The Wii U was a commercial failure, selling 13.56 million units worldwide in during its 5 year lifespan1. But like many unpopular consoles, it has built a cult following and MattKC traced its brief history with the aim of trying to make a Wii U gamepad clone.
You see, unlike other Nintendo console controllers, the Wii U gamepad was more of an extension of the console rather than a periphery; less appendix, more appendage. There were a lot of things you couldn’t do without it and if you lost it, they weren’t sold separately so you’d have to buy the whole thing again or pay the same price for just the gamepad. And they were region locked (because Nintendo loved doing that).
So that’s why MattKC figured you could just make a clone… except it’s not that simple. The first issue was the way it used WiFi connectivity, specifically WPA2 and WPS, to allow the gamepad and main unit to connect but nothing to interfere with it. The video shows how there are solutions to the various challenges but there are some tradeoffs including portability which was the whole point of the gamepad.
If you don’t mind a clone that isn’t “in your hand” so to speak, you can see what MattKC ended up with in the video above and get ready for a part 2 because you didn’t think he’d just succeed, did you?
- For context, the Nintendo Switch 2 has already sold about 10.5 million units and it was released 6 months ago. The Wii U had sold about 3.5 million in the same time period. ↩︎