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Wii Homebrew Channel on Wii U teased! [Wii mode only for now]

By Marcan and team failoverflow of PS3 fame.

Lock and make me cry if old (did a quick search and didn't see this)

http://fail0verflow.com/blog/2012/wiiu-teaser.html

Keep in mind that this is purely a demonstration at this stage. Depending on how things progress and what direction development takes, we may or may not release something like this in this form. Please don’t ask for release dates. We’d rather spend time investigating the new system than putting together a release that may or may not end up being the Right Way to do things in the future ;).

Please ignore the blue blinks. The monitor kind of sucks at syncing to component video sometimes. I would’ve used HDMI, but the Wii U cannot output analog audio simultaneously with HDMI (at least not for the Wii U menu part), and I cannot capture HDMI audio.

(edit) To be clear, this is the Wii homebrew channel in Wii mode on the Wii U. Not Wii U, gotta give Marcan a few more weeks on that.

(edit 2) There seems to be some confusion on why this is a big deal when we knew the Wii mode could already run homebrew. The difference is that the homebrew did NOT have the ability to write to any priviledged space. This includes creating channels or installing to NAND. This new exploit properly allows the installation of the homebrew channel (and the easy homebrew loading that comes with it)

This exploit does NOT enable piracy, but it DOES enable pirates to find their own means to further hack the Wii U's Wii mode.


(edit 3) Interesting note on Wiimpersonator's Twitter (long time member of the Wii homebrew scene)

PSA: if the Wii U detects a pending system update, it will DISABLE Wii mode if you are connected to the internet, even if it used to work.

In other words, Nintendo can disable Wii mode exploits at any time, if you are connected to the Internet at all, even if you don't update.
 
I guess Nintendo didn't do a good enough job of locking down the Wii U. Heh, heh.

We knew day 1 that the Smash Attack was still functional (little they could have done to really patch it). It will delete the saves if it sees it on the SD card, but once you load up the game if you put the hack on an SD card and insert it, it works fine.

This of course doesn't give Wii U hardware access, but it does make putting the old wii back into a box much easier.
 

braves01

Banned
keikaku.jpg


Edit: image really captures how Nintendo probably views homebrew folks
 
Isn't it still just Wii homebrew? Nothing Nintendo should worry about. I hate that they call it homebrew when it's practically piracy thought.
 
Wii Mode.

We already knew this would happen, and it's exactly why nintendo sandboxed the Wii mode in the Wii U.

That Wii OS design is unsalvageable

Okay, good. I don't care if people hack regular Wii Mode. I just don't want to see endless cheaters on the Wii U side of things like the few online Wii games I played back in the day.
 
So HBC in Wii mode and possible hacks in Wii U mode (see marcan thread)... The Wii U looks like it may have a great homebrew scene.

To be fair though, Wii mode hacks were pretty much inevitable. I was at the point where I was just expecting that homebrew would work day 1 (and it did, through Smash Bros.).
 

Foffy

Banned
So HBC in Wii mode and possible hacks in Wii U mode (see marcan thread)... The Wii U looks like it may have a great homebrew scene.

Should we take this as good news or even more upsetting Wii U news?

I think that the DSi hasn't even been fully hacked yet.

To my understanding there was never a community particularly dedicated in hacking DSi. All it had to offer over DS hacks was access to DSi Ware games, and I don't think the homebrew scene cared for piracy.
 

Zee-Row

Banned
Having the Wii OS on the Wii wasn't a good idea. They should of let the Wii U emulate and upscale everything with its own OS.
 
Isn't it still just Wii homebrew? Nothing Nintendo should worry about. I hate that they call it homebrew when it's practically piracy thought.

Nothing about the homebrew channel enables (wii) piracy. Any exploit that runs unsigned code has the ability to be misused for piracy, all the homebrew channel does is remove the need to use exploited code to load each homebrew (and yes, possible piracy software).

Marcan and team failoverflow have been staunchly anti-piracy but pro-open hardware... it's a hard line but one that's easy to cross. Bushing more or less left the scene because of people abusing his code for piracy.
 

Sixfortyfive

He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Didnt we aalready know this?
Various bits of homebrew were already working, but I think this is the first example of somebody getting the actual HBC to load. IIRC, the current method to install it on a fully updated Wii doesn't work on Wii U because the Wii U's backward compatibility mode doesn't have the message board function used to trigger the exploit.

I think. I'm not totally up to date on this stuff myself.
 
That sounds risky/messy.

All software exploits are messy... but hardly risky. Unless you're running untrusted code, in which case it's fully capable of wiping your (wii) nand flash clean.

The reason why the Smash attack is so hard to defeat is because of two things, how Wii games are coded (Wii doesn't have a background OS, it's all faked for every game when you hit the home button) since there is no background OS, it has no way to monitor games once it's loaded.

Second, Smash Attack uses the SD card save function as it's attack vector. Other save exploits require coping a save to the system via the system menu, which can then check for known exploits.

Because of those two facts, as long as you don't put in the SD card in the Wii menu, there is nothing that Nintendo can do to truly fix the problem aside from reissuing a fixed smash bros disc, but that would never fix the existing discs.
 
There seems to be some confusion on why this is a big deal when we knew the Wii mode could already run homebrew. The difference is that the homebrew did NOT have the ability to write to any priviledged space. This includes creating channels or installing to NAND. This new exploit properly allows the installation of the homebrew channel (and the easy homebrew loading that comes with it)

This exploit does NOT enable piracy, but it DOES enable pirates to find their own means to further hack the Wii U's Wii mode.
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
This is amazing news! Can't wait for the homebrew, the best part of my overall Wii experience aside from first-party IP's. Same for my JTAG's really.
 

GaimeGuy

Volunteer Deputy Campaign Director, Obama for America '16
Region free is nice and all, but the Wii got pirated to hell and back.
I like good videogames. Pirated videogame system = less ambitious development = me wanting to kick some hackers.

No one is developing for the Wii anymore.

The WiiU runs the Wii in a completely sandboxed mode. The System is for all intents a purposes a Wii while in Wii mode. There is no access to any Wii U-level functions.

This is not a WiiU hack.
 
To my understanding there was never a community particularly dedicated in hacking DSi. All it had to offer over DS hacks was access to DSi Ware games, and I don't think the homebrew scene cared for piracy.

There were DSi hacks, but they all involved downloadable titles that were quickly removed. The system is supposedly hard to hack. I actually am one of the only hundreds of people with a DSi that can run homebrew in DSi mode. (The x86/PC DOS emulator is so great on it, thanks to the 4x RAM and 2x processing speed.)

Why should anyone be happy about this?

Why shouldn't we be happy about this? :p
Sure, the Wii may still be a better homebrew machine than Wii U's Wii mode due to Gamecube features, but the Wii U has perks like upscaling Wii mode and apparently much better picture quality.
 
No one is developing for the Wii anymore.

The WiiU runs the Wii in a completely sandboxed mode. The System is for all intents a purposes a Wii while in Wii mode. There is no access to any Wii U-level functions.

This is not a WiiU hack.

I'll give the guy two more weeks... WiiU is rushed, it will be wide open soon.

And actually no one EVER developed for Wii because of this. All people I personally know with a Wii have the thing flashed, they didn't buy games for the thing, ever...
 

ArynCrinn

Banned
No one is developing for the Wii anymore.

The WiiU runs the Wii in a completely sandboxed mode. The System is for all intents a purposes a Wii while in Wii mode. There is no access to any Wii U-level functions.

This is not a WiiU hack.

From what I'm hearing (literally just a minute ago) is that will change very soon, from a development standpoint. Although that says nothing about a release to the public that will run unsigned code from USB loaders like the Wii did. It may come to that, or maybe not, we don't know yet. In any case expect access to most Wii U level functions to become reality soon.
 
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