by Mitch - 03.14.08
Booting homebrew on your Wii is getting to be a thing that’s gaining a lot of momentum these days. Ever since Team Twiizer’s Twilight Princess chainloader hit the Internet, there’s been a good deal of homebrew development flowering out from the little crack they made in the Wii’s more or less solid defense system.
However, it looked like the biggest obstacle to flowers firing from the aforementioned crack like water from a leaky dyke was that you needed an SD Gecko or a USB Gecko to load anything – and do some pretty wacky boot sector surgery on your SD card.
Well, with the alpha 3 release of the TP hack, you can use your Wii’s internal SD slot! And you can survive without having to muck about with boot sectors and such. Just throw the .elf onto the root of your card, and you’re good to go. This is some pretty exciting news! Hopefully this thing continues to develop!
The process doesn’t break anything, and it’s actually very easy. Check this out if you want to give it the ol’ college try. However, if you’re squeamish (or you just plain don’t have the required tools), I have a video up on YouTube demonstrating the process and the result.
Twilight Princess Chainloader, With SD Slot Support! (Video)
WiiBrew’s Wiki Page on the Hack
source: TehSkeen
Now they just need some good homebrew to use it with. Tetris is a good start, but it’s not really worth the effort.
peshue - 03.14.08 3:12 am
um.. will this work with the wii linux project?
just_a_guy - 03.14.08 5:12 am
Still doesn’t beat good ol’ Wiikey. I mean Wiki.
Zack and Wiki - 03.14.08 9:17 am
It should work with the Linux, though I’m not sure you can do much yet without the aid of a USB Gecko device (once they get more support for devices, like maybe USB Keyboards or something it’ll be more useful). There is an emulator or two you could try.
9th Sage - 03.14.08 9:28 am
Nice to know it doesn’t require any serious mods, but I’m starting to worry how long it is until someone turns this into a n exploit for piracy.
Namssorg - 03.14.08 9:41 am
@Namssorg: I thought some group already figured out how to use something similar to this to get the Wii to think any disc is an official disc? I could be wrong.
Tony - 03.14.08 11:17 am
Oh, I should note, you may have to wait a bit for the emulators to be programmed for front slot support…I’m not sure what supports it currently.
9th Sage - 03.14.08 11:44 am
@Tony: Well, they can use the Trucha Signer to do that, but you still need a modchip to run those discs.
9th Sage - 03.14.08 11:49 am
9th Sage: To current recollection, Team Twiizers vowed to make their homebrew loader only for homebrew, and not touch doing an ISO loader.
Mitch - 03.14.08 2:18 pm
@Mitch: Yeah, I know…they aren’t interested in piracy.
That’s certainly a good thing I think. I was just saying that the Trucha Signer by itself doesn’t really enable piracy.
9th Sage - 03.14.08 2:33 pm
Does this let you play import games? Because I bought my little brother the Eyeshield 21 game last summer from Japan and he hasn’t been able to play it since it’s region locked.
Keitaro - 03.14.08 5:05 pm
Keitaro: No - not yet, at least. The Freeloader from Datel seems to be working, but, it’s not future proof.
Mitch - 03.14.08 5:53 pm
Yeah, I was thinking about getting one for his Wii but scared they might firmware update to kill it, haha.
Keitaro - 03.14.08 7:23 pm
Ok… Why does this work with random guy #1 in Twilight Princess and not just straight from the Wii menu? The site is down, so could someone explain to me how the hell this possibly works/how someone could have found this??
Wolfmaster - 03.14.08 11:04 pm
The Twilight Hack works by employing a lengthly character name for the horse in the game (’Epona’) in order to facilitate a stack smash. This gets triggered when talking to the man next to you when you start the savegame as he loads the name to use it in his dialog or upon attempting to enter the next zone, before the man talks to you and reminds you to go the other way to get the horse.
info - 03.14.08 11:26 pm
Haha, it looks like Cory Doctorow reads 4cr.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/14/wii-locks-comprehens.ht ml
Scypher - 03.15.08 1:38 am