Hi there,
I've been toying with the idea for a while of making a portable wii (handheld trimmed wii, like the ones on the BitBuilt forum). Realistically, though, that'd be stretching my capability and available time, so I bought a Wii U yesterday and spent today working out how to get gamecube emulation going through the game pad. There are fantastic guides out there for most of it, but I spent 90% of the time on the last 10% (as is always the way) and thought it might be helpful to someone if I collate everything I did while it's fresh in my mind. Writing it here, it doesn't look too hard, but there was a bit of forum and reddit archaeology to get to this point! Appreciate if someone who knows what they're doing could do a quick QA
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What is this: A guide to taking a vanilla Wii U, a big SD card (256gb in my case), and turning that into a hand-held gamecube (at least within your house). I'm not touching any other mods or home brew or anything, because as I said above, I'm brand new to this! Aimed at noobs like me
Disclaimer: I have a brain, and doing this required a fair bit of use of said brain, so proceed at your own risk. Having said that, if you also have a brain, and take the effort to use it, you should be able to work it out. Took me ~10 hours from owning my first Wii U to being done, but mostly because I went down rabbit holes I didn't need to. Start by at least looking through the sticky threads in this forum - I can guarantee that's a better idea than not realising they exist till ~5 hours in...
Here's what I did:
1) Follow all the steps in the guide below to enable Wii U homebrew. I'd strongly recommend Haxchi over Mocha, even if you don't go all the way to coldboot haxchi - going through the browser every time you reboot, reloading the page on average 5 times per reboot, is a real pain in the ass. Worth the $9 (to me, at least).
https://wiiu.hacks.guide/
2) Follow all the steps here to do the same for the virtual wii (vWii) which is native on the Wii U. If you're just aiming for Nintendont I don't think the last couple are actually needed (cIOS update and the patch of IOS80), but I followed it to the end before I realised so I'm not sure.
https://wiiu.hacks.guide/vwii-modding
3) Download Nintendont. This is very easy, and doesn't even need installing per se. If you don't want to use the Wii U Game Pad you can stop here, otherwise see the next step.
Github link:
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont
GBAtemp thread with some instructions.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/
4) Here's where it gets harder, because I couldn't find any clear guides. You need to:
4A) Create a channel in the vWii which is a forwarder to Nintendont. This forwarder is just a shortcut on the vWii (NOT Wii U) home page which loads straight into Nintendont without the user going via the home brew channel. There are a few out there, this is the one I used from the main Nintendont page on GBAtemp.
GBAtemp thread same as above:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/
Scroll through that post to the header for Forwarders, and get the Joostin one (Wii U not Wii).
Use multi-mod manager (MMM) to install it. This video shows you how to install wad files (using a different example, at approx 6 minute mark):
MMM download:
http://www.hacksden.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=93
4B) You need the first forwarder (in vWii) so that you can create another forwarder from the Wii U home page to the vWii forwarder, which forwards to Nintendont. You need to do this step so that the game pad will work, through the magic (a.k.a. hard work by generous unpaid coders) of the forwarder below.
Have a read of the thread below, and make sure you're comfortable. I'm no expert, this is the product of my stumbling through to get mine working, not as a contributor to any of the code, and I feel like these bits might still be work in progress.
I downloaded the forwarder below, stuck it in the install folder on the SD card, installed with WUP Installer (like you did in step 1 above), and it all worked (give or take some troubleshooting).
GBAtemp thread:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-on-wii-u-virtual-console-injecting-games.483007/page-59#post-7579163
That post includes a google drive link with the forwarder:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzEB8f_rxW-oV3RWVEJ6Z1JMYnc
And a reminder to have the latest version of nintendont:
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/blob/master/loader/loader.dol?raw=true
---
Disclaimer 2: I own a GameCube (I literally moved it out of the way today to dig out a WiiMote), and a pile of hard copies of games. Not advocating piracy here. There's only one TV in my house, so having handheld retro games is very appealing when others have the TV.
--
Good luck!!
I've been toying with the idea for a while of making a portable wii (handheld trimmed wii, like the ones on the BitBuilt forum). Realistically, though, that'd be stretching my capability and available time, so I bought a Wii U yesterday and spent today working out how to get gamecube emulation going through the game pad. There are fantastic guides out there for most of it, but I spent 90% of the time on the last 10% (as is always the way) and thought it might be helpful to someone if I collate everything I did while it's fresh in my mind. Writing it here, it doesn't look too hard, but there was a bit of forum and reddit archaeology to get to this point! Appreciate if someone who knows what they're doing could do a quick QA
--
What is this: A guide to taking a vanilla Wii U, a big SD card (256gb in my case), and turning that into a hand-held gamecube (at least within your house). I'm not touching any other mods or home brew or anything, because as I said above, I'm brand new to this! Aimed at noobs like me
Disclaimer: I have a brain, and doing this required a fair bit of use of said brain, so proceed at your own risk. Having said that, if you also have a brain, and take the effort to use it, you should be able to work it out. Took me ~10 hours from owning my first Wii U to being done, but mostly because I went down rabbit holes I didn't need to. Start by at least looking through the sticky threads in this forum - I can guarantee that's a better idea than not realising they exist till ~5 hours in...
Here's what I did:
1) Follow all the steps in the guide below to enable Wii U homebrew. I'd strongly recommend Haxchi over Mocha, even if you don't go all the way to coldboot haxchi - going through the browser every time you reboot, reloading the page on average 5 times per reboot, is a real pain in the ass. Worth the $9 (to me, at least).
https://wiiu.hacks.guide/
2) Follow all the steps here to do the same for the virtual wii (vWii) which is native on the Wii U. If you're just aiming for Nintendont I don't think the last couple are actually needed (cIOS update and the patch of IOS80), but I followed it to the end before I realised so I'm not sure.
https://wiiu.hacks.guide/vwii-modding
3) Download Nintendont. This is very easy, and doesn't even need installing per se. If you don't want to use the Wii U Game Pad you can stop here, otherwise see the next step.
Github link:
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont
GBAtemp thread with some instructions.
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/
4) Here's where it gets harder, because I couldn't find any clear guides. You need to:
4A) Create a channel in the vWii which is a forwarder to Nintendont. This forwarder is just a shortcut on the vWii (NOT Wii U) home page which loads straight into Nintendont without the user going via the home brew channel. There are a few out there, this is the one I used from the main Nintendont page on GBAtemp.
GBAtemp thread same as above:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/
Scroll through that post to the header for Forwarders, and get the Joostin one (Wii U not Wii).
Use multi-mod manager (MMM) to install it. This video shows you how to install wad files (using a different example, at approx 6 minute mark):
MMM download:
http://www.hacksden.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=93
4B) You need the first forwarder (in vWii) so that you can create another forwarder from the Wii U home page to the vWii forwarder, which forwards to Nintendont. You need to do this step so that the game pad will work, through the magic (a.k.a. hard work by generous unpaid coders) of the forwarder below.
Have a read of the thread below, and make sure you're comfortable. I'm no expert, this is the product of my stumbling through to get mine working, not as a contributor to any of the code, and I feel like these bits might still be work in progress.
I downloaded the forwarder below, stuck it in the install folder on the SD card, installed with WUP Installer (like you did in step 1 above), and it all worked (give or take some troubleshooting).
GBAtemp thread:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-on-wii-u-virtual-console-injecting-games.483007/page-59#post-7579163
That post includes a google drive link with the forwarder:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzEB8f_rxW-oV3RWVEJ6Z1JMYnc
And a reminder to have the latest version of nintendont:
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont/blob/master/loader/loader.dol?raw=true
---
Disclaimer 2: I own a GameCube (I literally moved it out of the way today to dig out a WiiMote), and a pile of hard copies of games. Not advocating piracy here. There's only one TV in my house, so having handheld retro games is very appealing when others have the TV.
--
Good luck!!
