The one biggest complaint on the Wii U’s launch day was the waiting time needed to install the system update… because depending on your internet speed and how the Nintendo servers were handling the traffic during that given part of the day, download times seemed to range from 45 minutes to several hours (some of your Nintendo Fire writers actually had to wait three hours for it to finish!). The impatient folks who unplugged during the install (why would you DO that???) risked bricking their systems, which we reported on earlier this week… yeah, life would have been so much easier if we could have just run the download in the background while we checked out the system and indulged our curiosity and excitement…
But wait… we could have done that after all??? Turns out, yes. But for whatever reason, Nintendo forgot to tell us.
Someone on Reddit ( ) (yes, yes, we know, insert eye roll here) has actually posted the steps needed to allow Wii U owners to play their games during the system update, while the update runs in the background. This was also confirmed today by the Nintendo Life, whose staff member went ahead and used the instructions to make sure the Redditor’s claims were true. And it worked!
All you do is select “cancel” when the firmware request for update comes through the first time, then go ahead and play one of your shiny new games. Soon enough, the system will prompt for the update, and you’ll be able to complete that and head back into your game. Why Nintendo didn’t bother to let us know about this simple option is a complete mystery, but regardless of whether you choose to update right away or play a few games first and wait for the prompt, all the recommendations seem to be to not turn off your system until that initial update is installed. Got it?
Good. Now go enjoy your Wii U!
