My Wii is beginning to sound a bit rough lately, and has been tipped over a time or two. It got me thinking....what happens to my virtual console games and Wiiware games I downloaded if my Wii breaks??? Surely I would get to keep them, but I don't know how!

Email Nintendo. They should Help.

If you send your Wii into Nintendo for repair and they need to replace the system board or the whole unit they will link your shop account to the new system. You'll lose all your Miis (and therefore any associated game save data with Wii Play and Wii Sports) as well as any save game data you cannot back up, so make sure you store your Miis on your remotes before doing this.

I had a system board swap and everything was fine; I just had to download all my stuff again.

I got the artifact problem once. Needed to send it back to Nintendo and they replaced it so all my save games, Mii's and Friendcodes were gone. Thankfully I made a backup for all the games. Only everything in Wii Play, Wii Sports, Dr. Mario and the worst, Mario Kart Wii was gone.

During the shipping to Nintendo, I added a note with which VC and WiiWare games I bought. On the new Wii they activated that in the shopping channel. So I only had to redownload them. I got it back in one week (while they said two) so I was very happy with their service.