Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games

arbourp writes to mention that hackers Michael Steil and Felix Domke have demonstrated a way to hack the Wii that makes running homebrew code much easier. "The hack advances the possibility of running homebrew code with access to full system resources on the device, not just programs that Nintendo has sanctioned. Such games might be developed to run from a DVD drive, at least in theory. No such games are available as yet and Nintendo may respond by attempting to revoke compromised encryption keys. However history shows such countermeasures are likely to ultimately prove futile."

Star wars entry point

Just to point out they use Star wars as an entry point, however on its own the game is wicked and you can use your wii-mote as god intended :)

Re:Star wars entry point

and you can use your wii-mote as god intended

You do know that Steve Jobs has nothing to do with Nintendo, right?

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you can use your wii-mote as god intended

To play Sudoku in the snow?

hint hint

Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games

And the majority of these homebrew games look like retail games, except they're free.

Re:hint hint

Wii Hacked for Better Homebrew Games

And the majority of these homebrew games look like retail games, except they're free.

It's true that homebrew stuff invariably winds up getting used for software piracy... Even when it's not native software for the console, a popular use of a cracked console is for emulation - that is, playing games Nintendo would rather you buy through the Shop Channel instead of playing via the ROMs we've all had on our computers for the last ten years...

Still, some people really are interested in real homebrew... Either learning to write it, or just using it...

Re:hint hint

I would love to be able to use my Wii as a media server. If they would just add support to the photo channel to play H.264 videos, and support a usb hard drive or smb share, then I would be set. I don't really need a fancy interface. I just want to be able to play videos on my wii. Even without a hard disc, I would accept only using SD cards for watching videos from, if only I could play h.264 encoded videos.

Re:hint hint

I'm sure you're aware but I would recommend buying an Xbox and install Xbox Media Center on it. It can do everything you want plus more (hard drive built in opens many opportunities), and they're really cheap right now. I run an Xbox at home and use it as my media center, great stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC [wikipedia.org]
http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/ [xboxmediacenter.com]

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I love the XBMC, but for H.264 I really wouldn't recommend it. It can play it in theory, but in practice most encodes are going to give pretty choppy, or totally lagged, playback.

Re:hint hint

Which is why the XBMC Team is porting the software to Linux. It's actually quite a good ways along now. It doesn't have a final release scheduled for anytime in the near future, but the beta versions are VERY impressive. I know several people who are using it as a stable home media server and are using 1080p videos (Albeit with multi-core Intel systems with hardcore hardware.)

It's being designed with Ubuntu in mind and already has very good hardware support.

They are working on a direct port right now and as soon as they have that stable, they are going to start adding features like time shifting, video recording, etc...

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The Nano has a chip that accelerates (or, more probably, completely does) decoding of H.264. I don't know if the Wii has a chip to do that or not. If the Wii has the requisite chip, then as long as you stay within the chip's specs it would have no problem.

Re:hint hint

I've got a P4 2.6ghz/533fsb w/1gig of RAM and it chokes on 720p h.264 :(

Try digging up a copy of the CoreAVC codec (assuming you're running Windows). My 2GHz AthlonXP went from stuttering on 720p H.264 files to playing them perfectly smoothly (~80-85% proc) with CoreAVC.

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PS3 + TVersity (tversity.com) makes a fantastic media server.

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And the majority of these homebrew games look like retail games, except they're free.

Actually, the Wii has been hacked to allow pirated games for about a year (it was presented at the previous CCC). This new hack will eventually allow people to run unsigned code, whereas the previous hack did not. Basically all the old hack did was provid

Smart Thinking

I love the way they did, it shows good ingenuity. If you watch the video, they explain that they can get into GameCube compatibility mode (what is used for GC style home brew) but that the ATI chip acts as a gateway to the extended RAM and other new neat stuff (SD card slot, BlueTooth, etc.).

By physically tying address lines on the memory chips, they could circumvent the address lock and read areas of memory they shouldn't be able to. Through this, they dumped the RAM though the controller ports (using them as serial ports) and were able to pick through it and start decoding it to find things like the signature that let them break out.

Very neat. I love reading about this kind of stuff.

It will be very interesting to see what people do with this. I never really heard about any interesting XBox homebrew, just running Linux and XBMC type stuff. Ditto with the 'cube. But the Wii should prove interesting.

Re:Smart Thinking

Nintendo hasn't done much to stop DS stuff. The first hack of the DS worked by putting a pass through device into the DS slot. You'd then insert a regular game into that pass through. It would let the regular game card start the boot process and load the main executable, then when the DS asked the card what memory address execution should start at, the pass through device would intercept it and specify an address in the GBA slot memory space. You'd write your homebrew to run off GBA flash carts.

One DS firmware update modified the boot code to reject startup memory addresses that weren't in main memory.

The only other change Nintendo did with an affect on homebrew was to make it so the firmware could only be modified if you shorted a jumper. But that wasn't an attempt to prevent homebrew, that was just preventing bad code from bricking the DS.

USB.

The most useful thing that could be done with this is to allow emulation of discs from a USB harddrive. That way I could put my originals away for protection. Yeah, that's it.

Re:USB.

Metroid just tricks you into thinking there are no load times. Ever wonder why sometimes a door opens instantly, and sometimes it takes 15 seconds?

Not Steil and Domke

The hack was NOT presented by Steil and Domke. It was only presented at the end of their talk about xbox360 security at the CCC Congress. But the actual hack was presented by another person which name i don't know.

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I don't really think it's that bad for Nintendo. Since they actually make money from the console, and this would just add an extra selling point, it would just mean more profit for Nintendo.

Re:Why a console? Why not your own breed?

That post really needed some more to be organized into coherent paragraphs, but I'll answer anyway...

is it because of the "scene" or is it because you "can"?

Yes, it's because they can. They enjoy the challenge.

When you have broken the system security to release your own homebrew - then what? Challenge over?

Yep, and then you move on to a new challenge. In reality, though, breaking the system security is just one of the first steps to making homebrew software; there are still many challenges left.

Now realize this my friend - why not create your OWN hardware with your OWN challenges?

Because that's a different kind of challenge, and not as fun to some people. Why don't you forge your own plate armor? Or learn a new language? Or study Tai Chi? Those are all challenges, but they're different and appeal to different types of people. Some people -- the people who are working on this kind of project, in fact -- think that breaking a system's security and making homebrew software is much more fun than making their own hardware.

Point is - whatever you end up doing - make sure you use that time you got - wisely - otherwise you're technically just wasting your time doing it!

If you spent your time having fun, is it really wasted?

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Many times I've been thinking - why is it so important to break the latest console to work with your "insert-homebrew-here"? Is it because it's some hardware that most have been importing in to your homes? is it because of the "scene" or is it because you

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One of the things that make consoles so attractive is that they are standardized hardware that so many people have in their homes. Development can be targeted for this specific hardware - to take advantages of its unique features.

Re:Why a console? Why not your own breed?

Wha? The Wii controller is a standard Bluetooth device. This page [wikihow.com] is just one of many that provides links to drivers, and details on how to install them, for using the Wiimote on either Windows or Linux.

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No they told you exatly how they did it.

The keys are stored in protected memory. This memory is not accessable under normal conditions, as the gatekeeper chip disallows access to this. When the Wii is used in GC mode, this chip is disabled, but so is

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DRM and Copy Protection Schemes are cancer.