Hello there. Why do you start like that? Why not?
Why not? If you're watching this, you're probably coming from the five mods video where we broadly
cover a lot of mods you can do to your Nintendo consoles, but we don't really go in depth as
to why or how to do it. And this video won't necessarily give you everything, but I'm going to point you to
their guides and walk you through some of the things that we did so that it's a little
easier for you. So we're going to start with the MIG switch and the MIG switch dumper.
Pretty nifty. Back up your games to this thing.
This is probably the easiest thing that we did the whole time, minus one little thing
that I will tell you about after. So first things first, you need to update both your MIG switch and your MIG switch
dumper. Very easy. You download the update from the website.
You copy over that update file to the SD card you're using, as well as the MIG switch
dumper. And there should be one in the systems folder already, so you'll have to replace it, which
will be the update. You plug this in and it's basically updated, ready to go.
This one, we had a little more trouble actually. I was a little bit worried.
Part of the trouble we had is when you update it, the blue light should flash and then go
solid to show that it is worked. No matter what I did, I was always getting a red constant flashing, which means that
the update has failed. The trick we found is just like smashing it in there.
These things are kind of cheaply made and the pins make contact before you probably want
to. So as soon as the cart was anywhere close, it's making contact, but not good contact,
wasn't working. So our tip, shove it in there.
Just once you've done that, you copy over the folder you dragged from the game cartridge.
Easy peasy. Right now, it's pretty hard to find games formatted for this.
You need every certification file and bin file from the cartridge, which is unique to
each cartridge. So when you download ROMs on the internet, it's usually just the ROM itself.
And so you can't currently really download ROMs unless you're lucky or you find some
kind of repository that will probably exist more commonly as this kind of cart becomes
more common. But as of now, your best bet is boring your friend's cartridges and copying those.
Next up is the Wii U, which is still quite easy, although it's a little more involved
than the Switch one. Basically what I recommend, go over to wiiu.hacks.guide, like we said in the video, and it's a very
clear guide, but I'm going to take you step by step, just like I did when I modded the
Wii for the video. It's a very simple mod. You're going to need an SD card, and eventually you'll probably want an external USB drive.
I've had hit or miss success depending on the external USB drive.
The ones I found that work better are actually ones that have two USBAs on the end.
Basically to start, all you need is the SD card. Currently the OS that is recommended to install is Aroma, but I'll quickly show at the end
how you can install Tiramisu as well, just for compatibility with certain things.
So basically go to the Aroma site, you go to the download sections.
You select all the payloads you want. We selected almost everything.
Then you'll put your SD card into your computer. You're going to copy over the Wii folder that was created from that download.
First you should pop in your SD card to your computer.
You're going to need to format it Fat32, not XFAT, and that means that if it's over 32
or 64 gigabytes, you're going to need a secondary application to format correctly.
Windows formatter won't work, so I use Rufus. These are the settings that I use.
Format it. Don't call it Wii U. Apparently that can give you issues if you call the SD card Wii U, and then you just
drag over the folder that was created onto the SD card, take it out, and then you pop
it into your Wii U. So once you put your SD card on your Wii U, you're going to go to the internet browser
on your Wii U, and you're going to go to the website wieuexploit.xyz.
Basically in the modern era, most hacks are coming through the browser, so that's why
they don't like them anymore. At that point, you run exploit, and then you hold the B button to see a screen that says
choose your payload. For me, it worked right away.
If nothing happens, reset your browser save data, try again, but it should work.
If you don't get to the environment loader, that means you didn't hold B long enough.
Dumbass. So from there, you're going to nominate to the NAND dumper using the gamepad and A to
launch it. You're going to back up all this unique information from your Wii U in case something tragic happens
and you need to reset it. You're going to need all these files in order to do that.
You're going to dump it, pressing A to start. When the process is completed, you turn off your Wii, take your SD card, and then you
plug it into your computer and back those files up. I put them in Google Drive just because I've put sensitive stuff like that on a physical
drive that wasn't backed up, and then I lose it, and then you cannot recover your console.
That way you know you should be covered. At that point, you can delete the files from the SD cards just to keep it cleaner on your
thing, and then you keep going. You go back to that website, and then you hit the exploit, but this time, you're going
to hold X, which should go to the environment loader menu.
You're going to hit A to launch into the aroma environment.
When you're in the Wii U menu, you're going to look for the new icon, the payload loader
installer, and you launch it. Press A to check if you can install a payloader, it's going to do a little check, and you should
be good. And then you hit A to install, update. After installing, press A to shut down.
At that point, you are basically done. The problem would be you'd have to redo this exploit every time you want to use backups
on your console. So instead, we're going to keep going, and we're going to get to load into this home
room environment automatically. So at this point, you go into your Wii U menu, and you load into the health and safety information
app, which is actually hacked app, and you should have the option to select the Wii
U as your default boot option. You hit the A to launch the aroma environment.
You hit A to launch the Wii U menu, and once you're in the Wii U menu, you launch the
payload installer.
Press A to check, select boot options. You'll be asked if you want to switch to the boot title.
Press A to select switch to payloader. When the process has finished, press A to shut down the console.
And then now, every time you boot the console, you will load the payload loader.
Why is this so weird to say load twice?
Anyways, now you're going to want aroma to start automatically every time.
It's not a huge deal. When I was messing around with the video, I actually didn't do this so that I knew that
I was getting into a homebrew environment every time. When you turn it on, it's now going to go to that blue screen.
You select X when you're hovering over aroma, and it should change the color.
And then when you hit A, it's basically going to tell it, by default, I want to go to aroma.
When you are going through this process, just hold the start button while the console is
booting or loading the health and safety information app. Although once I was auto-booting, I found that the health and safety button wasn't working
right. At this point, your Wii U is hacked. I downloaded the homebrew app store, because I find it easier on a Wii U to actually get
the apps that I need, including a bunch of plugins that are made specifically for aroma.
I did that by getting the file from the HB app store website, copying that over to my
SD, running it on the Wii U, and then you get access to a bunch of stuff from your Wii
U, and you can download it there. The big important ones is the WAP installer GX2.
What that allows you is when you download games, that you know, this is the part that's
too spicy for YouTube. Not that we condone piracy, but when you download games from the service that I'll talk about
in a second, they don't come in a way that they will install on your Wii U.
You need the WAP installer, and basically, it's going to be very easy.
There's a lot of ways you can get your Wii U games. Personally, what I have used to legally back up what I own, Wii U USB Helper, and so that's
an app that'll basically allow you to get these games and then copy them over to your
SD, or you can even set up an FTP server so that you can use your network to copy games
over to your Wii U. One of the shortcomings currently is when you want to install games, you're going to
want to have it on your SD card and then install it from there, and when it's being installed,
you can put it on the USB hard drive that you have for your Wii U.
It's super easy. Just plug it in, it'll ask you to format it. But one of the first things that will come up when you are installing Wii U USB Helper
is it's going to ask you for your title key, and that's the most important thing because
the app is basically useless, so that if you happen to put titlekeys.ovh into that window,
you might notice that all of a sudden you have access to hundreds of Wii U titles as
well as thousands of homebrew as well as hacked kind of Wii and GameCube games that will run
super easily. From there, you can download, make sure you hit the download button once you've added
it to the queue, copy to SD card, and it'll ask you which SD card, and then that'll be
on your SD card that you can put in your Wii U, use the WAP installer, and then bam, you're
installing Wii U games that you don't know.
Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.
Pretty easy install. Getting other apps to work can be good, and the big trouble is installing games from
an SD card that you have to take in and out, but the nice thing is that you can have it up to a two terabyte SD in your Wii U.
I am sure there's better cleaner ways to do it, but this is how I've done it, and it's been fine.
It's actually super easy. If you go to we.hacks.guide, it'll give you a little primer on which hacks you need for
which version of the Wii you have. Presumably, you probably have one with the GameCube ports because that's the good one.
You download ModMe, follow the wizard there, and away you go. It's super easy.
I'm not going to get super into it. This video is probably already too long. Here's the part of this video that is the most interesting.
This modded GameCube. I'm not going to give you a complete guide on how to do everything, but I'll give you
a quick primer on how to get your console apart, as well as we're going to show you
us modding the console. So you will see.
Yeah, this is actually my GameCube because the one we have for work doesn't seem to work
very well. So I bought this one off the Japanese auction site because for a while I was doing console
refurbs and modding as a little side hustle. I realized that I don't have the time or energy for side hustles.
It was a silver GameCube and Game Boy player for, I think it was like $60 shipped, which
I was very happy about. And now we have the shell. It is so much nicer.
I'm not going to worry about this because this is as simple as disassembly.
Just check an iFixit guide for this, take it apart, and then do it in reverse with the
new shell. Easy peasy. For taking apart the GameCube, you're going to need this stupid GameBit 4.5, I think is
what it's called. I noticed that the iFixit drivers are just a little too short for this, where you might
rub a little bit around the circle. I'm not that worried about it. It's like sandpaper.
It's fine. I love working in a GameCube.
It's one of the easiest consoles to work with. I think the only one I like more is a Dreamcast, and you're freaking in there, man.
So the mods that we did, starting with the easiest, is this Type-C adapter.
Basically all you would need at this point is to unplug the power board that you had
in your previous system, unscrew it, take it out, and then drop this new one in.
This cheap one was a bit of a pain. So normally there's wires that kind of go from the connectors to the board.
This one has wire, but it's solid copper. There's also no insulation, which was kind of weird.
And so for our modded shroud for our fan, it actually didn't work.
So I had to snip that off, and I accidentally snipped off the screw mount.
So this one's a little free floater.
That's fine. I'll keep it out. The other thing that's super easy to do, and I would recommend for everyone, is this
Laser Bear Blue Retro adapter. So you can get little slide in ones.
They make it, it's kind of an open sourcing the Blue Retro project, if I'm right.
But someone actually made a full controller board replacement for the GameCube, which
is fucking awesome, because you can still use your regular ports, but you can also use
Bluetooth controller. So I actually did a short on it a long time ago, which made me buy one from my own.
So those are the two basically dropping components. Next we're getting a little more complex.
You can buy a pre-modded, what the fuck just happened here?
Oh god, what have I done? This is just the thing to check if the drive is closed.
So it's not super, I can fix that. Option one is you can buy a pre-modded fan, which is actually what we did.
It comes with the right connector. I can slide it in. We actually have this 3D printed shroud as well, which makes it all a little cleaner,
a little easier, although you can just kind of like jam it in there with some double-side
tape. It'll be fine. You can also get designs for 3D printed shrouds that'll actually have a mount for your
Pico boot. So this was a bit of a struggle for this video.
I really wanted to show off the flippy drive. I saw it in a Macho Nacho video, and he was kind enough to let us use some of his footage
when we're talking about it in the video. But unfortunately, when we reached out to the creators of it, they did not get back
to us. And so we didn't have it for this video, but it's super, super fucking cool.
It would be just as easy as the other things. Basically you would just add it on.
It has like a folding connector. You're going to slide it into the disc drive connector, which is under the disc drive,
and then you're done.
That's it. Whereas the Pico boot, you're going to have to fully disassemble, and you're going to
have to solder on the connectors. You're first going to have to flash the actual Pico.
It's still pretty easy, and it's very mature in terms of a mod.
It's interesting how most of the mods are now going around a Raspberry Pi Pico or the
RP2040 chip. Even the mod chip for the Switch uses the same chip, which I found very interesting.
I'm not going to go any further here, but you're going to see all this footage that we have of Justin and Tanner getting in here.
The HDMI mod is a very hard one.
It's a little easier on the GameCube than it is on the Wii, which is nice. You're going to be doing very small solders.
So make sure you have your glass of whiskey and just take a breath, take your time.
If you're going to do the same mod that we did, which is the GC Dual, this guide over
at Dan's Projects, I don't think it's our Dan, sadly, is what Justin was using.
It's fragile. Be careful. That's why they sell extra cables and parts in case you f**k it up and they give you very
clear discamers. If you break your console, that's on you. So be very careful.
If you're not super comfortable doing it, there's probably local modders around you
that might feel more comfortable doing it, and then you know, it's on them. I call myself, you know, intermediate in terms of soldering and modding and stuff, and it's
a little much for me. I think I could probably get away with doing it, but I would way rather have someone who
knows a little bit more than me do it. And so you're going to see footage of smarter, better people than me doing it right now.
And then in terms of the shell replacement, again, just follow an IFixit guide, tear down
and then do assemble it in reverse, but with the shell, Gamecube's not too bad.
The Wii is the worst f**king console to work on. I don't know why Nintendo thought it was so important.
I think when I did it for the first time, I counted 29 screws, which doesn't sound like
a lot, but they're different sizes. Some of them are different bits, and it's just so unnecessary how many screws are in
this stupid mother. But Gamecube, much better time. I think they were much less concerned with people, you know, dropping in parts.
It wasn't as much of a business at the time. Like PS2 was sort of the king, and PS2 modchips were kind of the specific thing to do so you
could play backup games. The last thing is for the N64, I'm not really going to cover it.
You get a mister. There's a million guides. You can buy pre-built as well.
It's friggin' awesome. Personally, I would wait a little bit.
There's clone board coming that we talked about briefly in the video.
It looks like it's going to be basically a drop-in replacement for everything, so you
are just going to save 125 bucks on your main board.
And even the RAM upgrades are going to be cheaper, so personally, I would wait on a mister for
a bit. PC emulation is the best, anyway. PC emulation is insane.
Look, I have 30 consoles plugged into TVs right now and so many more just on shelves.
I think I'm going to sell them all. I think that emulation is kind of the sickest thing ever.
I really want to do an LTT video about emulation. I think that it's mind-blowing how incredible it's become, like six-gen gaming.
So like PS2 and GameCube and Wii emulation is so good and it's so consistent.
There is definitely incompatibility issues, although it's rare and rare.
But you can run games at, like, the games will run smoother.
There's sometimes frame rate patches, so you can unlock frame rate.
Like you can place Super Mario Sunshine at 60 FPS in Dolphin.
Even when Nintendo f***ing remastered it, it was locked at 30.
Stupid people. There's even games that are compatible with a depth buffer being sent to Reshade, so you
can actually add ray tracing to certain GameCube games.
The results are kind of hit or miss, but it's a super fun experiment. I really enjoy Reshade.
It's about Pascal Gilcher's ray tracing plug-ins.
It's a Patreon-supported thing, and so you'll have to, you know, give five to seven dollars.
I'm not sure what it is right now, to get the latest version. But I think it's totally worth it.
The work is so cool. And it works on older PC games, too. I played through all of fear using that plug-in.
So f***ing cool. Having, like, the reflections be ray traced and the shadows look much more modern.
I'm a little bit off topic. Emulation's amazing. I use Project 64 for N64, Dolphin for Wii and GameCube, and Dolphin might be the easiest
emulator I've ever gotten to set up. It used to be so hard. You'd have to go find BIOS.
You'd have to, like, run a certain thing to get it working. Dolphin, you just download it?
You just drag your ROMs in? Buddy, done.
Done. And that's basically it. I know that this wasn't fully comprehensive of everything, but we wanted to go and cover
more in-depth of things that we gloss over in the video. If you have any interest in this stuff, we'll have a lot of guides linked below to make
sure that you can do it step-by-step, including some other creators that are doing a really
cool job in this space showing off this stuff, but also really taking you through each thing.
Because we covered so many mods, we couldn't go too in-depth about anything, and I kind
of wish we had the time to do that kind of content, you know, just, like, 20 minutes
on one mod. But that's not what we do here.
We open the window so that people can crawl through it.
You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? All right, if you liked this video, why don't you check out some more Floplan exclusives
like me? Retro Tank. Retro Tank?
The video? Did I do a Floplan exclusive of that? Whatever Floplan exclusive I did, I'm sure it's super memorable.