Wii

This section is still being updated - please be patient if items are missing.  Or email me and I can answer questions directly...

I was recently given a Japanese Wii for Christmas, but being a resident of the UK this posed a bit of a problem.   Parly because all the menus are in japanese and this, it must be said, is not one of my stronger languages.  The other problem is that the Wii is region-locked, which means that a Japanese Wii will only play Japanese games (there are two other regions - the US and Europe).

After unwrapping the Wii I then created a second problem - after trying to play one of the games I had it installed a european version of the firmware on it and I was no longer able to access the settings menu.  Instead, a web page was displayed saying a certain file was absent.  This, I soon found, is known as a semi-bricked Wii (semi since games will still play).

This section of my site tries to explain how you can convert a Japanese Wii to a UK Wii, including how to unbrick a semi-bricked Wii.

I was able to find all this information around on the internet (see the links section) but I didn't see anything that had everything I needed in one place and so here I'm just trying to rectify that.  I'm sure that this isn't a common problem (how many people in the UK have a japanese Wii??) but maybe someone will find it useful.