Wii ISO Loader demonstrated on video running "backup" copy of Zelda

Is this the day, is this the hack that frees the Wii console to finally run your legal (or, eh hem, otherwise obtained) "backup" games? As the story goes, Waninkoko, the latest name to emerge from the hacking underground, has developed a "work in progress" v0.1 Wii backup ISO loader for the Wii Homebrew Channel that will run backed-up game ISOs converted with a "special program" -- no modchip required. If true then the whole thing smacks of the original Xbox font exploit that turned that console into a hackers playground and noisy, all-media playing powerhouse. In support of the claim, TehSkeen has posted a video demonstrating the loading and execution of a backup Zelda game. If Waninkoko can deliver this to the masses, then the demand for a proper Wii storage solution is about to grow exponentially.

[Thanks, Joseph B.]

Read -- Video
Read -- Exploit described

[Techie @ Sep 15th 2008 7:12AM]

Time to go to Blockbluster and rip some games.

[shanoboy @ Sep 15th 2008 8:28AM]

Last I looked, it was kind of tough to rip Wii games. Has something changed?

[beano311 @ Sep 15th 2008 8:51AM]

Never was hard to rip Wii games... it's as easy as buying a specific $20 DVD-ROM drive for your PC and running either Rawdump or friidump. I've yet to get a bad dump and I've been doing it since maybe half a year after the Wii came out.

[T @ Sep 15th 2008 12:38PM]

beano311: how do you do that? i have an old computer kicking around...

[Jonathan-DBOSS @ Sep 15th 2008 7:16AM]

Board on the Wii train! (Now, more than ever!)

[ybd @ Sep 15th 2008 8:46AM]

Yeah, can't wait. Now that I can load "backups" without a modchip I can play great games like... ...uh...

[thatrotierkid @ Sep 15th 2008 10:24AM]

like Zelda: Twilight Princess, Brawl, or Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles?

[anantha92 @ Sep 15th 2008 7:23AM]

What's the point when DVDs are 4GB or 8GB and the maximum memory stick size the wii can read is 2gb?

[Ghen @ Sep 15th 2008 7:33AM]

You burn the game on a DVD.

[chefgon_ign @ Sep 15th 2008 7:23AM]

This jerk is exactly the reason why Nintendo refuses to deliver a Hard Drive for law-biding players like myself. I hate you, Waninkoko.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Sep 15th 2008 8:46AM]

USB storage support is in progress. Stay tuned.

And hate Nintendo instead. Homebrewers are only filling blanks left there by Nintendo.

[Reader @ Sep 15th 2008 8:52AM]

The better way to see it is that Nintendo is the jerk punishing you for paying when some dude is going to crack the protective measures anyway. DRM only affects the people that it doesn't apply to.

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 15th 2008 9:53AM]

Fear of piracy didn't stop every other major console (PS3, 360, Xbox original, and even the fuckin' PS2) from offering storage solutions larger than an internal 512mb, did it?

[Dale @ Sep 15th 2008 9:58AM]

I think if Nintendo had made the system region free, included DVD playback (both features that were mentioned even by their own executives) and the Virtual Console wasn't so damned pricy, there would be far less incentive for the hacking.

Not that you need to disincentivise it in the first place, but still.

[Kawaiipikachu @ Sep 15th 2008 10:22AM]

Chefgon ing
I agree with you totally as piracy sucks .
Companies ended up shuting down due to piracy even .

Recently Regie Fil-aime said the storage solution is soon but im sure hope god that this doesn't slow it down .

And Dale the Virtual Console is not pricey in fact its extremely cheap

Master system nes = 500 points $7.50 au $5.00us

Snes megadrive = 500 points $12.00 au $8.00us
n64 =1000 points $15.00au $10.00us

So its extremely cheap & if they are any cheaper Nintendo would be losing money on the Virtual Console .

I bought plenty of games on the shop channel .

So Dale in the end you are wrong about the virtual console being expensive .

[Serial 8-Ball Mouse @ Sep 15th 2008 12:21PM]

"if they are any cheaper Nintendo would be losing money on the Virtual Console"

Uh, proof please. Because that is definitely not true.

[Vidikron (FU) @ Sep 15th 2008 11:55AM]

@Kawaiipikachu

"So its extremely cheap & if they are any cheaper Nintendo would be losing money on the Virtual Console."


You're kidding, right? The VC is nothing more than emulators running ROMS. It's not like XBLA where classics have leaderboards, online play, enhanced graphics, and achievements added. VC is just plain old ROMS with the game manuals embedded. That's it. And I'm pretty sure the bandwidth required to deliver a 128KB NES ROM isn't breaking their bank. They could likely charge $1 for NES games and still be making a profit. Maybe it's not expensive compared to retail games, but compared to the value of similar games on XBLA the VC is a rip off and, quite frankly, a lazy cash grab.

[SirCurry @ Sep 15th 2008 9:47PM]

I agree, and now we will see Nintendo cracking down on the Wii hacking seriously.
Nintendo didn't really try to stop the twilight hack (well they did, but it was a pretty poor effort), but they sure will now.
this sucks

[Totalfixation @ Sep 15th 2008 7:30AM]

I say give it a few weeks and Nintendo will cover this exploit somehow.

[Erwos @ Sep 15th 2008 8:12AM]

That's almost irrelevant. The entire homebrew scene (which I suppose is about to become the warez scene) has been on "no upgrade" mode since the last Wii firmware release. Unless there's some insanely hot new game that forces a firmware upgrade that can't be worked around, I don't see this as a big deal.

[mastervictor @ Sep 15th 2008 7:46AM]

WOW! this is truly truly amazing. I am the first to post! Unbelievable!

[Ivan @ Sep 15th 2008 10:31AM]

FAIL!

high development costs = high priced games... NOT A FEW HUNDRED THOUSANDS OF HACKERS

its all a business, if they see that you will pay for a $60 game then they will charge you for it! douche

[David @ Sep 15th 2008 8:05AM]

... Sigh ....

(face palm)

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Sep 15th 2008 8:49AM]

@Ivan: "high development costs = high priced games."

Uhm... NO.

high development costs on other platforms = have to earn something elsewhere = high priced Wii games.

[Saurabh Singhvi @ Sep 15th 2008 8:08AM]

I think the target of the storage solution would be to eliminate a need to burn the discs. Just copy the isos to your usb hard drive, load the iso directly from the Wii ISO loader and viola!

[Slone @ Sep 15th 2008 9:40AM]

....Not sure I followed exactly how a stringed instrument came into context as the end of your sentence

[Doug @ Sep 15th 2008 8:08AM]

Some people are just adamant in destroying everything decent about the homebrew community aren't they?

[Kurian @ Sep 15th 2008 8:13AM]

Piracy leads to console success. e.g. PSP, PS2, XBOX, PS1, 360, Wii.
PS3 is the only one left out and its the least successful of all the above, even though its theoretically the best.

[Michael Rogers @ Sep 15th 2008 8:32AM]

I wish I could argue against that, but it IS a good point.

*stretching here*
Dreamcast?

[Kurian @ Sep 15th 2008 12:31PM]

The Dreamcast was doomed for various reasons.

1) The PS1 had a MASSIVE impact on the market in Sony's favor, and they announced the PS2 before the Dreamcast was launched, and the PS2 was to be launched in just a few short months. Everyone waited for the PS2 and it was assured that there would be enough developers to make big name games for the PS2, wheres the Dreamcast had nothing to back it up.

2) The PS2 was technically superior. There is no denying that graphics are important. The SEGA games are stupid and childish for the most part.

3) It just FAILED so badly that you couldn't even GET to buy pirated games.

[Lars @ Sep 19th 2008 2:08PM]

Here's why Dreamcast failed for me: Seeing what SEGA did with their previous console, I thought "hmm, I'm gonna wait a year or so before jumping on anything made by SEGA." Then lo and behold they up and quit again! The Dreamcast seemed to be an awesome system but I had absolutely no faith in SEGA at that time.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the PS2 or PS1. I never even cared about those systems (never even bought a PS1). I finally wound up buying a PS2 a while after the Dreamcast crashed and burned, just because of a few specific games that I really wanted to play. I never thought of the Playstation as being a good system until this generation. I'm very impressed by the PS3's hardware, and Sony's history of backing their consoles is very strong... can't say the same for SEGA. Funny how I've done a total reversal. I loved the Master System and Genesis was good too.

[Bruce @ Sep 15th 2008 8:28AM]

Engadget seems to be showing a Mainstream Media-esq level of ignorance over this topic at the moment. For clarification, waninkoko is not the "latest name to emerge from the hacking underground" he's been a thorn in the side of the scene since it has started. It is because of him that Virtual Console and WiiWare piracy occurs and he has written several dangerous apps. He just seems to be continuing his trend now. I wonder how long it'll take nintendo to respond...

[Haikibutsu @ Sep 15th 2008 8:35AM]

That copy of Zelda TP is probably an actual backup, not a pirated thing.

After all, they probably needed a legit disk to even install the homebrew channel.

I have the homebrew channel, and when some friends come over, they think Nintendo actually made it, because the intro looks so clean and polished.

[mlk @ Sep 15th 2008 8:47AM]

> Piracy leads to console success. e.g.
> PSP,

How is the PSP a success? The DS is doing better in the market, the PSP section in my local Game is tiny.

> Wii.

Wii IS A success, and as of yet little to no wide spread piracy.

[y3k.nik @ Sep 15th 2008 9:05AM]

The R4 and cycloDS chips have been in the market for more than an year now. DS is probably the most easiest of all to pirate on.

[rafa @ Sep 15th 2008 9:07AM]

PSP is a success, it's just not the success the DS is. I think they've sold 37 million units at last count.

[cheng @ Sep 15th 2008 9:33AM]

you have no idea of modded wiis do you?

[mlk @ Sep 15th 2008 8:48AM]

> console into a hackers playground and noisy, all-media playing powerhouse

OK, this ALL READY exists for the Wii (excluding "noisy"). Pirated games don't help here.

[whormongr @ Sep 15th 2008 10:05AM]

sadly, there isn't much that I can see wanting to pirate on the wii- the only thing I would use it for is to play all of the crappy games that I would never buy- right now I only use it for wii fit anyways, and you couldn't pirate the board

[Aedile @ Sep 15th 2008 10:41AM]

Slashdotted....
Or rather engadgetedededed.....
-aedile-

[j0no @ Sep 15th 2008 10:54AM]

Great. Just what Nintendo needed to really crack down on homebrew apps. Expect a robust firmware solution coming soon, which all future games (Wii disc, VC and WiiWare) will require to run, and possibly some online services, or even the entire Nintendo WiFi Connection.

I knew this was coming, but there's really no legitimate reason to do this. Thanks, asshole.

[Bob @ Sep 15th 2008 11:25AM]

Ya, Waninkoko, screw you for allowing us to do more with something we paid for. Screw you and your friends for adding features that should have been there in the first place. Screw you for allowing us to play those cool ScummVM games and nes & snes games we already own.

Seriously guys. These people are not the enemy. Its Nintendo's own fault. Remember when one of these guys sent an email to Nintendo saying that he found an exploit that would allow playing backup-ed games, and remember that he had to do a public letter because they would not respond to him after 3 emails? He game them a chance to fix it, but since they didn't he can do whatever he wants with it.

And anyway those people who are scared that their Wii-brew lives are over ... get really, like a firmware update ever stopped anything permanently.

[J. Evans Turner @ Sep 15th 2008 4:12PM]

j0no was DEFENDING homebrew. Waninkoko is not responsible for the Homebrew Channel. Team Twiizers (Bushing, Crediar, and the rest) developed it and made all major accomplishments and discoveries so far. Team Twiizers is taking special care to keep things legitimate and not do anything that would make Nintendo want to shut down homebrew, but Waninkoko is hell-bend on ruining homebrew for us all.

[bye4now @ Sep 15th 2008 11:35AM]

for a minute there i thought i saw something that said "THE HEBREW CHANNEL!"

[BigRedPimp @ Sep 15th 2008 11:58AM]

Seriously, will you guys ever stop posting stuff from TehSkeen? I know it draws traffic but seriously. Everything that's ever posted there is borrowed work and nobody ever gets the facts right. Please don't support the pirates by linking to them. It gives the proper devs who do the real grunt work a bad reputation. Waninkoko has repeatedly asked for help on stuff and said he'd never share anything. What does he do? He turns around and releases it as his own. Don't support trash like this. Honestly, if you're going to cover Wii-related homebrew news, cover the positive stuff or not at all. There's plenty of other webrags out there who post about this stuff who don't care about piracy. Every time you post about piracy this & warez that on consoles where people are trying to do legitimate work, you make us out to be pirates. Enough. Just enough.

[Knight0fDragon @ Sep 15th 2008 12:52PM]

Software like this really puts a slam on the homebrew community, We are trying to stay away from being called pirates by offering free open source projects, but jackasses like Waninkoko have to go about making things like this that give us bad reputations. Nintendo is not the enemy, Nintendo is a business, and if you want a good or use a service from that business, you pay what they want for it. That is how the world works. You guys would be crying your eyes out if we stole money out of your pockets, but hey, its your fault we are stealing it because you wouldnt give it to us. Love the philosophy of some people in this world.

[KeegdnaB @ Sep 15th 2008 3:35PM]

Seriously people....they probably wouldn't complain so much about homebrew if idiots didn't use it to pirate.

BUY YOUR OWN DAMN GAMES

[marcan @ Sep 15th 2008 5:27PM]

Seriously, one thing is for Waninkoko to put together four existing hacks and make a crappy game copy loader (no, it won't be fully compatible and there is a hardware limit to half reading speed - long loading times) and quite another is to get his stuff advertised on engadget of all places. Via tehskeen no less. Remember last time they got posted here? That's right - when he claimed that a little dongle that I humbly made to try to help people fix bricked Wiis (which is boring by engadget's standards) was somehow everything from a custom firmware, a pandora battery, a game copy loader, and who knows what. He still claims that I'm lying and trying to keep it under wraps for some deep dark secret reason.

Now engadget is basically promoting game piracy. I mean, seriously - you haven't even fallen into the "backup game" trap. The "(or, eh hem, otherwise obtained)" speaks mountains about what the author of this newspost was thinking - and we all know that is EXACTLY what 9 in 10 future users of this application are thinking. Since when did it become okay to promote game piracy (oh, sorry, I meant "game backups") using "politically correct" language?

Waninkoko didn't even do this for himself, at least not entirely. He used to claim that he wasn't interested in writing this. The reason he changed his mind is because he used to work for a certain modchip team, for a short while. They're shady, and haven't been paying him (not the first time they do this - I've known others who have had problems with them), so now he decided to stick it to them by writing this and trying to cut their sales. Almost a noble cause, except we did warn him about these idiots and he chose to ignore us.

Now Nintendo is going to come down even harder on wii homebrew. They already proved that they are unable to distinguish between the piracy scene and the homebrew scene, by trying half-heartedly to block our existing homebrew hacks. Best guess now is that they'll actually start cracking down, by properly fixing all existing published bugs, including one that will be fixed in future consoles sold. Once they do that, we will lose a very important ability on those newer consoles - with current consoles, we can hack the software to enable almost entirely risk-free recovery if you screw them up. We're working on it. Once they fix this one bug, this will not be possible on newer consoles. Ever (it's pretty fundamental). And since this bug is all related with the ability to run homebrew too, they're going to do this ASAP now. In fact, we'll still be able to run homebrew (their system is way too insecure for that), which means all of the pirates will get what they want, as usual - but those of us who will want to safely screw around with our consoles will be screwed with new Wiis.

First it was VC piracy, now it will be game piracy. First they fixed trucha and tried to block the Twilight Hack, now who knows what. Last time we said "thanks, waninkoko". I really would prefer not to have to do this again.

[Michael (Snick422) @ Sep 15th 2008 8:58PM]

Nonsense, it's completely legit for Engadget to report on this as it is a technological advancement. The author, and this website took no stance that piracy was either good or bad, but merely reported the facts on this development. Now, if running backups is a crime, we'd better arrest all those old grandmothers that display pictures in their homes that were scanned from photos.

Let's even go there and say that this is complete piracy and a crime, does this mean the newspapers and news programs should no longer report theft and robbery? Your entire argument against this post is ridiculous and goes so far as to make the assumption that Nintendo can't distinguish between legitimate software development and piracy, which is an unfounded claim.

[marcan @ Sep 16th 2008 1:11AM]

It's not very legit when the author of the post is basically saying "now you can pirate games without a modchip *hint hint* *nudge nudge*" between the lines.

Backups are a great excuse, but we all know - and the author of the post made it very, VERY clear - that backups are the universal Internet codeword for "piracy, oh yeah, and the 5% of people who actually use legit backups".