Topic: Wii U Home button stops working

I've had this happen twice today and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this.

Playing extended (over 1hr.) sessions of Earthbound I've had the home button on the Gamepad stop working. The game is fine, the controller buttons work and I can even press ZR to pull up the VC menu, but I cannot quit the game. Using the power button on the Gamepad only switches off the Gamepad and doing a forced power off on the console leaves the Gamepad running. So it looks like some kind of sync issue. I'm hoping for others to chime in because I'm not sure if the issue is only with Earthbound or all VC games (my other VC games are arcade-style or Mario - neither of which gets that kind of time from me).

Wait, so you only have this problem with VC games?

i hope yer issue goes away, i know stuff like that is frustrating

Yep, only with VC games.

I guess I just caught a spell of bad luck. I will say this: the ability to backup progress with a save from the VC menu as well as in-game and state save (when you exit the game via the home button) is a habit I would recommend people get into, BEFORE you have an issue like this. Sadly all three save states during a session you're currently running if you lose the home button will get lost; your previous save data (minus the save state from a normal game quit) will be okay.

Bottom line: never rely upon the save state from a Home Menu game quit because that it lost in the event of a hard power-off of the system following loss of sync with the Gamepad!