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The Wii U, for those of you that haven't moved to a new country since purchasing one, is a bit of a dick when it comes to accessing its online services from more than one global location.

You see, you can't simply access online services like the Nintendo Store or multiplayer gaming without first linking your 'profile' to a Nintendo Network ID (NNID), and your NNID is registered in the country you create it - or more accurately, the country you have your Wii U set to in your region settings when you create your profile and link your ID.

If you change that country in your console settings menu - perhaps because you MOVE TO A NEW ONE - your online services will no longer work, at all. If you DON'T change that country, but do move, your online services will - you guessed it - no longer work. You'll receive an error code asking you to change your regional settings to match the country of the NNID.

So, you are left with a single recourse: you must make a new profile, and a new NNID. This is unfortunate. Assuming you have some attachment to your online identity, friends you've made, the name you've chosen or any of the downloaded games in your collection - you're pretty much fucked.

This happened to me when I moved from Holland to Germany, and now again when moving from germany to Australia. I figured it'd be okay - I mean, I can still play my Virtual Console games by switching profile, and although I'm not happy with losing my Miiverse presence, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate friends or my profile name - I can live with it.

I forgot one very important detail: my game save files.

It's a good thing then that I can easily transfer those save files - which are completely independant of NNID, instead stored locally on the profile, as they have been done on every console that's ever had them before - from my German profile to my Australia one.

Except, I can't. It isn't possible. Those save files are locked to my German account, as were the Holland ones before it. Those were ZombiU, and I cared so very little that I'd forgotten I'd lost them. Now I'm faced with a fairly different predicament: I've lost my Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate save files. I can still access them on my old profile, but that profile's NNID won't connect unless I'm in Germany.

I've lost everything. Apparently, I need to start over entirely, because I took my Wii U to Australia with me and Nintendo haven't added the option to TRANSFER FUCKING GAME SAVE FILES BETWEEN PROFILES - NOT BETWEEN NNIDs, NO, PROFILES, LOCALLY STORED ON MY FUCKING DEVICE.

I'm not going to do that. Until further notice, Monster Hunter Monday is postponed. I'll be contacting Nintendo Australia soon to begin what I imagine will be a painfully long road. Rest assured, I'll be getting my save files onto my Australian NNID activated profile, or getting my German NNID working from Australia, before the end. I just don't know how long that's going to take. I'll keep you posted.