Hardware WiiU and retro-gaming

Windfish · Jul 11, 2014

Hello, everyone! Recently, I became serious about retro-gaming and obtaining the best possible visual output from my classic consoles. I bought a HD CRT television, a Sony Trinitron KD-34XBR970, in the hope that it would be a great retro-gaming display. Unfortunately, I bought it before I learned that HD CRTs have similar issues as HD LCDs in the scaling of the 240p signal of consoles like the NES. A HD CRT has less issues in this respect than a HD LCD, of course, but issues still. I am looking into external scalers and other devices such as the SLG3000 that add scanlines.

I have made other mistakes, which brings me to the topic of this thread.

Before I became serious about retro-gaming, I spent hundreds of dollars on the Wii VC and then transferred that content to the Wii U. Wii, from what I am told, outputted 240p when it ran games from the Virtual Console, but the Wii U does not. The lowest it can output is 480i. I am not sure what the implications of this are, if any, but I am wondering if any retro-gamers here can give me some advice on a setup that will make the best out of my situation.

In short, how can I make the best out of the Wii VC games on my Wii U? What setup will allow me to play these games as if I was playing on them on their console of origin with RGB output to a good CRT television? What advice do you have for me?

Schizoanalysis · Jul 11, 2014

How big is your TV? Wouldn't they look quite pixelly on a large screen?

If you want a true retro experience, you could use one of those old tube TVs, well, you could if the Wii U would actually output to to it.

WiiCube_2013 · Jul 11, 2014

For a true retro experience you know the answer isn't using a Wii U but the original consoles with their cartridges.

I gave up on collecting games from the 90's but if I'm ever at a flea market and see a batch of them I'll definitely snatch them for a deal. Today I saw a Neo Geo X in a store but their price was exactly the same as on eBay and without any games to test, so I ditched it.

Windfish · Jul 11, 2014

Schizoanalysis (re: #2),

Hello! You wrote:

Schizoanalysis said:
How big is your TV? Wouldn't they look quite pixelly on a large screen?

If you want a true retro experience, you could use one of those old tube TVs, well, you could if the Wii U would actually output to to it.

My HD CRT is a 34'' widescreen display. Here are the full specs.

Best,
Windfish

Windfish · Jul 11, 2014

WiiCube_2013 (re: #3),

Hello! You wrote:

WiiCube_2013 said:
For a true retro experience you know the answer isn't using a Wii U but the original consoles with their cartridges.

I agree. If I had not spent hundreds of dollars on the Wii Virtual Console, I would be scavenging for the physical media. Alas, though, I did spend hundreds of dollars and would like to prevent that from being a total loss.

I will continue to research this and report back here from time to time.

Best,
Windfish

Windfish · Jul 18, 2014

Hey, everyone. I have decided to transfer my Virtual Console games back to my Wii. Since there are no legitimate means of doing so, I am looking into Wii softmod options. The Wii U does not support 240p, and this is bad. HDTVs, even my own HD CRT, treat 240p as 480i, deinterlacing an image that should not be deinterlaced.

blaisedinsd · Jul 18, 2014

The best way I have found to transfer Virtual Console games back to your Wii is using YABM (Yet another blue dump mod).

If you have your Wii and vWii modded it is pretty simple.

You load up YABM from the homebrew channel on your vWii and use it to dump all your VC games on to your SD card as wads. Make sure you fake sign the ticket or whatever it's called to remove the DRM.

Than you take your wads on your SD card and put it in your Wii U and load up the vWii and hombrew channel and use a wad manager like Wii Mod to install the wads.

I have found this to be the best way. Initially I restored my backup NAND on my wii to get my stuff back but if the shopping channel ever gets opened it will nuke your games by re-instituting the DRM.

LightyKD · Jul 19, 2014

Windfish said:
Schizoanalysis (re: #2),

Hello! You wrote:

My HD CRT is a 34'' widescreen display. Here are the full specs.

Best,
Windfish

Wait! They make them bigger than 30'?! I have a 30 incher (CRT HDTV) and that sucker is HEAVY. I don't even want to imagine how heavy your CRT HD set is! Also, do you ever get a bit of yellowing when you're on a white screen for too long and does your Wii U in vWii mode flip out on white screens sometimes?

Windfish · Jul 20, 2014

blaisedinsd (re: #7),

Thank you for your reply! You wrote:

blaisedinsd said:
The best way I have found to transfer Virtual Console games back to your Wii is using YABM (Yet another blue dump mod).

If you have your Wii and vWii modded it is pretty simple.

You load up YABM from the homebrew channel on your vWii and use it to dump all your VC games on to your SD card as wads. Make sure you fake sign the ticket or whatever it's called to remove the DRM.

Than you take your wads on your SD card and put it in your Wii U and load up the vWii and hombrew channel and use a wad manager like Wii Mod to install the wads.

I have found this to be the best way. Initially I restored my backup NAND on my wii to get my stuff back but if the shopping channel ever gets opened it will nuke your games by re-instituting the DRM.

This process sounds simple enough to follow. I have a few questions for you, though. All of my Virtual Console are already on my SD card, so will I have to transfer them to vWii's main menu for YABM to 'see' them?

Also, what are the risks involved in doing this? Can I still go onto the Wii Shop Channel and download more games without any fear of a bricked console?

Best,
Windfish

blaisedinsd · Jul 21, 2014

I didn't have my games on the SD card but I think bluedump works the same way even if the content is on the SD card. If not you have a workaround just moving the stuff around.

If you do this you can still access the wii shop channel with no issues on both you Wii and your vWii.

Slartibartfast42 · Jul 22, 2014

Windfish said:
Hey, everyone. I have decided to transfer my Virtual Console games back to my Wii. Since there are no legitimate means of doing so, I am looking into Wii softmod options. The Wii U does not support 240p, and this is bad. HDTVs, even my own HD CRT, treat 240p as 480i, deinterlacing an image that should not be deinterlaced.

You didn't do a NAND dump before you did the system transfer?

blaisedinsd · Jul 22, 2014

Slartibartfast42 said:
You didn't do a NAND dump before you did the system transfer?

Even if you restore your NAND dump after doing the system transfer you run the risk of nuking your content again if you open the shopping channel. It will check and restore DRM on all the games that are supposed to be transferred. Dumping your content to wad files and fakesigning them you can avoid that risk.

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