Super Mario Galaxy

My kids have been obsessed with Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii for a while now. So much so that Joe tells anyone and everyone to call him Mario! If I say "Joe", he quickly says, "I'm Mario!" I got the game for the kids around Christmas time. It really is a very good game. Problem is- the kids cannot play it entirely by themselves. They can play the 'easier' parts but it gets harder and harder.

Mario Galaxy is a game where Mario tries to save princess Peach from Bowser. He goes through the universe and defeats enemies on all these different planets, collecting "power stars" from each. The power stars power a special 'space station' and once he has 60 stars he goes to the center of the universe to fight bowser. He fights bowser pretty much at the end of every galaxy discovered. Once he has beaten Bowser, Mario collects 60 more power stars. Once that is done and Mario has 120 power stars, he fight Bowser again. Then the game can be played with Luigi to collect all 120 stars again. That somehow will give Mario 121 stars total. The game is beat. YAY!

I should also add that the kids are so obsessed with Mario Galaxy that if they are not playing the game they want to watch it on Youtube! Mario- Mario- Mario!

So the kids and I have been playing this game for a couple of months now. We have 114 power stars. Only 6 more to go and we can play with Luigi. Sam is looking forward to that. Some of the stars were easy to get, some took lots of practice and others may have been pure luck. The last 6 are kinda hard ones. At least 2 are pretty hard- I have yet to pass them. Today Max, Joe and myself were playing the game. I went to go do something else and left Max and Joe playing. I could hear Max yelling at (I'm guessing) Joe. Nothing concerning- Max always yells! Later in the afternoon Joe and me turned on the Wii, started Mario Galaxy and I was shocked! I'm pretty sure Joe did this.... Every single character we play with (there are 8 slots) had been deleted!! All 114 power stars gone! We have to start the whole dang thing over!! I could not believe he did this. All those hours and hours of work to collect the stars are now gone. The bright side- at least we should be much better and faster on collecting all the stars -- again!


***EDITED to add*** I think Joe may have reformatted the whole Wii. When Sam went to play her game Petz- Dogs 2 everything was gone. Yeah, we were getting close the end of that one again (I think!). I get so tired of doing the same thing over and over again. I haven't looked at Wii Fit but I'm pretty sure it will also be all gone. However, last week Joe was nice enough to erase me Mii so I think that means all of my stuff was gone anyway! I even had a golden piggy bank- all gone, I'm sure. And if that is what happened, we will have to unlock all the games again.

Does anyone know a way to back up the Wii???

edited again to add-- I realize I have some of the above info wrong (like the # of power stars at the end, blah, blah..) but you get the idea!