Questions about the Homebrew Wii Channel...

[Draven]

I just happened across the Twilight Hack while searching the 'net. Pretty awesome, I must admit. It's ironic because I just ordered Twilight Princess and someone at work gave me a Palm Pilot (won't hold a charge) and it had a 256MB card in it. The Wii I just got has never been online. It has ver 3.1. I'm interested mostly in the emulation department, but I'd also like to have access to mp3's and the DVD player while I'm at it (did I miss anything else possible with this mod?). I've researched everywhere but I still have a few questions. Maybe someone here can help me out.

1. I know the max amount the Wii reads without the update is 2G. How much could I store on my 256 card (games/emulators and whatever's necessary for the DVD/mp3 player). I know I should just buy a new one, but I'm pretty anxious to roll with what I have.

2. What emulators do you guys recommend? NES (Nesticle?), GBA, SNES (SNES9x?), MASTER SYSTEM, ATARI, ARCADE, GENESIS, N64, ETC. I have pretty much every popular system with tons of games, so hopefully this won't turn into a legal debate. I mainly want to have access to my games on one console instead of constantly switching for short gaming sessions. Can any emulator work, or do they have to have a program to run on the Wii?

3. Do I need to have EVERYTHING on my card before I load it into my Wii, or can I go back later to add roms/mp3's/other applications?

4. By not getting the update will I be running into storage capacity problems later, as my collection grows, or can games be saved onto the card through the homebrew channel? Has anyone ever opted to go with the update rather than the Twilight Hack?

5. If I fill the card can I use multiple cards to keep my emulators/programs seperate, or is this a one card deal? If possible to do this, would it be difficult to boot the homebrew channel like this or am I overthinking it?

6. Last, but definitely not least, what good homebrew games are out there? I've seen Masteroids and Tetris. Any other notables?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[NayusDante]

1. I believe that higher capacities are supported, but the biggest one I have is 2gb. I believe that homebrew supported SDHC cards before the Wii system did.

2. You can find most of them on the homebrew browser. If I can remember correctly, it's just one thing to copy to the card, then it allows you to download, install, and update your homebrews directly on the Wii.

3. You treat it like an SD card. When you want to add music or software not on the download pages, you'll have to put it back in your PC. Nothing but the homebrew channel itself is loaded into the Wii, it all runs off the SD card.

4. I don't know enough to answer this. I've heard that one country got the 4.0 system and it politely uninstalled the homebrew channel without a mess.

5. As long as you have the homebrew channel files on the card, I think it's fine. The channel on the Wii depends on data on the card, but again, I haven't read up on it.

6. Quake. Play Quake. Doom is good too, but you need to play Quake.

[Draven]

Thanks, NayusDante. You've been a great help! One more thing. I just found out about the New Play Control series in Japan (I guess it hasn't been released here yet?). I would love to get the Metroid Prime series (never played any of them before except on DS). Anyway, is there anything on this soft-mod that allows imports to play or do you think it will eventually make its way to the States and I just need to be patient? Hopefully if it makes it here they'll put a cheap price tag on it, like $20!

[Neil Koch]

The New Play Control versions are coming out in the US. There's already been a couple of releases, Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis.

If you are looking to modding/using the Homebrew Channel, I highly recommend picking up Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. It's a very fun fighting game in the vein of the Marvel Vs Capcom games, but will probably never come out in the US because of all the licensing issues that would be involved with the anime characters.

And I haven't used the Homebrew Channel myself, but most ROM files, especially for 8-bit era games, are very tiny. You could probably get 100+ (at least) NES/SMS games on a 256MB SD card. But really, you should just get a bigger SD card. They're getting dirt cheap nowadays. You can pick up a 2GB one for $5-10.

[ubersaurus]

Some answers for you:

As far as emulators go, FCE Ultra, SNES9X, Wii2600, Genesis Plus, SMSPlus, and visualboyadvance are all pretty good stuff. The only arcade emulator for MAME blows, but the Neo Geo one is alright. Everything is stored on the card, too, so it's just as much crap as you can stuff on there. I have the whole Atari library, a bunch of games for other systems, and a couple Turbo CD games, and my 2gig card isn't full yet. And yeah, if you want to split stuff among cards, that's perfectly fine by the console; only thing on there is the Homebrew Channel normally.

For imports, GeckoOS is the way to go. It should load up most Japanese games, though if you're running PAL stuff, or NTSC on PAL, it can give you issues.

I've got my Wii on system menu 4.0 after installing the Homebrew Channel, and its still there. I guess the update only kills the Twilight hack.

[Draven]

So I can still update to 4.0 and keep the Homebrew Channel if it's installed before the update? I hope so (makes sense, because how can they differentiate between the homebrew channel and a channel that contains a VC title?). Anyone else try this to verify it wasn't a fluke with ubersaurus's console? I love having my cake and eating it too (I've always said cake is pointless without the eating)!

[Sabz5150]

So I can still update to 4.0 and keep the Homebrew Channel if it's installed before the update? I hope so (makes sense, because how can they differentiate between the homebrew channel and a channel that contains a VC title?). Anyone else try this to verify it wasn't a fluke with ubersaurus's console? I love having my cake and eating it too (I've always said cake is pointless without the eating)!

I have the latest firmware and the Homebrew Channel is unaffected. Hasn't been an update yet that bothers it... they only disable the Twilight hack.

[Draven]

That's awesome. My boss here at work has a Wii and he wants to do the same thing. Fortunately he has an SD card reader (the last piece of the puzzle). All I need to do now is research the Homebrew Channel a little better instead of the Twilight Hack. Thanks for the help, guys. Everyone's batting 1.000 so far!

[Vigilante]

I installed the homebrew channel a good 6 months ago. Once it's all setup it will auto update itself. Recently Nintendo released a system update so you can read the sd card as channels and not have to move the data back and forth.

I found out about the update thru the nintendo channel, so I first ran the homebrew channel to make sure it was up to date, then I updated the software from nintendo to get the sd card update, no problems at all, worked like a charm.

I got a 2 gig SD card for like 10 bucks.... dumped alot of roms, emulators, downloaded homebrew apps and games, my own family pictures for that picture channel, downloaded Wiiware channels, anything I could think of.... only took up 1/2 of the card, still have arround a gig free. I highly recommend getting a 2 gig card, you'll never have to worry about a space issue for a long time.

If you have any problems then drop me a PM and I"ll help you out.... it was a piece of cake.