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disclaimer: this blogpost does not endorse piracy. i am simply relating my personal experience.

my story with the wii

when i was 9, my parents decided to buy me a Nintendo Wii. for the context, i grew up in a third world country where consoles were sold softmodded or modchipped from the get-go, as the only available games around were burned copies.

i got the console the 6th of August 2010, with Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I almost exclusively play for several days.
The very first timelog recorded on my Wii, the day I bought it. Picture taken on Dolphin running my original NAND
The very first timelog recorded on my Wii (06/08/2010). Picture taken on Dolphin under my NAND dump
comes the fatal mistake around the end of the year. prompted by a game, i update the console to 4.3E. it uninstalled the homebrew channel, and disabled whatever was installed to authorize burned DVDs, probably DIVX. Modding was to me a form of magic that manifested in mysterious upside down undocumented channels, that had disappeared.

I returned the console to the original shop, whose owner proposed to modchip it by the end of the week. He labels it: "{my name} mise à jour". ("{my name} update"). the sticky label was already worn out in 2011:
A picture of my Wii, taken in mid 2011 with a 3DS
A picture of my Wii, taken in mid 2011 with a 3DS
a far fetched note: i like to see the parallel between this event and the first episode from Danny Phantom's second season when Danny loses his memories and his powers, yet Sam saves the situation by reproducing the setting that led Danny to originally get them. Sam then adds a stylized "D" on Danny's phantom suit, that he carries for the rest of the show. My Wii also carried this sticky label until this day!

As my Wii was back with the modchip on, I had spent time on the internet getting aware of the Twilight Hack, the Homebrew Channel, and the common softmodding culture around it. I rapidly figured that homebrewing a console would come with much more than running those 1$ copies sold in my city. Notably, running NSMB Wii that had an anti-piracy mechanism.

And I did it! A few weeks later, I bought a copy of Lego: Indiana Jones from my usual game shop, and followed instructions online to install the HBC from the Indiana Pwns exploit. That was my hacker origin story :]

my favorite gc/wii games

related personal projects