Hardware Misc If I bought a japanese gamepad would it connect to a european wii u without homebrew installed?

[noobmoddingconsoles]

my wii u gamepad has broken recently and the only ones I can find are Japanese

 

[linuxares]

Nope, they're region locked for some reason

 

[noobmoddingconsoles]

Is there a way to unregion lock it without homebrew?

 

[linuxares]

Swapping motherboard with a unit from the region your WiiU is from.

 

[SDIO]

You could use the recovery menu. Not sure if you would consider that homebrew

 

[linuxares]

You could use the recovery menu. Not sure if you would consider that homebrew

Won't work. As far as I know it's the firmware on the gamepad telling the Wii U "Hi, I'm a Japanese Gamepad!"

 

[SDIO]

The README claims it works: https://github.com/GaryOderNichts/recovery_menu#pair-gamepad

 

[linuxares]

The README claims it works: https://github.com/GaryOderNichts/recovery_menu#pair-gamepad

Huh, TIL. Hopefully it works then

EDIT: It's kind of a softmod, not as simple as from it being from Nintendo.
EDIT2: You basically need to do a softmod after reading through it

 

[Ryccardo]

First it pairs correctly
Then

"Hi, I'm a Japanese Gamepad!"

so the console tries to flash the gamepad (it only holds 1 language at any time)

"owo what's this?"

Unofficial pairing tools (hell, even systemconfigtool) don't care, until of course the next time you change the language in the official way

 

[V10lator]

Nope, they're region locked for some reason

While that's true it's just a simple software check the Wii U does while pairing. After pairing the region isn't checked anymore, so it works on stock firmware.

So the OP has two possible ways:
- Temporary load Aroma (via browser exploit) with the DRC Region Free plugin.
- Use the recovery menu to pair (like SDIO told already).

//EDIT: Both has zero brick risk, in case that's what's concerning the OP.

 

[Ettino]

Or get a Japanese Wii U

 

[NinStar]

While that's true it's just a simple software check the Wii U does while pairing. After pairing the region isn't checked anymore, so it works on stock firmware.

What about updating the gamepad? How would that work using a console from a different region?

 

[lolcatzuru]

Or get a Japanese Wii U

the guy cant even be bothered to use a search engine to find a question, sourcing a japanese wii u seems too complicated.

 

[Hayato213]

Easiest is to get one from whatever region your wii u is in.

 

[sirjman]

I tried to pair a US pad to a Japanese console through the recovery menu yesterday. It will pair, then change language to Japanese, but when you boot the console, it then it kicks out the 'incorrect region' error (now in Japanese).

I was able to pair it back to a US system though and it happily changed back to English.