my Wii
I purchased my Wii on launch day and only had a few choices for games so I ended up with Madden and Tony Hawk Downhill.
A few months passed and I bought a WiiKey and then attempted the install. I hit a snag and almost toasted my cd drive. I actually ripped a contact patch off of the board and managed to somehow stick it back on. Games still played fine, but I had a bit of a vibrating buzz on fast spin ups. Mario Kart was the worst curplit for that noise.
I installed one of the earlier twilight hack versions and then installed the hombrew channel so that I could play my roms on the wii. I had a nice collection of NES, SNES, and Genesis stuff that I never really liked sitting in front of the computer and playing so it was a natural fit.
Around October I installed some custom firmwares on my system so that I could load backup games. I know what you are thinking but I did this simply to keep myself from destroying them. After all, I hunted down around launch day and paid $50 for each of those games. Around my house not only were consoles all sold out, so were most of the early release titles.
So, back to the story. I had the backup loader “alpha” installed and it barely worked right but it did allow me to make a backup of my Mario Kart game. The “backup” of my Mario Kart spins much quieter than the real one, so there is a non “piracy” benefit out of some of this stuff.
Support has developed for more titles with the backup loader so now you could buy nearly any game and not worry that your backup copy wont load. As a safety precaution I have downgraded my wii to the 3.2 firmware and installed Starfall so that I can do an emergency recover if needed.
I’m now a very happy wii owner :). More and more advancements are being made in the scene and eventually support for PS1 games and hopefully DC will be a reality. Almost all the older game systems are available in emulator. And to top that, most of the PC based utilities for the scene are written in .net code which means I might be able to contribute.
Anyways, that’s all for now. I’ll post pics sometime when I can get them.
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Update: 5/31/09
installed bootmii to boot2 (for system brick proofing)
backed up my firmware 3.2 NAND and verified it
installed CIOS36 rev12
installed system menu 4.0
installed trucha signed IOS60 and fixed shop channel
installed preloader and set hacks (for total code execution control + brick proofing)
installed mIOS rev3 and Gamecube Loader 0.2
installed USB loader channel. Need to buy a usb drive. My dvd drive is going to last 3 billion times longer now that I can run my games from a usb drive.
now I have a brick proof, fully hacked and region free wii. I can write my own apps without the official kit. I can also back up these old gamecube titles without worry of ruining my originals. Or, more specifically, I can back them up so I don’t do something stupid, like step on it because too much stuff is on the floor. I was really really glad that was my backup, else I would have been out 50 bucks.
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Update 09/09
Downgrading is no longer the preferred method to do these things. Now my console is running 4.1U system menus with Preloader 0.29 and Bootmii v3. I keep constant backups of my system image incase I screw something up. I have the Waninkoko R14 cIOS installed as IOS249 and the Herme’s R7 cIOS installed as IOS232. By adding the Herme’s cIOS I got back the ability to play USB instruments on Rock band and Guitar Hero. Still using cMIOSv3 until an update comes around but now gamecube backup compatibility is more than 75% of the whole collection. Emulators and rom compatibility are perfect now for nearly every system.
I also grabbed a USB drive and started loading all of my backups onto it. They play twice as fast as a burned disc because the system is not limited by the 3x read speed on burned media. Instead it can run at full 6x speed like a real game would. Load screens are no longer any concern even on the crummiest of games.
Also just starting to use Triiforce to emulate directly on the NAND. This allows me to use those games from the Wii Shop Channel without installing them to the drive first, in a way. The system does not have enough room to hold all the games I want, nor does my SDcard. This allows me to try out the new titles and decide if its worth installing permanently.
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01/01/10 Update:
An unexpected softmod configuration caused an error on the 4.1U system menu when returning from a game of Wii Fit Plus. I got the dreaded “System Files are Corrupted” message. This was 2…TWO damn days before X-Mas. I decided I couldn’t really lose out on anything since I had full console backups so I went ahead and did the manual upgrade to 4.2U. This involved installing each individual IOS, one at a time. About 40 of them total.
I then reinstalled bootmii as IOS and boot2, installed Priiloader, installed TriiforceMRC and created a decrypted NAND backup for Triiforce to run from. Somewhere along the line in here a Mame emulator came out and I was finally able to play the Simpsons arcade game on my wii. I am still running Custom IOS38 revision 14 in IOS slot 249 even though revision 17 is out. I upgraded to a 1TB external USB drive and added Uloader so I would be able to apply BCA patches on the fly when needed. I installed Hermes’ Custom IOS’es too in slots 222 and 223, revision 4. I created the merge module for the #223 IOS slot because I figured I might play with Rock Band equipment one of these days.
I also slapped some hacks onto a original PSP-1000 WITHOUT using a pandora battery mod or the special mem stick package that most ppl require. I just got lucky I guess. Either way, now its a great handheld unit to take out on work trips. It has all my fav titles, especially those old capcom fighters.