Wii hacked to play back-up games
by David Hinkle 
{ Dec 21st 2006 at 9:30AM }
We're having a hard time believing this, for a number of reasons, but it appears that someone has found a way to play burned games on their Wii through a combination of utilizing a SD card and a back-up of Twilight Princess on a CD-R. Now, we're no pirating experts (we like to support Nintendo, they rock), but to us it looks like this person has found a viable way to consistently play burned games.
What do you, more technically savvy, readers out there in reader land have to say about this? Real deal or fake?
[Thanks ZeldaX!]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Shaun @ Dec 21st 2006 9:38AM
What do you get when you combine 2 Wii consoles, 2 AV connections and 1 TV?
You can see them swap the AV channel.
Krinyo @ Dec 21st 2006 9:49AM
It's fake, fade out and in @ 1:18
Proooooof @ Nov 26th 2007 12:09PM
... Its real.. Becasuse: 1. we all saw that he put in the backup disk in the wii on the front of the tv. 2. Then AFTER the fade, the tv shows that there are no SD cards in the wii.. then he puts in the card with the hack into the wii on the front! the same wii that he put the backup disk in... and the SD card with the hack pops up on the screen.. so if there really was a fade between AV1 and AV2 it should have been after he put the SD card in!.... And then he starts playing... So there you got it.. proof;)
mgroves @ Dec 21st 2006 9:51AM
I want to believe!
josh @ Dec 21st 2006 9:55AM
real. It's using the same style of hacks that worked on the psp. I'm sure nintendo will simply patch the firmware the way that sony did to fix this.
Canuckle @ Dec 21st 2006 10:14AM
Before he even puts the SD card in the Wii is recognizing there is data on it. It was instantanious... something fishy about that...
KiTA @ Dec 21st 2006 11:24AM
Twilight Princess on a ... CD-R?
Fake Fake Fake.
wiieurope.wordpress.com @ Dec 21st 2006 10:18AM
wiieurope.wordpress.com
Mickey @ Dec 21st 2006 10:47AM
http://wiigg.net has some thoughts about this.
ryan @ Dec 21st 2006 11:06AM
Totally fake the whole screen goes black right after a way too zoomed in shot of the "hack". Bogus and stupid. People have too much time.
uberjoe @ Dec 21st 2006 7:07PM
I think you would need a DVD-R. This smells fake to me.
Smoke_PK @ Dec 21st 2006 12:12PM
Apparently some of you aren't XBOX 360 "inclined". The disc he loaded into the Wii was a Verbatim DVD+R DL... not a CD-R. Not saying he didn't just create a .jpg with the "Wii Bootloader" text and just swap cables, (because I believe it would've opened an outside application, NOT completely reboot the Wii), but we can't completely discredit this as the Wii DOES load apps off the SD card.
davederrave @ Dec 21st 2006 12:01PM
yeah i think its fake but lets wait and see what happens on new years day (supposed release date of this loader)
Field Anony-mouse @ Dec 21st 2006 12:45PM
It may load apps from the SD card, but using the photo channel? Wouldn't it make more sense to have it added to the channel selection and launched from there?
cakestick @ Dec 21st 2006 1:18PM
@4, 13:
The PSP hacks that used photos were hacked TIFF files, which when opened allowed the user to run arbitrary code on the system. As a result, a preview of the image (like the 'Wii bootloader' image) would not be available. What I'm not sure of is whether you could still get an image to appear with an exploited image. Doubtful.
Anyway, hopefully this is true - I love the Wii too much to be all cheapass and pirate the games, but homebrew would be ever closer.
TsunamiPepper @ Dec 21st 2006 1:33PM
Nintendo's still using the Gamecube style of burning, making Piracy really damn hard. Gamecube and Wii games are written like records, not CDs. They also read counter-clockwise. Ease of copying? Not much. Nintendo games are substantially harder to pirate, due to these 2 measures that are a little hard to counter.
TsunamiPepper @ Dec 21st 2006 1:38PM
And DL burners aren't capable of recording backwards.
Stefan @ Dec 21st 2006 3:04PM
Do you seriously think some clown engineered a buffer overflow in the picture viewer, so that he can use it to install a bootloader? Moreover, using an overflow in such a manner wouldn't really need a full "reset" of the system to by pass protection, it could just overwrite what it needed to in the current memory.
Somehow, I'm guessing the Wii isn't afflicted with the age-old microsoft GDI library overflow vulnerabilities.
But hey, maybe this guy has a magical DVD burner that records in reverse, just for his Wii to play pirated games!
Or maybe in that span of time it took them to make a lameass fake video, they could do something more productive and earn enough money to buy like 20 or 30 Wii games.
sixtyfps @ Dec 21st 2006 4:50PM
You 'tards: The GC reads discs clockwise like every other drive. Just pop your system open if you don't believe me.
Urban-legend whores.
bebopfox @ Dec 21st 2006 5:59PM
you tard, try actually hacking your GC to see that it does spin the discs backwards before telling us we're wrong. opening up the system as though just to take out or put in a game isn't going to show you how the system reads the cd while in motion. do some homework next time.
DiRT @ Dec 21st 2006 6:48PM
Compare the menu at 14 seconds in to the one at 1:30... they are on different machines.
Justin B @ Dec 21st 2006 7:06PM
#19, ever think of hitting the "open" button while the disc is reading??? oh yeah...
This has been debunked and is easily proven as such. Trying to claim otherwise, especially in such a combative nature, makes you look like an assclown.
Justin B @ Dec 21st 2006 7:07PM
that should have been "combative manner"
Nightmare @ Dec 21st 2006 7:50PM
errr the original games are where its all at
Xaios @ Dec 22nd 2006 1:25AM
@ #18
The disks spin normally you're the idiot :P
GazzyC @ Dec 22nd 2006 5:52AM
You Americans use such stoooopid language!!!!!!!!!! tard usually comes from fat american teens mouths that don't know what it means come to Europe where our Gamecube discs spin the opposite way to American discs and we will show you muahahaha I hate hitler
LadyHitler @ Dec 22nd 2006 11:49AM
I finally got around to watching this video. I'm a video editor, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that this video was not manipulated in any post effects program like AfterEffects.
1. There are no cuts in the film. I've watched it three times, and it would be apparent given that it's hand held and so shaky.
2. If this were an aftereffects job, this guy is amazing. The amount of keyframing he would have to do would be unbelievable, and given the amount of camera shake, it would probrably be very easy to see.
The only possible way would be to have two Wiis, but we would have seen the TV display which input was being used if it was switched mid way.
Response to #8: Yes, it does go black, but the cursor stays in the same position when zooomed out. Given the shakiness of the camera that would require some remarkable camera work and wiimote positioning (you've played with them right? shaky as hell).
Given the facts, I would say it has a heavy disposition to being true.
Dead_Prophet @ Dec 23rd 2006 3:08PM
It's a very simple thing to fake. Go into the photo channel and play a video of zelda being loaded. Voila
RabidZombie @ Dec 30th 2006 6:49PM
The TV could very easily be playing a video from a Source which isn't the Wii, which could have been edited together on a TV and wouldn't have taken long.
Although, I haven't checked the video well, so don't blame me if there is a flaw in my thoughts. To be perfectly honest, I don't care for two reasons:
1) If it is real, or fake, we still have to wait to know for sure.
2) I'd rather play my Wii than argue over something such as this. :P
Agron @ Jan 14th 2007 5:47AM
This is definitively FAKE . ZOOMED in and a screen goes black..Come on man...
m0dul4r @ Feb 24th 2007 5:11PM
I myself think this can be real. Going off of the old Xbox as an example, I used an audio exploit to run unsigned code. It instructs the box to run a bios from the hard drive, not the actual chip. I don't have a Wii, but I'm guessing it has the ability to play movies and CD's. There ya go. Hacked Wii bios probably tells it to spin the disc like a movie or cd to read the info. As for ripping and burning the games, there was something a long time go for the Atari 2600 called a Prom burner, I believe. It made a mirror image of a cart in drive A and transferred it to a blank in drive B. Now, Ataris and Wiis are vastly different on a galactic, if not biblical, dimension, but just maybe, that guy hotwired the hacked bios to dump all of the contents of a disc to his computer via FTP. Just my thoughts, though.
P.S. Xbox reads the copy protection like a vinyl, and it was modded, so it's not a far stretch to assume that the same could be done to a Wii. For the TV, my tv flashes the channel name (av in) when my box reboots... Maybe his is the same. Reading the SD card in a flash? If you noticed, he secured the card before panning out, the crappy camera just made it look like it was still going in, when in reality it was probably adjusting to the light. The real quick fade in, fade out? If the wii fades out when you select the sd card (I don't have one) the camera would have to adjust to the sudden difference in light (like when you turn off the light in a room to have it go pitch black, your eyes have to adjust to it) so there are several ways this can be either a really crappily shot real thing, or one of the most elaborate hoaxes since War Of The Worlds.