#nintendo modding

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I've had a complicated backstory with treating items back in my early days, but it didn't come across me until the past few recent years. Gone were the days where I would've abused any nearby electronics, as I've been building upon and upon in the past seven years while also growing some patience learning over my past. There are many consoles in my room between Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox, all with their games pertaining to my interests while also trying to open up to new boundaries. Unfortunately, the aforementioned Wii U from that special day in 2012 was one of those victims of my own past self, going from a defective disc drive, to the stick buttons no longer clicking on the GamePad, to the whole thing no longer working altogether. I fell off from the Nintendo loop for a couple of years before getting back onboard with a 2DS for my younger brother and a Switch for me, then it expanded with the Wii and the many opportunities that Homebrew had to offer there. Even now I can't have a grasp of what my anti-Nintendo phase was like.

...and with that, hey all, Floaty here! We come to today, my experience with a Wii U in 2023. As of writing, it's been nearth a month since I've had my unit delivered home and it's been rather mesmerising, a genuine throw back to the past, so I'm writing up this article to write down what it's been like. There are some things to tackle here and there regarding my gameplay experiences and how I've been with the console...

The first feU hours

12th January 2023, it could've been a Thursday like any other but I took the decision the week prior to spice up my console "collection" with a relic of my late childhood... a hit-or-miss at that time, but definitely one worth looking back to, but was it worth the 120€ that I've spent?

The packaging was underwhelming as everything in the box was loose and unprotected, but the goodies inside did travel safely from Southern Italy all the way up here in the North and deary me, what goodies. Boxed in were a 32GB black Wii U and a black Wii U GamePad, just like how I had them the first time around, their respective power adapters, a black Sensor Bar, a pretty short HDMI cable, and... a white stylus, a short one at that and completely unbranded. Huh.

On the outside, the console's glossy finish was quite scratched up on the top, though the other sides looked fine. The GamePad was definitely in better conditions, albeit a little dirty, but not nearly as bad as a used Wii I bought some years ago. The stickers that hid the screws were all missing, so I can only think that the original owner had gotten inside the GamePad at some point, unless the stickers went off on their own which... I think happened to me too? More importantly, the left and right sticks could've CLICKED, I genuinely missed that. Overall, I wasn't too worried over the cosmetic conditions as the console would've gone behind my TV on my desk anyway. Alas, the vertical stands had to be a separate purchase which I did for that sake at a later point.

In practice, things were off to a rocky start - let's be clear from the get-go, I don't mean it in a bad sense, but there were some surprises throughout my first day with the console from the very moment that it was connected to power. If you've never had a Wii U, the front of the console has two LED indicators, one for power and the other for when a disc is inserted... so I was surprised to see the latter being a solid white when I connected the console to power. Of course, the first thing that I did was ejecting the disc and what came out was Mario Kart 8.

The real test, however, could've started only upon startup. Upon starting up the console for the first time, the first thing that came across was that the previous owner had already wiped the system and configured a generic user themselves. While it does save a bunch of time on first-time configuration, I went to format the system myself. Not only did I want to experience the out-of-box setup again after many years, but I also wanted to start completely fresh to lay off ground for Homebrew and any eventual tinkering... I thought that it would've been a long way before I could've done truly anything, until it turned out that the console already had a payload loader installed due to an error that kept popping up on startup from the beginning. The payload loader is an essential part in getting to the installation of Tiramisu, a custom firmware for the console, and just like with the Mario Kart 8 disc, it being already installed wasn't mentioned in the listing. While I couldn't get into the Wii U modding experience from scratch, it did save me a bunch of time as I already had an SD card prepared for Tiramisu thanks to some research prior to this day - all it took in this case was to insert the SD card to the console, start it up, choose TIramisu and the Wii U Menu as default options for startup, launch the Mii Maker, and what do you know, I was already in the Homebrew Launcher! I didn't think that it would've worked, but it just did, so I could've already started getting into the dirty work. That'll be for later.

With a console now in an almost clean state with nothing but my Mii and Tiramisu in it, it was time to play games for a test drive. The disc drive of the console was functional, so the soonest thing I thought of was playing the "free" copy of Mario Kart 8 that came in the package. It required a bit of a hefty update, but after some time, things felt familiar with what I've already played in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Switch.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is one of the best-feeling and best-selling Mario Kart games, it's good for anyone who's new to the series and it's readily available on Switch. Mario Kart 8 almost feels like I'm at home, partly due to how I started playing 8 Deluxe in early 2018. Aside from the missing quality-of-life changes, none of the out-of-box DLC that Deluxe introduced, the Booster Course Pack tracks, and alas, no Dry Bones to play as, it does still make for a neat Wii U starter bundle. The only points here to mention are that a lot of stuff has to be unlocked gradually (just as in past Mario Kart games so I can't complain) and the unfortunate mistake that Battle Mode was in this time period, but other than that, Mario Kart 8 is the Mario Kart to play on the Wii U.

The Homebrew experience

Homebrew on Wii U is different from what I've been accustomed to from the Wii, yet some of it was familiar. Modding the console did not give you immediate access to the Homebrew Channel... or Homebrew Launcher as it should be on the Wii U side of things, as you have to load into the Mii Maker to access the Homebrew Launcher. It was weird, but on the other hand, I did see something like it before by modding a 2DS and having to use the Download Play application. I ended up getting an installable Homebrew Launcher anyway because I felt more comfortable that way. Other than that, Homebrew on the Wii U is barely any different from Wii, you simply go to the Homebrew Launcher to load your apps from your SD card to the console. Installing the Homebrew Channel on the virtual Wii ("vWii") was also rather straightforward thanks to a "compat_installer" provided by the Wii U Homebrew guide. Download the installer to your SD card, load it in the Homebrew Launcher, and there's the Homebrew Channel in the Wii Menu ready to be used. Getting it up and running was just like how it was on original hardware, and since I already had a hard disk drive with a bunch of games and an SD card with my own USB loader settings, it was relatively painless to get things up in vWii too, from Virtual Console, to Wii games, to even GameCube games. Of course, I was too lazy to get all my save data from my old Wii to the Wii U one by one, so I had to resort to an emulated NAND, something that was entirely new to me. I had to run into some hiccups and sometimes some games threw save data errors even when things were fine, but overall, it has been working to my favour. The only thing that I'm missing now is GameCube ports, but that's the least of issues at this minute.

Exploration

The matter then is about Wii U games. I wanted to go beyond Mario Kart 8 and the games I could've loaded from vWii, I wanted more for the Wii U in particular. I can't say where exactly to get said games, but to install them, there are Homebrew apps such as NUSspli and WUP Installer GX2. You can choose whether to install them on NAND (built-in storage) or a USB drive, and this is where a spare 32GB flash drive finally comes in handy. Effectively, I've got 32GB + 32GB for my console, plenty for a sufficient amount of games but there is still room for improvement down the line. There were games that I wanted to play for a long time, thus being but not limited to Splatoon after countless of hours with the Switch games, The Wind Waker HD, Twilight Princess HD, Paper Mario Color Splash, Nintendo Land for the first time in many years, and potentially other smaller games here and there. I've downloaded some Virtual Console games between NES, SNES, N64, GBA, and even DS for the fun of it. I won't be talking about the games themselves here, but to make a summary:

Grinding through Octo Valley in Splatoon was something I didn't see myself doing back in 2015-2016 as I only played the Testfire then, yet it was fun

Twilight Princess HD so far grew on me more than I thought it would've, less so The Wind Waker but I only had just started there

I haven't played all of Nintendo Land yet, but the memories coming from Donkey Kong's Crash Course and Pikmin Adventure are fresh in mind and still very fun

Paper Mario Color Splash is an oddball as someone who played Paper Mario 64, The Thousand-Year Door, and Super Paper Mario for a long time, it's pretty good as an HD game but the cards mechanic for combat is strange

Wii Sports Club is just the original Wii Sports but in HD and with Wii MotionPlus support, which is still enough to make me want to play it alongside Wii Sports Resort

Except for Mario Kart 8, I couldn't get myself to try Wii U games that were then ported to Switch because first and foremost, I already have them on Switch, and secondly, they'd take up storage that could've been taken up by games I did not play before, hence Splatoon and Twilight Princess just to name two. I'm pretty sure that those games could've worked well with the Wii U GamePad, but their respective Switch versions are hands-down better in terms of playable content available... looking at you, New Super Mario Bros. U. ...oh, third, if I were to get Breath of the Wild any time in the future, I'd rather it be on Switch, but let me get through Twilight Princess first.

All aroUnd...