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Wii Update 4.2 Tries (and Fails) To Block Homebrew
marcansoft writes "On September 28, Nintendo released a Wii update, titled 4.2. This update was targeted squarely at homebrew, performing sweeping changes throughout the system. It hardly achieved that goal, though, because just two days later a new version of the HackMii installer was released that brings full homebrew capabilities back to all Wii consoles, including unmodified consoles running 4.2. However, as part of their attempt to annoy homebrew users, Nintendo updated the lowest level updateable component of the Wii software stack: boot2 (part of the system bootloader chain). Homebrew users have been using BootMii to patch boot2 in order to gain low level system access and recovery functions (running Linux natively, fixing bricks, etc). The update hasn't hindered this, as users can simply reinstall BootMii after updating (it is compatible with the update). But there's a much bigger problem: Nintendo's boot2 update code is buggy."
Read on for more details.
"Boot2 had never been updated in retail consoles until now. During BootMii's development, its authors noticed that Nintendo's code had critical bugs and could sometimes permanently brick a console by writing incorrect or unchecked data to flash memory, so they decided to write their own, much safer flashing code. Now, Nintendo has pushed a boot2 update to all Wii users, and the results are what was expected: users are reporting bricks after installing 4.2 on unmodified consoles. Nintendo is currently attempting to censor posts and remove references to homebrew. It is worth noting that the new boot2 does not attempt to block anything or offer any additional protection or functionality. Its sole purpose is to simply replace current versions which may or may not have been modified with BootMii. Another interesting tidbit is that Nintendo is not believed to have any method to repair this kind of brick at a factory, short of replacing the entire motherboard."
You have buy a machine, not a license. If you want to open it, and mod it on any way you want. Is just a tiny mountain of chips and transistors. You could break it in pieces and use it to fix your refrigerator. Any law that let the creator of the machine perpetuate this locking trough anti-user changes sould get a fine, and any law that help then do that, sould be reverted, and the legislators of these laws be kicked in the ass with a boot.
-Woof woof woof!
DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM DRM.
This is to updates as DRM is to using stuff. It's all a big commercialistic manipulation attempt. People don't like to be manipulated. Thus it fails miserably. There's also that warm fuzzy feeling when the hacked version solves bugs too:D Bonus "learn your lesson" points if they have to replace the bricked consoles (which, under most consumer law, they should).
Excuse for why is your room always messy?
It costs them a lot of money to try and stop modding etc, when they will fail every time.
Waste of time, money and reputation.
Never happened. True story.
Hello,
Some of you have reported problems with your Wii console after updating to the Wii System Menu 4.2. The symptoms most people are describing usually occur when the Wii has been modified. However, some of you also mention your system has never been modified.
We'd like to help get your system working properly again. If you're experiencing problems with your Wii console after downloading Wii System Menu 4.2, and you believe your system has not been modified, please give us a call. If we find that you have a normal system and the update caused your system to not work, we'll repair it at no charge.
Please call our Customer Service Department at your earliest convenience, 1-800-255-3700. We are open 6 AM to 7 PM, Pacific Time, 7 days a week.
Thank you,
NOA_Tech_Jane
Please stop making me cry.
Sincerely,
Your loyal non-modding customer.
P.S. Please spend all this time and effort addressing the cheating hackers plaguing the Mario Kart Network instead.
What's the best course of action here?
I don't have BootMii installed at present.
I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy. I have the Homebrew Channel installed and it's great fun to play a few things on, plus occasionally turn the Wii into a media player.
IIRC it can be used to play out-of-region games. Which is a GOOD thing.
What exactly do they have to gain here?
Stop buying Nintendo goods and services until they fix the issue. Tell them that, on the forums.
Hit them in the wallet.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
installing 4.2 worked fine on my (unmodified) Wii.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Is this update optional or once I connect ii to the net and it auto searches for updates, it won't let me carry on until it's updated?
No checksums before flashing? Really?
Even at launch I was hearing about bricking problems. Glad to see things are improving after taking in all that cash.
The Refrigeration Industrial Artists' Association has decided that you will need to pay an "iFrigement use fee" if you put any food item with an energy content of more than 1000 kCal in your fridge. Your fridge comes with a Healthy Home Edition license - I'm afraid you need to upgrade your kCal licenses for your level of consumption.
That's easy, I haven't bought any for about six months anyway.
I meant, is there a way to avoid a bricking of the nintendo products I already own?
Just DONT accept the 4.2 update when the Wii asks if you would like to upgrade. Simple as that. Unlike the XBox 360 / PS3 they have no way to "force" you to take the update.
If you don't like it, then don't download and install their free firmware updates.
You can get all huffy and jump up and down on your soap box all you want. But the reality is, you bought some hardware and it needs some software to operate correctly. You can choose to play games offline only, or you can choose to plug it into the internet and collect your free updates that maintain support with Nintendo's network while at the same time attempts to prevent you from using homebrew.
If you want to do homebrew games, buy something open, like a PC. Microsoft will even give you a free C++ compiler capable of doing full DirectX programming. And those Linux guys do the same thing, but the OS is free, compiler and debugger are not crippled and it's OpenGL or SDL instead for doing homebrew.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Wii forces you to update as well through some (first party) games. Mario Kart or Wii Fit for instance won't run if you don't install the updates included on their discs. So if you don't stay up to date, you will lock yourself out of an increasing number of games for the platform.
that no matter how hard they try to 'break' someones ability to do something, those someones will quickly circumvent that 'break' in the system, if they wish to. Makes me flash back to the days of the T-shirts with the DeCSS code written right upon it, and all the controversy about them. Also the tshirts that printed with the PGP (probably also gpg)code that were considered munitions by the US government. Makes me chuckle, makes me sad. It's a mad world, to quote Tears for Fears (though I think I adore Jules version more). There are plenty of other examples, from recording a videotape to another, using analog methods (which to me seems one of the easiest and first methods to break most digital methods of 'breakage', though the quality does suffer, in many peoples opinions.)
I really don't forsee a day when people will quite hacking the 'breaks' in systems. Isn't that what they are there for in the first place? Why not spend all those research dollars into the improvement of the platform itself? Or finding new exciting artists? Etc...
Why doesn't nintendo want arbitrary code to run on its console? Its not like it has an internet connection or anything....
Oh wait it does... Well, its not like that internet connection could be abused through running arbitrary code....
Oh no, absolutely not, none of these guys would EVER do that.
Listen... if you want to run 'homebrew', just get a modded wiimote and use it with your computer, heck redirect the output to your tv if you want.
http://www.wiimotemods.com/
I think they LIKE it when you mod the wiimote.
We (Parallel Realities) have written a bunch of games and I was recently looking into porting these onto the DS and Wii via Homebrew, because I think people would enjoy playing them (on the move in the DS's case), so I'm all for Homebrew.
What I am against though is modding your games machine just so you can download the games off the web without having to pay for them, which I think is what Nintendo is actually annoyed about.
However, getting around region locking does mean that one can play games only released in Japan (or the US if you live in Europe). In this instance I could understand a gamer's frustration and why they might download it off the web (because they can't a company willing to ship overseas).
Summation 2
Too bad the hardware team at Microsoft did such a good job with the 360 security. At least the ability to keep homebrew off it anyways, since they left enough holes for pirated discs. Yeah, there was a pretty good hole discovered recently, but unfortunately it has been blocked quite tightly on new boxes and through an update.
Sucks that pirates are still able to do what they do, when people who just want decent media player software on that thing can't get it.
depends on the game I guess, I haven't yet run any game that absolutely requires a system update past 3.2 (what I have)
all games have an update partition though that contains the latest version of the system update at the time the game was pressed
if you acquire these games from the internets, you can use a tool to delete that partition and then either burn it or run the usb loader
there is also an app called starfall that can block that update from running
It is highly likely that they can recover the box in the repair depot. You can flash chips without removing them from the board if the board designer was thinking intelligently. In my company's HW dev labs they re-flash bricked system boards all the time; they can also do so in the factory. If we couldn't fix RMA'd sysplanars, field flashing bugs would be a complete and total disaster.
SirWired
Why even bother to stop people modding their OWN consoles? Which THEY bought? If I bought a computer I can mod it as much as I want. A guitar? The same. But why does Nintendo stop at nothing to stop me changing a console? Seems a bit pointless to me. I think their time and money could be better served by making more games!
Face it, Shigsy. You're never gonna stop those modders. So let's see what else you've got up your massive sleeves.
I'll fess up. I've got a SD card in my Wii with old NES games, and I run Homebrew Channel and FCE Ultra on my Wii.
Mind you, I own most of the games (SMB games, Mega Man games, TMNT2, etc) on NES cartridges. I do have an old NES, but I just can't be arsed to drag the thing out, wire it up to my TV and spend 10 minutes wiggling cartridges until they work. And I couldn't be arsed to buy games I already own on Virtual Console so I can play them again. Even though they're only $5/game, it's a principle thing.
But not everyone has a closet full of old video game equipment to use as lame justification. And Nintendo is probably losing a good bit of money because of kids telling their friends how to exploit the Wii and install FCE Ultra so that they don't have to buy the Virtual Console games. So, I kinda understand the whole anti-homebrew thing from that direction...
They force you if you want to use the virtual console. Buying VC games only works if you have the latest release.
Regional tastes have nothing to do with it.
American sugar producers lobbied and got a protectionist tariff on sugar that increased the cost significantly which made it cheaper for all the soft drink companies to switch to corn syrup. Elsewhere in the world sugar is cheap enough that it can be used with out driving up the cost of the product prohibitively.
My sister went to Korea some years ago and the coke there also was made with sugar. It's pretty much only in the US that corn syrup is used. Heck, in South America they use sugarcane as feed stock for the ethanol plants to produce fuel for cars.
I just don't understand why a company would expend those kinds of resources to do something that provides nobody with a positive benefit. Nintendo really needs to reallocate some of the resources they're spending trying to stop people from modding their system into investing in good games. Maybe then then my Wii would serve a purpose other than dust collection.
How about some anti-cheat measures? Playing online Mario Kart is still fun, but it is less fun when there's some griefer with infinite red shells.
I'm not aware of it even being used for piracy.
There are at least 2 private torrent sites dedicated to Nintendo roms and disk images,
I should know, I am a member of both. The scene does not discriminate, we pirate for
EVERY console and device.
I'm more worried about when they'll force me to upgrade by way of "this game requires the latest system menu update" blah blah. Will my launch date Aus/NZ Wii with Boot2v2 and the forced update mean that I will be bricked? Probably. Quite simple, this is bad. I'm just hoping that Team Twiizers or some other respectable homebrew developer(s) can release something that will sufficiently upgrade one's Boot2 to Boot2v4 so that when it comes to a forced upgrade by way of game DVD it doesn't use Nintendo's shitty upgrade code that (as said in TFA, Summary, etc) would likely brick my Wii.
:| Had nothing else to do, why not :|
I'm glad that Marcan got this on slashdot. I was reading all about this for the last 6 hours
signature is pants
Just buy the game, put it somewhere out of the way and download the ripped version. Or you could even rip it yourself. Little extra effort, but you get to do what you want with something you bought.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
The purpose of the "DRM" stuff has nothing to do with homebrew and possibly nothing to do with copy protection. It's to make sure companies have to pay Nintendo to get their games on the machine. If you can run whatever you want, then nothing is stopping you from running commercial software that isn't giving it's cut to Nintendo. They're not trying to stop users, they're making sure they get paid for commercial titles.
Why are so many companies so upset over the concept of modding their equipment? The worst that will happen is that more software will be created to use it meaning more reason to buy it meaning more sales for Nintendo (Or Sony, Microsoft, XXX...). I have never completely grasped the need companies have to close off their hardware to people who just want to write software for it... (Are you listening Apple?).
Unlike the XBox 360 / PS3 they have no way to "force" you to take the update.
Could you clarify that statement? I own a PS3 and have never been forced to update. I've gotten nag notifications that updates are available, but in order to actually complete an update I have to use System Update.
I know when v3.0 was released I held out for a while because of all the news stories about losing "Other OS" support. I waited, did some research, and updated when I decided that it was safe and beneficial.
Wrong...
That is what " FIx 002" option is.
Most USB loaders allow to block this, tricking the game to think that X version installed on your NAND Flash is what they are looking for....
I bet these games are still playable in a pirated form though...
I'm getting sick of this cat and mouse game. Can't they just realize that piracy will always be around, move on and try to compel people into buying games instead of pissing them off ?
Wii forces you to update as well through some (first party) games. Mario Kart or Wii Fit for instance won't run if you don't install the updates included on their discs. So if you don't stay up to date, you will lock yourself out of an increasing number of games for the platform.
Just don't buy a Wii. Or any other machine that forces anti-customer upgrades.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Is GH5 a first party game? I was recently forced to update to run that game...
I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo had requirements to include the update on some games to be able to release them.
You are totally clueless.
Operating profit per console of $6, for a console that costs $250 is 2.4%. Operating profit is calculated before interest costs and taxes. Depending on Japanese taxes this might be (let's be very generous) a contribution of 2%. If you can put money in the bank and receive 0.5%, then a risky gamble of 2% return, or less than that when dividends are taxed, is idiotic. Hence, following those rules Nintendo would not have been able to fund production in the first place because nobody would have given them money. And all of that assumes Nintendo has zero debt incurred to fund production. In fact, it also ignores that projects that succeed must cover the cost of all projects that fail.
Operating profit is also a defined accounting term, which uses current costs by definition. Operating profit does not take into account costs before the relevant period. Hence, all those designers, marketers and engineers whose jobs it was to design a winning console which eventually ended up in the shape of the Wii? Yeah, previously incurred costs are by definition not included in an operating profit calculation. So thanks for linking to the site, it just shows how clueless you are.
"Shill"? I am not employed, I'm a student. Relevant Slashdot editors or someone with that access can confirm that from the IP. Unless I am a shill who has bribed people to have access to university computer labs, genius.
Please do the world a service and shoot yourself through the head.
Although I applaud the BootMii people and their work, sadly I cannot try it out on my Wii.My wife would kill me.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
My Google skills have obviously been waning. I did some searching for a way to play Wii games without the discs and never came up with anything. Is Hack Mii the best way to do this? I honestly don't care about homebrew, but my kids destroy optical discs. Heck, last week, my son tried to put Lego Batman in the drive while Wii Fitness Resort was in and now the optical drive itself is dead (go AmEx extended warranty!). Will Hack Mii allow me to take titles I bought (I own over 20) and drop at least a few commonly used ones to a USB drive, preferably flash?
I looked around Hack Mii, and there's a certain vocabulary that's already assumed. I think I'm most interested in WiiTools / Wiiso, but WiiUpdateManager seems relevant too. Can anybody tell me if there's a simple app I can run (after installing Hack Mii) to image off a disc to a USB stick or an SD card?
I can understand why Nintendo doesn't want Homebrew to be installed, but to target it specifically when releasing an update that should be fixing bugs instead of introducing ones? Anyway, i'm still running 3.2 with homebrew and don't see any reason why i should update my Wii. All the games i bought (yes, that's not a typo) are running fine and i can also play nice homebrew games. I'm not a fan of "if it aint broken, don't try to fix it" but this time i agree with it though.
If Nintendo aren't idiots, they'll ditch the idea of putting boot2v4 on discs. They can still throw the rest of the 4.2 update on them with no ill consequences to unmodified consoles.
The only real advantages to region locking are for the producer of the product. They can put up different price points for different markets and prevent consumers from tapping into a different market (region).
Depends on how you look at it. If the manufacturer can't price discriminate between different market segments, they will price the product beyond the reach of a lot of people who might want it. In that case, region locking can actually help the (poorer) consumer, since they will be able to purchase a product that otherwise would have been too expensive for them. Meanwhile the manufacturer avoids the risk of arbitrage.
At least, that is how it's supposed to work in theory. In reality region locking is used for a lot more than price discrimination, and it's just pointless and annoying when the product isn't even sold in multiple regions.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
And your a fuckwad AC who lacks the convictions to put a name to your trolling.
Nintendo has stated that they do not & will not sell the Wii at a loss. End of discussion.
Kindly STFU & go back under your bridge.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Kids and CD/DVDs do not mix very well! Sure you can rant and scream at them, not to mess the discs up but they will sooner or later.
How old are these kids? I have younger cousins who visit my house every other weekend, and I just didn't let them touch game discs until they were old enough to understand "you break it, and I'll put away the Wii". That works even on a new console that hasn't yet been cracked for homebrew and piracy.
There is a program called preloader, and if you install it on your wii you can backup your current config, and if your wii ever bricks after an update you can restore your old config with minimal hassle.
Good thing I guess, since I have HBC installed. Before I tried the update I updated HBC and DVDx; since then I have installed BootMii IOS version but HBC doesn't seem to want to load it. (the new HBC is faster, though, that's nice.)
Anyone know why IOS BootMii might not show up on HBC?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I had a modded Wii and I was prolifically downloading Wii games for free from all kinds of pirate sites at Nintendo's expense. It all changed as soon as this patch came out, it suddenly turned me from being a dirty pirate to a legitimate customer! My pockets which had previously been devoid of anything other than pocket lint are now somehow filled with cash that just materialized out of thin air. I use that money to buy games legitimately, giving the company the profits it deserves. Their share prices have quadrupled in the past 3 hours. The company is worth more than Microsoft now. Hot Japanese anime girls are waiting to blow all of the company executives who came up with this wonderful anti-piracy patch that fixed everything.
This is what they've been waiting to hear... let's lie a little bit so they can feel good about wasting millions of dollars on this patch.
How to get around Disc Channel's update requirement
short of replacing the motherboard...
can they tell a modded Wii from an unmodded wii once it has bricked?
You're not required to install it, but Wii Shop (which is online) won't work unless you
...use WiiSCU to update only Wii Shop Channel and Wii Shop Channel's IOS files, not the Wii Menu.
I suspect that region locking is the big fish, but you could put several emulators on a hacked wii. This could cut down on the money they make from people buying classic games from the Wii store.
I have the Homebrew Channel installed and it's great fun to play a few things on, plus occasionally turn the Wii into a media player.
But how is a Wii console better than a Mac mini or a slim PC running Windows for these tasks?
Silly question I've just never given this any thought.
When the Wii is 'off' and sitting there - occasionally I see it turn blue and so it seems to be semi-on. Is this due to download pushes for updates from Nintendo?
Warranty or not, if Nintendo's update bricks your Wii, ask them to repair it at their expense. Tell them exactly why you need the repair. They did break it, after all. If they refuse to fix what they've broken, feel free to bump their A+ BBB rating down a notch or two. BBB has a category for repairs; file a complaint there. That or take class action against them.
Not just "may differ from the PAL version", but "may not work with and may even damage your TV".
Then PAL games should run in 60 Hz if they detect an NTSC console. A lot of video games can already run in a 60 Hz variant of PAL. A few games, such as the Metroid Prime games for GameCube, can only run in PAL60. The only noticeable differences are the color subcarrier frequency and phase, and that's only for composite and S-Video, not interlaced component, progressive component, VGA, DVI, or HDMI. As far as I know, if you try displaying a PAL60 signal on an NTSC TV, you'll get a perfectly formed black-and-white signal. So why can't a game designed for PAL60 run in NTSC, other than artificial market segmentation?
Disconnect it from the web and enjoy the product at its prime?
If this patch bricks both hacked and stock Wii's, you're entering a lottery with the update no matter what you do.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I didn't understand from TFA - when does the bricking occur? I have no homebrew (and no interest in it). I installed 4.2 last night, and the console worked fine at the time. I haven't turned it back on since playing immediately after the 4.2 update (although I assume the update caused a reboot). When does this bricking occur? Only immediately after the update? Or is there a small chance of it occurring every time I turn the Wii on from now until they fix it?
Simply update your copy of the homebrew channel. The latest version will not be removed by 4.2. Nintendo simply looks for a channel with the homebrew channel's ID to decide what to remove. The latest version has a different ID.
Because I just use the homebrew channel for quake and media playing.
That counts as "doing something to your Wii".
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Only if they rip off the flash chips to read them, but that would be lots of work. But maybe they will rip them off to recover your VC/WiiWare games. And notice the HBC at the same time.
That is, unless you brickblock the game first.
Waking up to the idea that all current game consoles suck and you should never, ever spend any money on them at all. Then the next step is convincing the occasional-gamer girlfriend that we really don't need this stuff and can have just as much fun with the ION-based Linux box that we currently use for MythTV, even though the games are different. It's not an easy process, but it does pay off, and you get to score some smugness too.
Spending money on stuff from honest merchants is ok. Giving money to people who deal with you in bad faith, is not. Once you know you're getting screwed by sociopaths, it's just not any fun at all, no matter how cute the Wii characters look. And if a Wii isn't fun, then what's the point?
They just reauthorize those games online on your new console (via the serial numbers). When the system is totally bricked you lose your saves. They only notice homebrew or warez when they get "bricked" consoles that display an error message (which indicates System Menu operation), which they can usually fix by reinstalling stuff with their rescue mode DVDs and a small "flag" tool inserted into a memory card slot to put the menu into recovery mode.
Has anybody had to send a Wii back to NoA and then been told "You've got to pay for us to repair this?"
I'm suspecting that if you called them and said "I started the update for the latest firmware, and now the Wii won't turn on, your update broke our Wii!" That Nintendo would likely do the right thing and replace/repair your Wii.
Now, if they don't, I think someone should go to the media and tear them a new one in the court of public opinion. Just remember how quickly Microsoft changed their policy when the nightly news started reporting "Xbox 360's are breaking all the time and MS isn't fixing them!!!"
With that all said, I'm glad I haven't updated my Wii and now I won't!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Yeah but those are updates on the disc. At least those older ones are still somewhat safe by comparison.
If you want to do homebrew games, buy something open, like a PC.
I recommend this option too. But it has one drawback: The PC you already own is likely to have Voodoo3-class integrated graphics and more importantly isn't within a cable's reach of your TV. Buying a Wii, an SD card, and a copy of LEGO Indiana Jones ($259) is cheaper than spending $429[1] on a new slim PC with a gaming video card and an SDTV adapter, and I gather that more people already own a Wii than already own a spare slim gaming PC.
[1] Dell Inspiron 537s with Pentium E5200 CPU, ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics, WLAN card, and Windows Home Premium, for U.S. market.
They're no better than Crapple. After the OS 3.1 update release removed tethering (even from officially unlocked phones) the issue has been getting hot on Apple's discussion boards. The thread keeps shrinking as people continue to discuss the issue. Apple is no better than Nintendo when it comes to not wanting to deal with user issues, but choose to instead censor them and ignore them.
Maybe Apple and Nintendo should merge. It's a marriage made in Hell! :)
One big problem I see is Nintendo is pushing out buggy software and then demanding $85 to fix it on out-of--warranty devices. Let me repeat: they are pushing defective software out, in effect vandalizing customers' product, and then requiring those customers pay $85 to fix their f$#&-up. How the hell is that not extortion?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
(1) Delete all homebrew and uninstall Bootmii
(2) Update
(3) If Bricked, e-mail Nintendo
(4) Nintendo will ship you a box to mail your bricked Wii back to them
(5) When Nintendo finds no homebrew, they will send you a new Wii for free
(6) Reinstall all homebrew, Bootmii on brand new Wii
(7) ???
(8) PROFIT
Of course, if you Wii is already bricked with homebrew on it, you're out of luck. But then again, why in the world would you update your Wii with homebrew on it without checking to see what the new update does first?
I just can't be arsed to drag the [NES, Super NES, or N64] out, wire it up to my TV and spend 10 minutes wiggling cartridges until they work.
You can spend an order of magnitude less time wiggling if you spend one minute with a cotton swab and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. With a properly cleaned cartridge, it shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to start, which is about how long it takes to line up the Sensor Bar, navigate through the Wii Menu, and start the VC channel that you bought.
If you load the game via GeckoOS, the game won't force you to uptade.
The Atari 2600 crashed because anyone and his brother could create shitty games, which ended up flooding the market and leaving stores with tons of unsold inventory.
Nintendo's licensing policy that limited publishers to 5 games per year was a wonderful thing, and the lock-out chip was a necessary evil to make that happen. Did crap still come out? Yes, but much less of it.
Sure, Nintendo's done some dirty stuff (the Game Genie litigation was definitely uncool), but the lockout chip is not something I can hold against them given the era and circumstances.
My stupid web site
coke from Turkey ... tastes better - I think it just has less sugar.
It may be that coke from Turkey has been in the can longer since it had to be shipped from a long distance. More time in the can means less whole sugar molecules. Not better by design, just older.
Except that if you have a modded Wii there are ways around this.
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For some reason I updated my wii today only to find my beloved homebrew was missing. Thanks to Slashdot, I was able to find everything I needed to fix the issue easily.
you will lock yourself out of an increasing number of games for the platform
But don't worry, you can download a hacked version of those new games from the internet!
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
My Wii isn't on the internet and has never wanted to update. All the games have worked from the shop without wanting to update anything, including Wii Fit and Mario Kart.
I'm a fruit pirate. I bought a watermelon once, and spat the seeds in the back yard. They grew into another watermelon,
off course homebrew allows u to bypass the update.
Which is perfectly legit since ur scared nintendo will brick ur wii.
The funny thing about this is that while homebrew-hackers kno not to update( and FYI IF nintendo FORCED a update without telling the user, and say the power cut off during this forced update and bricked the WII that WOULD be illegal) normal people are going to update and have a small, but scary chance of bricking there wii.
It's not just that either - I go on holiday to various places around the planet. Sometimes I go into a music or games shop whilst I'm there and buy one or two things to take home.
Why should I not be able to play them when I get home?
I have lived in Japan, US and now reside in Europe. The idea that I should be required to have separate consoles (or DVD players) to play games for the different periods is utterly ridiculous.
I lost my sig.
That's not entirely true. Simply install GeckOs onto the Wii, insert the disc with the needed update files, and GeckOS will install just the needed IOS files, nothing more. You can then run the game just as if you'd fully updated your system.
I'm still on 3.2 and every single game works, even the ones 'requiring' a system update.
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
I'm not downloading games from the internet, and all the games I own have been bought.
I've installed homebrew for enjoying all free stuffs around.
Unfortunately, I've been forced to install usb loader and a hard drive in order to be able to run latest games without installing the IOS updates.
Just put the new disk in the Wii and selected "install". Then I run the game from the drive and ........... it works....so far....
I'm still running 1.2E
ever heard of starfall? And backup loaders usually tend to skip updates.