itspudding.com

Or “Adventures in Wii Modding”

So I finally purchased a Wii last November, and had been wanting to get it chipped ever since, for several reasons.

The biggest reason? Despite the fact that the DS and Wii are actually rather popular in the PAL regions (Europe and Australia), we just keep getting screwed over with the release dates. Look no further than Super Smash Bros Brawl for a great example: It came out at the end of January in Japan, and it’s got a release date of the 9th of March in the US. Anyone want to guess when it comes out in Australia? Well, your guess is as good as mine, because we still don’t have a date.

We get screwed over in more ways than one though. Despite the Australian dollar being quite strong against the US at the moment, they still want to charge AU$100 for a game in the stores, or the equivalent of around US$90. The same games go for around US$50-60 in the ‘States. Hardly seems fair to me.

The other big reason would probably be Gamecube games. Most of these aren’t available in stores locally anymore. And some of which, despite being released four years ago, are still being pushed on eBay for sixty dollars. Yes, I’m looking at you, Tales of Symphonia. So the chip allows me to either import them from the US, or obtain them via alternative means. I’ll leave the latter up to the imagination.

So in late January I had the cash and took the plunge. On a friend’s recommendation I sent it off to OzModChips for a D2CKey install. Being a recent purchase, it required the more expensive D2CKey, which meant $175 for installation. Ouch.

About 2 weeks later, I received the console back, along with a SD Gecko (for backing up games). I took it home on my lunch break, plugged it in, rubbed my hands, and it booted. I’d left Super Mario Galaxy in the console when I sent it away, so I pressed the eject button. And waited. And waited. And shat bricks when the disc never came out, despite the drive making lots of noise. After lots of shaking and tipping the console on various sides, more bricks were shat.

I still had time, so I pulled out the tri-wing screwdriver I used on my DS and proceeded to disassemble the Wii. As it turns out, Nintendo are masters of hiding screws under everything imaginable - stickers, rubber feet and even the battery cover. I was then greeted with the DVD drive, so I pulled the shield off, carefully lifted the Mario disc out and sat there trying to find anything that could be broken. I couldn’t find anything, so I manually slid the slot load mechanism back out to the ejected position, put the shield back on, and nervously plugged it back in. It worked! And both burnt Gamecube and Wii games booted first go.

Moral of the story? If you’re posting a Wii (or any other slot load drive for that matter), take the bloody disc out first!

While I had it apart though, I got a good look at the modchip installation. I can now safely say that $175 was well worth it - if I didn’t know better, I’d say it came with the chip straight from Nintendo. OzModChips’ install is brilliant.