How do popular Wii titles deal with corrupt save files?

Its every gamer’s worst nightmare; You load up your favorite game hoping to relax after a long day at school/work and you discover your save files got corrupted! Today I decided to deliberately corrupt all my save files on my Nintendo Wii by opening the files in a text editor and deleting random stuff, I did this to several popular and well known Wii titles and here are the results:

DISCLAIMER: PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS ON A REAL CONSOLE AS YOU RISK BRICKING IT IF YOU CORRUPT THE WRONG FILE!

Wii Sports

Wii sports is a classic in my opinion, I have fond memories of accidentally hurling my Wii remote at the TV while trying to get to Pro level in Bowling. When I launched the game after corrupting the saves everything seemed normal, but after I pressed A+B to get past the title screen is when the game detected that the save file was corrupt and gave me an error message saying “This game's save data is corrupted and must be formatted. Format the data now?”

If i refused to format I would be unable to save my progress in the game so I had no choice

Wii Fit/Fit Plus

Wii Fit and Wii Fit plus have the same concept. You stand on an accessory called the “Wii Balance Board” and it calls you overweight, only difference is that Wii Fit plus has more ‘training’ minigames such as jogging and snowball fights

When I corrupted the original Wii Fit the game tried to play like nothing ever happened, there was no error message or indication that the save was corrupted. The game just continued as normal, just very broken as the BMI and weight graphs were completely blank, somehow it still figured out that it was my 18th day on Wii Fit

When I corrupted Wii Fit Plus that was a different story, it straight away gave me an error message saying “This file cannot be used because the data is corrupted. A new save file will be created.” and when I pressed ‘A’ to continue it erased the corrupted save and started fresh

MarioKart Wii

Ah yes, MarioKart Wii. The racing game where you and your older brother can see who is better at playing with motion controls because you can’t find the nunchuck (Spoiler alert, you both suck)

It was a similar result to the others when I corrupted Mariokart Wii, apon launching the game I got an error message saying “This file cannot be used because the data is corrupted. Delete the file and create a new one?” with the options to either do so or return to the Wii Menu, this game didn’t even give me an opportunity to play without saving! (how rude!)

New Super Mario Bros Wii

New Super Mario Brothers is a confusing game to say the least, like why did they call it “new” when the game is now over 14 years old?

Anyway when I corrupted the save file i got the same old error message saying “The file cannot be used because the data is corrupted.” with the only option available is to delete the file, i guess Nintendo were like “Yea mate its fine just start all over again it doesn't matter that you poured all your fucking effort into the game”

Pikmin

To be honest I don’t really know much about Pikmin, but they seemed to be fucking everywhere when I just wanted to transfer my save files to a Wii U using Nintendo’s Wii U Transfer Tool

This one was quite interesting because instead of prompting me to delete the save file the game attempted to recover the files, which it managed to do successfully. Thanks Nintendo for giving my Pikmin some mercy!

ridiculous

Built-in Wii Channels - Mii and Photo Channels

Okay I know these aren’t technically Wii games but i thought i’d try corrupting their save files nevertheless, First up on the chopping block we have the Mii Channel, the Channel in which 8 year old me tried to make the most ridiculous looking Mii and ended up making it look like Peter Griffin

When the save files to the Mii Channel got corrupt the Channel just started fresh, no error message or anything. It just went on as if there were no Miis on the console in the first place...Do deleting Miis make me a serial killer?...

For the Photo Channel it wasn’t very special, with a popup saying “The save file is corrupted. Now formatting Photo Channel save data.” and it just deleted the save file without even asking me! (Why is Nintendo so god damn rude?)

Thats pretty much all the corruption that my Wii can handle for today, If you have any suggestions for experiments I should do next feel free to email your suggestions through our forum’s contact email! Thanks for reading! :)