Wii Hacked to Run Custom Code

Jan. 31 9:58 PM by Lynxara

Once a system gets popular, there's a mad rush to break it open. Importers want to be able to play their games without keeping two machines in the house, pirates want to steal, and hobbyists want to play with homebrew software. Well, only a few days ago, a group of hobbyist hackers have gotten all three groups closer to their goals with the Wii.

Atomic MPC covers the hack and how it works in detail, and it's really an elegant approach. The same hackers who got modified code to boot on a Wii via a disc-swap method found out that you can use Twilight Princess's savegame data to basically trick the console into running potentially anything off of an SD card.

If this hack took off, it could be big enough to really kick-start a Wii grey market that has, up to now, mostly just allowed for slightly doctored, pirated game images to be played on a machine. Atomic MPC also has an interview up with the hacker, Bushing, although it's pretty brief.