Wii Questions

[donkeyking]

Does anyone know if Wii games can be copied? Any idea what softwares or what media format (DVD Dual Layer) would be used in copying the games?

Thanks.

[aedipuss]

backups of games you own can be done. but.... only these 3 dvd drives can reliably read an original wii disk. LG-8164b or LG-8163b or LG-8162b. you need wii rawdump tool and wii unscrambler to convert to iso. the only dvd9 game so far is super smash bros. brawl.

like all other consoles the wii needs to have a modchip installed to read and load backups.

[lordsmurf]

WiiKey

[aedipuss]

wiikey doesn't work with the last 2 generations of wii. d2pro is current.

[handyguy]

Wii games have the same data size. Always fillup that disk.

[steptoe]

The games can be 'backed up' but as previously mentioned only with very specfic DVD-ROM drives if doing it from an original as they have to be read with special commands that bypass the usual way of ripping data off disk, only certain drives have these commands built into the firmware, and it takes about 2-3 hours to rip a game. It used to take about 50 hours .....

To rip them you need RawDump v2.0, and you MUST install .net from Microsoft otherwise you WILL get a strange error and it will not work. I just installed .net 3.5 and that works perfectly



To play them on a wii, you MUST have it chipped at present there is NO WAY to swap discs, boot disc, nothing, it MUST be chipped. The actual chipped needed depends on how new your console is as Nintendo have changed their drive chipsets about 3 times now, but there are a couple of new chips that are apparently universal and upgradeable firmware with 'only' about 9 wires to solder instead of 31 with the newer chipsets .... like my wii is

As the chip is connected to the actual drive chip, no firmware is altered so you can also update your consoles firmware as and when required. BUT make sure you update only from your region, so if you have a PAL console you CANNOT update the firmware from an NTSC version of the game, or it WILL 'brick' your console, which basically means its now dead and totally unusable, unless you can upgrade the firmware to a newer version correctly which as you have just upgraded it obviously wouldn't be possible



I have a few NTSC games that I can play on my PAL wii without any problems as I use a bit of software to prevent the game trying to apply a firmware upgrade if its an NTSC game. If you are worried about this just stick to your regions games, but some games are not available for some regions. ManHunt 2 is a good example, its banned in UK and is illegal to buy from anywhere, but I can play it as I have the uncut NTSC release playing on my PAL wii as its chipped and technically region free, but not all games from other regions work. I have yet to get any Japanese game to run



Have a look for regionfrii v1.21 and also BrickBlocker 1.3, they are both used to make the console think the game is for your region and BrickBlocker is very important as it prevents the game from trying to do a firmware update. Some game NEED the latest firmware so if the game fails, either update via the 'net or update using the same game but for the correct region your wii is from. I had a game that refused to work which was an NTSC game, did a firmware update using another PAL game to the latest firmware, the game now worked correctly so needed an updated firmware to play

Also, bear in mind that some firmware upgrades may stop older games working if your console has been chipped, but that is down to the chip, NOT the game



You can use any standard single layer DVD media, but burn as slow as you can and spend that extra bit of cash and buy good quality media instead of bargain basement end of line, otherwise you will get problems. I've found the drive is very sensitive to dust and fingerprints on the DVDs, a game that worked previously may stop with a load error, cleaning the disc surface even though it looks clean and it works again. I can only assume this is down to the laser having to work harder to read the less reflective burnt DVD media so is a lot more sensitive to dust and dirt/grease compared to an original disk which is more reflective to the laser



I burn at no faster than x4 but have burnt at x8 by accident with no problems. I also use IMGBurn which is free and produces very compatable burns for wii, xbox 360, PS2 and DVD films. Again a lot of it is down to media, I avoid generic bargain rubbish and spend a bit extra for better quality burns



wii game images are a very specific filesize, so they are all the exact same size when unpacked, but there is some new software out that compresses the disk image as a lot of the disk can be compressed to very small filesizes. To use this you NEED a key which I'm struggling to get hold of so can't test this software out



If you have access to newsgroups, have a look, there is plenty of 'stuff' on them

[handyguy]

That pretty much sums it up steptoe.

Also, some images are in *.wii format & these need to be converted to an ISO first with rawdump.

[Lucifers_Ghost]

Just to revise this thread a little ..

Is this information still valid? Specifically, the only drives able to backup are the LG8100 series? The ones that are no longer available? :P