So I haven’t played my copy of Xenoblade in a few months and last time I have left off in around 18-20 hours of game play. Since the Wii in the house is my g/f’s and she mostly plays Wii fit and other games upstairs; I was thinking about buying a Wii Mini so I can get more playtime at Xenoblade. 

My question is, is there a way to transfer save game files from one Wii to another or are they copy right locked on that system? I know from previous experience on the PS3, games like Killzone 2 or Dragon Age are copy right locked on that system and can't be saved to usb stick or SD card. Is the Wii similar in this area?  I don’t necessarily want to start all over from scratch.  Any ideas or help from someone would be appreciated.

Idk about transferring saved games, but if I were you I wouldn't get a Wii Mini, just get a regular used white Wii, which will probably be cheaper.  The Wii Mini can't play GC games and it can't connect to the internet.  It is probably lacking some more features that I don't know about.

think you can use a SD card to move it. have you checked if you can copy the data from the data manager under system settings?

you can try an sd card, but i'm not sure the new wii will let you use the save file from another wii. Eager to see what you find though.

a quick google: http://www.wikihow.com/Copy-Save-Files-to-Another-Wii

you are welcome ;)

notes (if you don't read the whole thing) : there are some games that you can't copy for certain reasons

• Only one save per game may be on a Wii or SD card. Make sure you don't delete your friend's saves!
• If the game has never been played on the target Wii, you must load the game first (no need to play), return to the home screen then copy the game data file from the SD card to Wii memory. The Wii will now recognize the copied data file.
• Most SD cards should work for this. If you are having trouble with a certain type, please refer to the user manual, received with all Wii consoles.

so.. you overwrite the save file with the one you had on the other system

ahhh okay, gotcha.  Thanks for the help.

Games you can't copy normally have an online component or mode, making those savedgames tied to the console.

And this bullet is true. When I got my WiiU last year I didn't do the Wii2WiiU transfer but I manually passed a few saved files... each time I had to launch the Wii title before copying the save file.