Is my Wii terminally ill?

March 6, 2008 4:18 PM

My fairly new Wii has started to act all weird.

I play the Lego Star Wars pretty compulsively these days and suddenly yesterday it just froze. Nothing I did unfroze it and I had to turn off the Wii and when it restarted I had lost all my progress. It then happen a few more times and the graphics became all jumpy. I got the Wii for my birthday in January but I think the bf actually purchased it in November. We don't have it hooked up to the internet. Is it maybe over-heating? Is it broken and can I get it fixed? Is it a known problem with a solution (please please please) I really NEED my Star Wars!

posted by yodelingisfun to technology (9 comments total)

I haven't seen this problem, but it's still definitely under warranty. When I first got mine, I had a problem with disc reading. I mailed it in and got it back fixed in a couple of weeks.
posted by ignignokt at 4:22 PM on March 6, 2008

Oh, also, if this doesn't happen with any other game, it may be a problem with the disc rather than the console, so you might want to examine the disc and see if this occurs with your other games.
posted by ignignokt at 4:23 PM on March 6, 2008

Your Wii will probably have to be repaired under warranty. A while ago, my Wii got some weird graphics corruption in most games, so I sent it to Nintendo. In about a week I got mine back, all fixed.
posted by zsazsa at 4:24 PM on March 6, 2008

i would test other games to see if you have a similar issue. and if you have a wireless router, i would try hooking it up to the net and running an update...but honestly, it sounds like it's just plain broke and you'll need to send it back to nintendo for repair.
posted by gnutron at 4:52 PM on March 6, 2008

My copy of Wii Lego Star Wars has frozen, too. That game seems to be rather glitchy; sometimes when I replay certain areas, my second Lego character suddenly changes into the one I'm already using. Strange.

By losing all your progress, do you mean your game saves, or that you just had to start over from the beginning of your last playing session? If it's eating your game saves, I'd back those up onto an SD card just to be safe.
posted by phatkitten at 5:03 PM on March 6, 2008

If it's under warranty, contact Nintendo. I had a problem with my first Wii that a few internet searches turned up as an overheating GPU. Sent it back to Nintendo, they called, said they couldn't reproduce the problem, but sent me a replacement anyway. Took a little over a week and the new one has worked flawlessly. Their customer service/repair service couldn't have been easier to use or done more to fix the problem. They'll even transfer over anything you bought from the store and anything saved on the Wiis memory.
posted by Phoenix42 at 6:47 PM on March 6, 2008

The only game I've had glitches & problems with is my GameCube copy of Lego Star Wars II, and it's the same problems that you've described re: freezing and forcing a restart of the level (especially in the Mos Eisley spaceport. Huh. Guess it really is a wretched hive of scum and villainy).

Right now I'm borrowing a friend's LSW game for the Wii. So far, no problems (and I'm +80% done), so I can't corroborate much. But I'm going to agree with phatkitten that it's probably just a glitchy game.
posted by metabrilliant at 6:58 PM on March 6, 2008

I've found the Wii-native "Lego Star Wars; The Complete Saga" to be much less glitchy. It's not a GameCube game, and I suspect that this contributes to the game's newfound stability.

Complete Saga has both LSW1 and LSW2 built in, along with bonus content.

On another note, one thing you could do to troubleshoot your Wii is to unplug the power adapter from the wall and let it sit unplugged for 30 minutes or so. They had an issue with the earlier Wiis where the adapter's internal electronics were causing it to glitch after a few minutes of playtime. Letting the power drain from it (you have to give it time because it has capacitors in it) causes it to un-fail.

I can confirm that both original LSW games are extremely glitchy though. A lot of it is due to the anti-piracy measures they put into mastering the discs, though that is more a problem with the PC versions than the GC ones. I think the reason that the Wii-native, newer version runs so much better is that they had some extra time with this release to hunt the bugs down and kill them.

Good luck!
posted by SlyBevel at 10:27 PM on March 6, 2008

Also probably a good idea to hook it up to the net and pull down the latest system updates.
posted by jbrjake at 8:11 AM on March 7, 2008