Your best bet is going to be to read the stickies on this forum extensively. It will save you a lot of headaches.
I will try and read at least 1 sticky a day
But here are some answers to questions you may be thinking:
1) You can simply download WAD Manager and add it to your sd card. When you boot up homebrew channel, it loads all the apps on your sd card. I'm not sure if there is a vWii forwarder for it, but you really shouldn't be using it super often so it's not terrible to go through the homebrew channel to get to it.
2) "Forwarders" are the term for those icons that show up on the Wii home menu.
vWii and Wii forwarders work differently, so do NOT install any forwarders unless you are sure they are for vWii! (This is referring to forwarders which send you to a homebrew app. WiiWare and Wii VC games install just like they would if downloaded from the Wii shop, so nothing to worry about with those.) Furthermore, if it is missing a file when installed, it can brick your vWii, so be very cautious.
I will just avoid 1 and 2, sounds too risky for me.
3) The 128gb flash drive should work fine if formatted correctly. However, you cannot have it formatted for Wii U games AND use it for homebrew... It's going to be one or the other. Personally, I would recommend you get an external hard drive for your Wii games/homebrew, and format the flash drive back to the Wii U format using the Wii U's menus. Then you can redownload your games from the eShop, but your save data will be lost. (UNLESS you use a data-recovery tool on your flash drive and are able to recover the files, in which case you would want to do this before formatting. However, I'm not sure if there's a way to transfer them back after formatting to Wii U format, as I'm not sure if that's accessible by a PC.)
4) Back to the external harddrive, if you plan to do that... It is recommended to either use one with external power or with a Y-cable, simply because a single USB ports on the Wii and Wii U is not powerful for most hard drives. You will also need to plug the hard drive into the back ports, rather than the front ports for most things.
What about my Club Nintendo games, can those be downloaded again?
Any suggestions on what brand/model of powered external hard drive?
5) Your classic controller should work just fine for WiiWare, WiiVC, emulators, and Wii games that support it. (So you do not "need" an adapter to play N64 games, as your post suggested.) However, if you want to play with a Gamecube controller... the Wii U doesn't have Gamecube ports. This means you need an external adapter, and by far the most popular are the official
Wii U Gamecube Adapter and the Mayflash Adapters (
#1 and
#2) Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but keep in mind that regardless of which adapter you buy,
they have limited compatibility and your controller is generally being emulated as a classic controller. (Except with Nintendont, in which case it is being emulated as a standard Gamecube controller.) This means that it may not behave exactly like you expect, and non-standard controllers (like bongos and dance pads) will have compatibility issues.
Well I just tried to play the Super Mario 64 WiiWare using the Classic Controller and it worked fine, I will try the N64 Roms I have in a few minutes, I just gotta remember where they are, lol.
Additionally, is there a way to copy the WiiWare that guy put on my WiiU to my Wii?
There might be other things that I'm not thinking of or didn't mention. Like I said, make sure to read the stickies and become informed before making any purchases or modifying something you are unsure about. When dealing with homebrew/non-proprietary modifications to any console, it is your responsibility to make sure you know what you are doing. The reality is, you can make much better use of everything that is available if you are well-informed, and it is possible to do irreparable damage if you are not.