News: Install Wii Games onto a USB Hard Drive Page 1

Install Wii Games onto a USB Hard Drive

26.05.2009

Install Wii Games onto a USB Hard Drive on Nintendo gaming news, videos and discussion

The Wii homebrew community has brewed up a way of having all your games in once place using a USB hard drive.

By popping a USB Hard Drive onto the Wii players can rip and store all their titles, running them from a Wii-esque menu for potentially faster loading times, convenience and an easy way of carrying your collection about. Lifehacker reader Mike has produced a written guide and a video on how to get it all up and running.

Those wanting a little bit more pizzazz can include a cover/CD art to jazz up the digital collection.

Have you/will you be using the USB loader to back-up your Wii collection? What do you think of the idea, performance?

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Canyarion 26.05.2009#1

This will mostly be used for piracy. I see it as a bad thing. Swapping discs isn't hard.

Darkflame 26.05.2009#2

Indeed.
Its a real shame this stuff is made, as I love real homebrew, and this damages its rep.

I\'m also not sure about load times, might depend heavily on the game. USBs/FDDs have no start up or seak times, but they are normaly slower at streaming data, so games with continious streaming landscapes (HarryPotter) might struggle.

( Edited 26.05.2009 22:25 by Darkflame )

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Yoshindo 27.05.2009#3

Not having to swap discs would be convenient, but as said, it is not much work swapping discs and sadly it will be used for piracy. Like the menu look though and Nintendo should take interest in something like this.

crackedthesky 27.05.2009#4

I'm not so sure that piracy will be a huge deal, with this thing. For person to person pirating, it'll require at least one large USB drive, with games being around 4 GB, and it'll also require that both people have a Wii with Homebrew Channel installed (which will likely become more and more rare, since Hintendo keeps finding ways to make it impossible to put HC on the Wii.) Sure, people can download the ripped files online; but they could already do that. It's called ROMs. I really don't see much of a difference between using this new USB, and using SD cards. The people who are going to use this for piracy were already going to be pirating games, and likely, already were. Adding a new way to pirate games when many methods were already available doesn't necessarily mean that more people will start doing it.
That said, this looks nifty. I'm going to check it out. I can't see much personal use in it, other than backing games up... but think of those of us whose Wii systems won't read Brawl anymore, but can't be sent to Nintendo for cleaning. I can spend $15-$25 importing the Wii disc cleaner... or run Brawl from a USB drive for free. No more buying a new copy if a game gets scratched up, if you have a backup on USB. It'll depend on how well it runs, of course, but this has a lot of good potential.

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russraine 27.05.2009#5

I tried to install this today but without luck, I was however only interested in ripping my own games to HDD and not use it for Piracy. I've never used a pirate game for any Nintendo platform and don't intend to start now. I have the HBC installed purely for interest and the homebrew apps (though most aren't that good yet).

If you are running version 4 of the system menu (the latest one with the new SD menu) then it's much harder and requires downgrading of lots of stuff - I didn't want to do that and risk the potential brick.

Mario_0 27.05.2009#6

I really don\'t see much of a difference between using this new USB, and using SD cards

Uhh HDD\'s can hold like 120GB to 1TB of data and range in price from £45-£100

32GB SDcards can cost up to £70 and there probably the slow ones.

People could easily download a shit tonn of wii games onto a hardisk.

( Edited 27.05.2009 01:02 by Mario_0 )

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MasaMuneCyrus 27.05.2009#7

People could just as easily download and burn pirated Wii DVDs, for much cheaper, even (with 1 Taiyo-Yuden dvd running less than 45 cents per disc)

Additionally, the cost of the hard drive is in the vicinity of ~$100

I\'ve personally been using it for about a week and a half, now, and I\'m very happy. I have about 30 games installed on it, all of which I own. The games run slightly better using a HDD than using a DVD, and piracy will not be any worse now than it has been as people have been able to play pirated DVDs for a year (and it\'s obviously not dented the Wii\'s sales).

ADDITIONALLY, pirated DVD backups have better compatibility than the HDD.

( Edited 27.05.2009 01:36 by MasaMuneCyrus )

satsubatsu347 27.05.2009#8

Sorry gang but the reality is that, yes, it will be used for piracy... But, I would hope the "piracy" would be titles you will never see on the VC.

ohm 27.05.2009#9

Oh I am so getting this. I hate disk swapping. Actually, I probably won't bothered to get it.

JoshSL 27.05.2009#10

It's pretty neato, but the piracy rate on Wii is bad enough already...

If I had a HDD though, I'd probably get this in a second, assuming it worked fine on 4.0 Wii. Would be good to load up Super Smash Brodders without swapping the disc.

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MasaMuneCyrus 27.05.2009#11

Piracy on the Wii is hardly bad, at all. Go ahead and ask some people you know if they pirate on the Wii. Only people tech-savvy enough to know how to downgrade their Wiis, know what IOS and cIOSes are, and can browse through hundreds of pages of forums can pirate easily.

Moreover, until recently, 4.0 firmware Wiis had no exploit to hack them, and LU64 and LU65 serial number Wiis -- new Wiis -- are unhackable.

And once again, pirated DVDs -- actual physical DVDs -- have better compatibility than the HDD. Certain games use multiple IOSes that must all be patched and the game itself must also be patched to use a custom IOS; in those cases they cannot be run on a HDD. Notable examples I can think of would be Metroid Prime and Metal Slug Anthologies.

russraine 27.05.2009#12

Don't forget people that Nintendo have the power to put a stop to many of these things so as far as piracy goes if it gets really serious expect Mario Galaxy 2 to have a serious set of instructions to remove all non official hacks from the Wii.

I am still surprised that Nintendo haven't removed the HBC - i the Wii firmware update can scan and delete save files then it's just as easy for it to do so with channels. Yes people can block and hack updates for now but if a big enough game has enough anti piracy code in it then is very hard.

Darkflame 27.05.2009#13

Which is precisely why stuff like this is bad for legit homebrew.
The more attractive you make piracy solutions, the more reason Nintendo has to stop the lot.

http://www.fanficmaker.com <-- Tells some truly terrible tales.
Last update; Mice,Plumbers,Animatronics and Airbenders. We also have the socials; Facebook & G+.

~~taraff1 27.05.2009~~#14

You can also now install Wii homebrew and play copied, backup, and import games, plus DVD\'s without using a modchip using the Nintendo Wii Homebrew unlockHack!

( Edited 10.10.2009 10:30 by SuperLink )

crackedthesky 28.05.2009#15

Exactly. It's not like this opens up a huge number of possibilities... the only thing it changes is the amount of space.

And seriously, you could copy pretty much every GOOD Wii game to one SD card anyway Smilie

NNID: crackedthesky
My blog, mostly about writing: http://www.davidjlovato.com

Udkedae 28.05.2009#16

As a Nintendo player, I don't mind chaging discs at all. Besides, I like having the discs around so when I see them in 5 or 6 years, they become a memory Smilie .

This is good for backups and WILL be used for piracy, but I'll stick to SD cards.

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Fazeel (guest) 22.09.2012#17

hello i want to ask that how do i download wii games in my usb