Waffle Squadron Omega

So, my Wii has been winking its long blue eye at me for a day or two now. Thankfully, I was lazy and didn’t turn it on before reading my daily gaming news. While reading Kotaku over breakfast (as usual) I came across this article. Long story short, that Twilight Princess Exploit Jack told you about a little while ago has been nixed by the big N.

However! The good news is that if you used the hack to install The Homebrew Channel then you’re still in the clear. It seems that The Homebrew Channel allows you to use homebrew apps on your Wii without running the TP hack every time. Being a fan of the homebrew scene on my PSP (and my DreamCast back in the day) I’ve decided that the time is now!

At Jack’s request, I’ll document the process with words and pictures (no video, since I’m already home and comfy…unless our sparse readership really wants to see me in my Duff Beer boxers). So, if you’re interested in trying this yourself, don’t update your Wii!!! and click the link below…

So, the first thing I did was some serious research. Here’s a few sites I recommend you get very familiar with before attempting this:

• WiiBrew
• The Homebrew Channel

I downloaded the appropriate files and formatted one of my 2GB SD cards to FAT16 (or just plain FAT in Windows). The process is described here. Before copying over the hacked savefile, I backed up my actual Zelda save to another SD card, since you basically have to delete the savefile stored on your Wii. …I think.

See, here’s where I’m getting a little confused, though: the Homebrew Channel installation instructions tell you to have the TPHack installed prior to installing THC. Step 4 of that TPHack “step-by-step” tells you to put your hombrew .elf file in the root of your SD card, so wouldn’t that be the THC installation file? Not sure. Will the TPHack not work without a homebrew ready to load? Not sure.

Here’s what I’m gonna do. I grabbed a copy of WiiAsteroids, seems innocuous enough for a trial run. I put it in the root of my SD card and called it “boot.elf” as per the instructions. Let’s see what happens when I follow the rest of the steps…

I turn off my Wii and put in the loaded SD card. I turn it back on and enter the Data Management screen–>Save Data–>Wii and erase my backed up Zelda savefile. Navigating over to the “SD Card” tab, I see this:

I copy it over successfully and put in the Twilight Princess disc. I then remember to find my nunchuck and I blatantly disregard the strap warning. One look at the Quest Log screen tells me I’m on the right track:

I chose the “walk up to the nearest guy and talk to him” and lo-and-behold a whole bunch crazy text explodes across my screen (too fast for my unprepared camera reflexes). Here’s that WiiAsteroids in “action”:

Ok, so that seemed to work. I had to fully shut down my Wii to get out of it, but it loaded up fine. Now I think I understand what the Homebrew Channel Readme meant. They basically mean “have that fake TP savefile copied onto your Wii and have an SD card ready to go!“.

So! Now, onto the Homebrew Channel installation. I load the files onto the SD card as instructed in the Readme. I also load the extra example files I grabbed from the THC download page. The SD card primed and ready, it’s time to run the hack again. Here we go!

Hey! I caught that text this time:

And here’s The Homebrew Channel’s install prompt:

Well, the installation took about 10 seconds. Went very smoothly and it will reset your Wii when it’s done (after you hit 1 to accept, that is). When my Wii Menu came up, it looked like this:

Clicking on it brings up this nice animated title screen with a pleasant, almost Nintendo-esque song:

And here’s the handy-dandy menu listing all of my homebrew apps currently on the SD card:

I tried out the ScummVM program, which lets you play lots of those old-school point-n-click adventures…the good LucasArts ones like Maniac Mansion, Sam & Max, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, etc. Or even Zak McKraken & the Alien Mindbenders, if you prefer. I tried out the included demo for some game I never heard of, “Gobliiins”. Here’s some screens:

Neat! The Wii Remote controls the mouse cursor, A clicks, etc. The graphics looked as good as you could expect and the sounds worked ok as far as I could tell, never having played this game. I hit buttons until I found out how to quit and it dumped me ceremoniously back into the Homebrew Channel menu. A quick test of WII64 (an N64 emulator) made me realize I should plug in my Wavebird. Having done so, I tried out the supplied public-domain ROM. It ran at 20fps without sound, but was kinda neat. There’s supposedly some other emulators for the usual old consoles: Genesis, SNES, etc. I’m too tired to try them now, though. Time for bed.

Still! I would call this venture into the dark and steamy homebrew jungle a successful one! The Homebrew Channel was easy to install with the help of the Twilight Princess Hack. Works well and is relatively safe to install from what I can tell, provided you follow the instructions. I think I’ll still avoid the 3.3 update for now. If an awesome game comes out that requires an upgrade, or a future upgrade offers better new features than the ho-hum ability to drag your Miis from the Plaza to the Parade, then I may go along with it. Otherwise, the homebrew will continue to flow.

Thanks for checking this out and lemme know what you think!

Tags: Awesome, Emulation, Games, Homebrew, Wii

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 10:25 pm and is filed under Awesome, Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.