Many users report bricked Wii U consoles after not playing them for years

The Wii U’s successor, the Nintendo Switch, has been available for years. However, there are still Wii U games, as well as Virtual Console retro titles not yet available on Nintendo Switch Online, that cannot be played on the hybrid console. Because of this, there are still some advantages to playing the Wii U.

Unfortunately, many gamers who haven’t used their Wii U in a while find that after booting up, their Wii U no longer works. The Wii U seems to have persistent memory system errors, particularly the memory error 160-0103 that can occur on the GamePad. None of the affected Wii U consoles were modified or tampered with in any way, but all user reports mention that they hadn’t played their Wii Us in years.

The corruption leading to the errors appears to be related to the NAND. Users who have bricked Wii Us report that factory resetting the console does not resolve the issue. So it has become quite clear that the only method that could possibly save the player’s console is a NAND backup. Unfortunately, even having a backup saved beforehand would result in a difficult process because Nintendo no longer provides official support for the Wii U.

In fact, due to the Wii U’s age, players can no longer send the console in for repair. Nintendo UK has some instructions for the previously mentioned error code, but users dealing with the error are reporting that these instructions are not working. For now, it is suggested that Wii U players turn on their console once in a while to avoid the issue.

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