS1 games that are older than I am, and they all work flawlessly to this day. Plus, Wii U games are on Blu-ray discs, so why on earth would they be breaking down after such a short time? I’ve even seen people report opening brand new, factory-sealed games to find that the disc has already began to deteriorate.
I checked my disc and found a small pinhole near the center of it. Figuring the disc rot had got me, I started checking the couple other games I own and found that a couple of them also had small pinholes, with one of them having multiple on its center. However, when I tested my other games, they all worked perfectly, holes or no holes. At this point I’m thinking “what the hell” so I ended up taking my BOTW disc to a friend’s place that also has a Wii U.
My game WORKED on his console, no issue at all. I was wondering if my console’s disc drive was to blame, but then the other games I played on it wouldn’t work either, right? What makes it all the more confusing is that I borrowed my friend’s copy of BOTW and found that it also won’t work on my Wii U, but works on his with no issue. This specific game won’t work at all on this specific console. I also tried to uninstall and reinstall the game data that it installs to the system, but this also didn’t fix anything.
More research online had me finding people reporting similar things; certain games inexplicably refusing to work on certain Wii U consoles. This also seems to not matter if you have CFW or not. Not sure what’s going on here, but it seems like a nightmare for collectors. If you’ve had an experience like this with Wii U, talk about it here.
However, the other day, I wanted to show my girlfriend my completed file on breath of the wild, since I owned it on the Wii U first and finished that version 100%. It had been a few years since I played the game on my system, but I put the disc in, everything loaded up, normally, and I loaded my most recent save. I was just about to show her all the different Amiibo outfits when the game suddenly froze and I got an error code, telling me that the disc could not be read, and that it may be dirty.
I’ve never had anything like that happen on my Wii U before. I looked at the disc and it is in pretty much mint condition. fingerprints, nothing of the sort.
So, of course, I went to Google looking for answers. And Google has given me a hodgepodge of potential problems, but the one thing I’ve noticed is that they all seem to be inconsistent, and without any sure concrete answers. A disturbingly large number of people seem to have reported disc rot in their games. Opening games of that are only a few years or even a few months old and finding small pinholes in the disc that make it unplayable. People have reported this happening with older systems like the Sega Saturn, but the difference there is that the Saturn is a far older system and I don’t suppose it’s too uncommon for media that old to begin to break down over time. Although I will say, I own many PS1 games that are older than I am, and they all work flawlessly to this day. Plus, Wii U games are on Blu-ray discs, so why on earth would they be breaking down after such a short time? I’ve even seen people report opening brand new, factory-sealed games to find that the disc has already began to deteriorate.
I checked my disc and found a small pinhole near the center of it. Figuring the disc rot had got me, I started checking the couple other games I own and found that a couple of them also had small pinholes, with one of them having multiple on its center. However, when I tested my other games, they all worked perfectly, holes or no holes. At this point I’m thinking “what the hell” so I ended up taking my BOTW disc to a friend’s place that also has a Wii U.
My game WORKED on his console, no issue at all. I was wondering if my console’s disc drive was to blame, but then the other games I played on it wouldn’t work either, right? What makes it all the more confusing is that I borrowed my friend’s copy of BOTW and found that it also won’t work on my Wii U, but works on his with no issue. This specific game won’t work at all on this specific console. I also tried to uninstall and reinstall the game data that it installs to the system, but this also didn’t fix anything.
More research online had me finding people reporting similar things; certain games inexplicably refusing to work on certain Wii U consoles. This also seems to not matter if you have CFW or not. Not sure what’s going on here, but it seems like a nightmare for collectors. If you’ve had an experience like this with Wii U, talk about it here.
