Wii Region hack status, AnyRegion Changer / Gecko OS / GC Booter / Starfall

[charlesr]

Now that you can play other region games, you need to play Ikenie No Yoru with the WiiFit Board. It's daftly expensive though now. Maybe you could borrow mine....

I assume you've played Ghost Squad and S&P2? (Which are available in various regions).

[sj33]

Just in case anybody is making the transition, pretty much all of the Wii software mods work fine in the Wii mode on the WiiU.

Using one of the compatible exploits (such as SmashStack), you can install the Homebrew Channel just as before, and from there load stuff like the USB loaders, emulators, region free using Gecko OS etc. Even GameCube compatibility can be restored using Nintendont.

The bonus of using the WiiU is HDMI, and 1080p upscaling if you have an NTSC console.

[nakamura]

NTSC console has upscaling?

[egparadigm]

How do you play gamecube without a controller (port)?

[Brad]

It won't upscale. It'll output 1080p but it's not doing anything that your tv wouldn't do.
controller pro or similar I guess.

[sj33]

The NTSC console does upscale, but obviously TVs upscale internally too. It doesn't increase the native resolution of the game, merely upscales the output.

Controllers are supported over USB.

[Lyris]

Are you saying the Euro version has the scaling disabled?

It won't upscale. It'll output 1080p

That is the definition of scaling, (assuming the game is rendered at 480p).

[sj33]

I actually don't own a PAL console so maybe I'm just mistaken - I was led to believe that the PAL console outputs Wii games at 480p, but I may be wrong.

At the very least, the NTSC console upscales (not up-rez) Wii and GameCube games at 1080p, as well as homebrew such as emulators. In that sense, the WiiU makes a nice little HDMI retro emulator box for under the telly.

[nakamura]

Ah. They will still look rubbish then.

[Baseley09]

Just picked up another wii to have a bash as softmodding - what are the quality of emulators like on this system, compared to say Xbox?

Specifically looking at Mame, Snes & Nes.

[sj33]

Snes and Nes are basically perfect. Everything on the Snes is emulated full speed, including chip enhanced games like Yoshi Island. Retroarch is the emulator to use for Snes games because it has certain speed improvements. I believe the Nes is emulated with cycle accuracy too.

Can't vouch for Mame though because I've not tried it.

[nakamura]

Mame was pants on the games I tried.

[sj33]

I think like all console versions of Mame, it's severely limited by what games it can fully load into RAM. This presumably affects an awful lot of NG games etc.

[nakamura]

I tried Midnight Resistance to name one. Shouldn't be too taking.

[baad bwoy]

I dont think the emulation is anywhere near as good on wii in comparison to Xbox. Ive got hbc installed on wiiu and its incredibly buggy and crashes on a fairly regular basis (using retroarch) expected more considering the rave reviews this emu gets...perhaps im missing something?