Are all Wii U physical discs doomed?

[+wongojack]

I have played a few Wii U disks recently and they all worked.  Because of this thread, I looked for the "pinholes" near the center on a NSMB U and they were indeed there.  However, the game booted up and let me play the first level just fine.

[Downland1983]

I have a pretty extensive Wii U collection.  I'll have to check my disks tonight.  I've never had an issue with loading one of them.  I don't use the system nearly as much as I used to since the Switch came out.  But since Madden 13 is the only football game on either system, I've literally logged thousands of hours into it between 2012-2020.  My best friend would come over most Friday nights (pre-pandemic), and we have played several years of franchise mode together through a number of different teams.  I also recently booted up and played Super Mario Maker with no issues while I was copying one of my courses from there over to Super Mario Maker 2 on my Switch.  I'll check for those pinholes and do a boot of each disk and post results.

[Downland1983]

Examined and tested a few of my games yesterday (counted my physical collection at 40 games).  Here's what I found:

 

No Pinholes:

Nintendo Land

Madden 13

Super Mario 3D World

 

Pinhole:

Super Mario Bros. U

Yoshi's Wooly World

Super Mario Maker 2

 

I think I am remembering that right from yesterday afternoon.  Regardless, not all of the disks had them for sure.  And there didn't seem to be any correlation to age of the disks, and the pinhole being present.  Nintendo Land and Madden 13 are some of my oldest games, and they did not have any pinhole, but Super Mario Bros. U which was just as old did.  All of the games booted up and went into gameplay as normal with zero issues regardless of whether the disk had a pinhole or not.  Most were a single pinhole, but the Yoshi's Wooly World appeared to be a double pinhole (2 pinholes extremely close together so that they converged).  Again, Yoshi's Wooly World gave no trouble booting and entering into gameplay despite having a larger pinhole than the others.  I can check more, but I am of the opinion that the pinholes were there the whole time, and did not just suddenly appear later.  The holes are in a very specific area on all disks they are present on, and there is no indication of flaking on the top of the disks or new pinholes starting to wear through.

[atarilovesyou]

We can all have opinions, but I stand 100% behind the fact that when I bought SMB 3D World brand new, opened the shrink and examined the disc thorougly for holes against a bright light source; there were zero holes. I made this post shortly after I discovered one near the rim.

 

The fact that your 3D World has no holes and mine has one proves that it's not intentional, or at least not all of them are. The game still works but of course I'm keeping an eye on it. 

 

The intent for this thread was to highlight an issue I have read about more elsewhere, but not here. It's just something to keep in mind, particularly when buying used physical Wii U media.There may be some discs that have the holes closer to the spindle, and that's one thing, but scratches due to top damage are easier to spot...as long as you know what you are looking for. The sky isn't falling, but it's worthwhile IMO to know about. 

 

We have a local library that rents out Wii U discs. Some of them are in pretty rough shape, but not one of them has damages or scratches to the bottom of the disc. Thus, the damage had to come from the top. About ten games would not load. Put it this way: the same library has dozens of Wii games, PS3, PS4, XBone, etc...not ONE of those games we signed out has not loaded properly. That's over four years! Only Wii U games had loadong problems, and at least a half dozen I can think of. Some had holes even under the protective layer put on TOP of the disc, which is like a transparent plastic sticker they use as part of the security system in the library. So no damage from the top OR bottom in some cases, yet the holes are there. And some games work, some don't.

 

I definitely think something is up with the way Wii U discs were manufactured.

That's just me and I've seen enough to affect how I will buy future Wii U games: digital download, given the opportunity. I'm lucky I only lost a few bucks on a used game that would not load. 

 

Bottom line, check them first, don't buy with holes unless there is a store warranty (our local shop offers 90 days) so at least you can see if it will load when you bring it home, and handle the things extremely delicately. 

 

 

 

[Gamemoose]

While cleaning out my car I found a copy of Super Mario 3D World I bought for my kids that didn't work when I put it in my U.  I bought another used copy and intended to get this one resurfaced but never got around to it.  I'll have to check that disc out later to see if it has the holes.

[Swami]

On 5/13/2020 at 3:52 PM, eightbit said:

This has been happening to people with Wii U discs for years:

 

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/our-wii-u-discs-keep-developing-pinholes-in-them.1158167/

 

 

I hate to say it, but it appears to be disc rot. Perhaps the chemicals/materials they used for these discs were not up to snuff. I offloaded my entire laserdisc collection years ago because I saw what was happening there. Sad to say disc based media is not something that will last as long as some other media formats....but this happening only after a few years is way premature.

Aren't CD/DVD-Rs supposed to be the 80 year media? I guess their not using Verbatim or Toshiba.

[Video]

CD and DVD may be 80 year media. I've never heard anybody make that claim on any of the recordable media. My first hand experience is it can last years, but look to reburn after five years of so, after ten, most the discs I've burned start having obvious degradation, sometimes even visible.

[Mikebloke]

I think there is varied information on rewrite disks, I think the average expectation is up to 25 years. They'll definitely go before others do. 

[Swami]

I found this quote from a French study. Looks like Verbatim Gold Archival is the only one DVD beats 18 years. I'm uncertain what an average that is a range means, unless it is the uncertainty around the average. In that case the center (statistical mean) for the Verbatim Gold Archival would be about 80 years. The M-disk DVD is supposed to last over 100 years, minimum, but has a special player that may go the way of the iOmega Zip drive by 2050. https://www.pcworld.com/article/2933478/m-disc-optical-media-reviewed-your-data-good-for-a-thousand-years.html

 

"Verbatim Gold Archival DVD-R [...] has been rated as the most reliable DVD-R in a thorough long-term stress test by the well regarded German c't magazine (c't 16/2008, pages 116-123) [...] achieving a minimum durability of 18 years and an average durability of 32 to 127 years (at 25C, 50% humidity). No other disc came anywhere close to these values, the second best DVD-R had a minimum durability of only 5 years."

[MegaManFan]

At some point an Optical Disc Emulator (ODE) like already exists for Saturn, Dreamcast, et cetera will be the way to go. It would be interesting to know if anybody like Krikkz, Terraonion, et cetera is working on this... but I suspect not. Most of the products in that area are for late 90's or very early 2000's disc based systems. We haven't even gotten to PS3 or Xbox 360 with that tech yet. There also may not be as much incentive to make one financially given (sadly) how poorly the Wii U sold and how many people would want or need an ODE option.

[Asaki]

On 12/30/2020 at 6:31 PM, MegaManFan said:

At some point an Optical Disc Emulator (ODE) like already exists for Saturn, Dreamcast, et cetera will be the way to go. It would be interesting to know if anybody like Krikkz, Terraonion, et cetera is working on this... but I suspect not.

Nah, I don't think it will happen. GameCube, Wii, and WiiU (and maybe Switch?) can all load ISOs directly from SD cards. Wii and WiiU will also load them from USB flash drives and HDDs.

Not sure if WiiU will run WiiU ISOs, but I can only assume that someone has cracked it by now.

 

The XBox has always had an internal hard drive, and Playstations have had hard drives since PS2, and most mods just load the game straight from it.

 

Saturn and DC never had these options, though I suppose it might be possible to make a cartridge option for Saturn? The MD/Genesis has one.

[+jgkspsx]

Holy crap, this is... *looks at WiiU collection* the worst thread ever. I hope this isn't as much of a problem as it looks. I have a large external hard drive hooked up to my WiiU. I've never rooted my system, but I wonder if ripping the discs to the hard drive is an option...

[Tempest]

35 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Holy crap, this is... *looks at WiiU collection* the worst thread ever. I hope this isn't as much of a problem as it looks. I have a large external hard drive hooked up to my WiiU. I've never rooted my system, but I wonder if ripping the discs to the hard drive is an option...

If you use Haxchi you can run a program that rips discs to a hard drive.  I did that with all my games.  If you download all the DLC and move those files to the hard drive first then rip the game to it, they install and work perfectly (direct work the other way around I think).

 

I use the regular Haxchi which requires you to run it each time you want to run homebrews, but the advantage is that the Wii U is untouched unless you run the hack (softmodded).  You don't need to run the hack to play the games, just to rip them.

 

I used real discs to do this, installing downloaded roms is another matter completely.

 

[Asaki]

24 minutes ago, Tempest said:

If you use Haxchi you can run a program that rips discs to a hard drive.

Do the games load any faster that way? Might be worth looking into that for Lego City Undercover...the loading times are so long, and there are so many disc read failures.

[Tempest]

14 minutes ago, Asaki said:

Do the games load any faster that way? Might be worth looking into that for Lego City Undercover...the loading times are so long, and there are so many disc read failures.

I don't know.  I imagine it must be a little bit faster though.  LCU was the largest game I ripped, I think it was 23GB or something like that.

[MegaManFan]

Here's a silver lining to the cloud -- if Wii U emulation ever becomes a serious thing, and you own a physical copy of the game, you're perfectly entitled to play it in emulation (at least in my view) because you own it, whether it's currently working or not. The data on the media may have an expiration date, but emulation has none.

[+jgkspsx]

That's my philosophy, too, but it's going to take quite a lot of work to build an emulator that supports the GamePad with a phone app and a clamp on controller shell and make it run on something that sits under a TV

[brockj]

I just came across this thread as I recently started collecting for the Wii U and noticing more and more issues with the games.  This is the first disc based system I decided to collect for (grew up in the Atari/Nintendo age) and specifically avoided disc based games because of media issues.  I love the physical library aspect, as browsing through all the games to decide what to play is part of the fun for me, but man, this has me bummed.  I am definitely not opposed to backing up the games to play that way, and since I rarely play online I can't imagine that would be an issue.

[bevilacq12]

I've seen a lot of threads about this in various forums, and I really think people are conflating disc art pinholes with the dreaded disc rot.

 

On CD-based media, the fear makes more sense. With CDs, the data is stored very close to the top of the disc. Early CDs were especially precarious because the artwork was right on top of the foil data layer. A protective lacquer of some kind was added to the CD manufacturing process later on, but there are lots of stories about how cheap Sega was, so it's believable that SegaCD and Sega Saturn games were particularly easy to damage. It's still true that a pinhole is not necessarily a breach of the data layer, as the artwork itself can be imperfectly applied from day 1, or the artwork might degrade in some manner without taking the underlying data layer with it, but a pinhole is at the very least a good heuristic for a potential problem.

 

With Blu-ray Disc-based Wii U games, though? There's no correlation. Blu-ray Discs have data stored extremely close to the BOTTOM. That and the higher density of data are reasons why Blu-ray Discs receive a special protective coating on the bottom layer to protect from scratches. There is a sizable polycarbon layer between the data and the artwork of the disc. The disc artwork having pinholes from imperfect manufacturing or from friction is not a concern for the data integrity of the disc. Tons of people are reporting these pinholes, but there is no dead disc epidemic to match. A few people have bad discs, because a few bad discs are always going to exist - but the occasional coincidental overlap of a dead disc and these pinholes does not prove that the pinholes are the cause of the dead disc.

[TheGameCollector]

On 1/19/2021 at 12:55 AM, bevilacq12 said:

I've seen a lot of threads about this in various forums, and I really think people are conflating disc art pinholes with the dreaded disc rot.

 

On CD-based media, the fear makes more sense. With CDs, the data is stored very close to the top of the disc. Early CDs were especially precarious because the artwork was right on top of the foil data layer. A protective lacquer of some kind was added to the CD manufacturing process later on, but there are lots of stories about how cheap Sega was, so it's believable that SegaCD and Sega Saturn games were particularly easy to damage. It's still true that a pinhole is not necessarily a breach of the data layer, as the artwork itself can be imperfectly applied from day 1, or the artwork might degrade in some manner without taking the underlying data layer with it, but a pinhole is at the very least a good heuristic for a potential problem.

 

With Blu-ray Disc-based Wii U games, though? There's no correlation. Blu-ray Discs have data stored extremely close to the BOTTOM. That and the higher density of data are reasons why Blu-ray Discs receive a special protective coating on the bottom layer to protect from scratches. There is a sizable polycarbon layer between the data and the artwork of the disc. The disc artwork having pinholes from imperfect manufacturing or from friction is not a concern for the data integrity of the disc. Tons of people are reporting these pinholes, but there is no dead disc epidemic to match. A few people have bad discs, because a few bad discs are always going to exist - but the occasional coincidental overlap of a dead disc and these pinholes does not prove that the pinholes are the cause of the dead disc.

Another possibility is that the laser is becoming picky as the years go on. I've had a XenoGC for Gamecube for a while and from the get-go brand new discs I've burned would stop playing in the middle of the game while I could play other ones for hours without issue. It was totally random. Your bad disc could work in someone else's Wii U. You really don't know until you try it. I have two Wii U's. One modded and one not. I think if I ever experience an issue I'll let you know but first try it on the other system. This thread definitely makes a point for setting up a hard drive to use on the modded Wii U like the one I have for my PS4 game installations though.

[TheGameCollector]

Someone on facebook asked this question about bad Wii U discs. They said they figured their system was at fault and had it refurbished by Nintendo. They got their system back and it played the disc. So it sounds to me like this is not a problem with the discs alone, but also the system laser. Wii U's may have sensitivities in the disc drive similar to a fat Playstation 2 that will no longer read PS1 or Blue PS2 discs. A badly pressed disc might not be completely dead, but your laser will have to be in really good shape to read one.

 

It's kind of like a DVD I had for years. It wouldn't be read by any of my computers anymore but I bought a new external DVD drive and that luckily read it so I could rip it and burn a new disc.

[Austin]

Haven't had any issues with my Wii U laser. I really hope this isn't a huge problem like it was for fat PS2 systems. *knocks on wood*

[juansolo]

I've had a few problem discs, essentially the problems manifest in the discs not being recognised and not reading. Off the top of my head: Batman Arkham Asylum, Lego City Undercover and Bayonetta. The last one being a sealed game, popped it in and nada. That was the one that prompted me to jailbreak it and load everything onto a hard drive and sell all the discs that still worked. I just didn't trust them any more. I ended up doing the same with the GameCube and the Wii as it turned out there might be problems there too, though I never experienced any in those instances. But at that point I thought why not. I've been gradually doing the same with all my disc based systems that I can do it with.

[scotty]

That is why I play my Wii/Wii U games from a hard drive, and store my originals in a cool, dark closet.