Topic: Wii U games work fine; Wii games crash. Any ideas why?

Hey guys and gals. I've had my Wii U for two and a half years and hadn't tried the Wii Mode until recently. Only, my games don't work properly - I either get an "invalid disc" message, the game will play and then freeze after a few minutes, or the console randomly switches itself off. I've tried about ten Wii games and get the same results. There are no issues with my Wii U games.

I'm not particularly asking for fixes (though any suggestions would be appreciated), just wondering if anyone else has experienced this and why it would be happening considering Wii U games work fine (as does the Wii Mode itself). Why is it able to read Wii U discs but struggles with Wii ones? Most strange.

Thanks in advance.

I think I've only tried one disc in Wii mode, but it caused my Wii U to freeze as well, so it's not just you.

@shaneoh Hopefully the fault is just tied to Wii Mode and that our Wii Us aren't dying. Thanks for replying.

I believe it is just Wii mode, last time I tried to use it for a physical Wii game was about 12 months ago, but the console still functions perfectly. Touch wood.

Just for the record, the game that causes my Wii U to freeze is Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3. Also, I've bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy from the eShop, which runs in Wii mode, and I've had no issue with it. So whether the issue is limited to disc, I can't say.

@shaneoh Interesting. It seems the fault is likely limited to disc because I've also downloaded Metroid Prime Trilogy from the eShop and it's worked fine so far (completed Prime 1 and currently near the end of Prime 2). The disc version, however... I usually get the "invalid disc" message, and the one time it did work the console shut itself off after about 10 minutes (no freezing; the Wii U simply shut down as if I had hit the power button). The game works perfectly in my Wii though. It's quite baffling really.

Strange. I've tried many of my Wii games in Wii Mode (the only way I can play them atm) and never experienced any problems. I even played Super Mario Galaxy 2 over the span of a month and a half (disk version) and didn't have any issues.

My best guess would also be that it's related to how the system is reading physical Wii disks, but I don't know enough about the internal components to tell you what may be up.

Hello,

first time poster

I have this issue, I got Super Paper Mario today and it freezes after about 10-20 minutes of game play, I get the error screen and have to remove the power supply to the Wii U to turn it off.

There must be some kind of issue with backwards compatibility when reading a disk

Thankfully I still have my Wii :]