Homebrew Emulation vs Virtual Console

PapaDon · Jul 17, 2020

Good Morning,

reading through this thread, I'd like to learn if anything changed in favor of emulating games vs using them as .wad's.

The major reason for my concernes is reading a lot how virtual console games could potentially brick your Wii, even when using EmuNand and the likes.

In particular I have PacMan, Secret of Mana, and R-Type bought from the market, but would like to access them from my USB for convenience reasons as well.

How would I go about dumbing them from my flash memory(or whereever they exist), and then reinstall them to my USB?

Also, is it safe to delete them from Flash Memory once install is done, any I backed up the dumb?

Ericsonanzois · Jul 17, 2020

Hi, i think that VC games not will brick your wii if you use the wad for your wii´s region. Otherwise, wad´s from others regions can installed if you had priiloader installed. I used at least some jap wads with no problems.

Maeson · Jul 17, 2020

There should not be bricking issues if the WADs are fine, specially since Emunand and Neek do nothing to your real NAND. Maybe freeze the system if a particular game doesn't work on a certain setup, but shouldn't be any brick if you're not doing anything to your NAND.

That thread you link in your post is about 3DS, this board is about Wii. Also I don't get if you're talking about actual emulation, or channel emulation through something like Emunand or Neek.

In my humble point of view, Emulation on Wii is better to Virtual Console releases in pretty much all cases, with a few key exceptions.

A properly set up emulator, or front-end like RetroArch (or RetroArch SS, a fine-tuned version specifically made with Wii in mind by SuperrSonic) will let you play a lot of different systems, giving you access thousands of games, with lots of settings and features, controller options and such that Virtual Console doesn't give you. Not to mention you'd be able to play games from VC-related systems that didn't release, and games from systems that were never supported on the Virtual Console.

To me Virtual Console releases are relegated to games that either don't work well on homebrew emulators, or may have some special feature added to them. N64 VC releases for example are still really useful, most of the games play better on the VC releases than on homebrew emulators. Certain Arcade releases had special settings and such that make them desirable.

If you still insist on using VC releases for systems that are better emulated through homebrew, there's different ways to dump games to an SD card. One of the simplest is making an Emunand with USB Loader GX, it creates ready-to-play copies of your Wii digital games. For actual ripping, making them WADs, you can follow this guide.

Erasing channels you ripped should be safe, but I do not remember if it was better to remove them like you would do normally, through the Wii's System Menu, or fully unistalling them with a WAD Manager.

PapaDon · Jul 17, 2020

Hmm...I can use emulators for my VC titles as well? I thought they'd need to be in their origin game format, like .n64 for the Nintendo64 f.e.?

I also have a copple original PS titles laying around. The console is broken though. And I've yet to figure a Wii compatible emulator that drives Front Mission 3, Doom64, Parasite Eve 1+2, Final Fantasy IX, Turok series and Golden Eye 007. As far as I can tell those titles are exceptionally not working for any available N64/PS1 emulator.

https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/WiiSX_compatibility_list_(beta_2)
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Wii64_Compatibility_List

My major inconvenience right now is, that I can conveniently access all titles from inside USB Loader GX, but for Secret of Mana, I'd need to exit to the org Wii menu. My first try on getting SoM working as dumbed .wad failed, as the game would not even start, and I got an exception error after, when restarting the Wii. Which was the only one I ever got one...didn't build up the courage after that "accident" to try again. Me no liky bricky.

So any solution that helps me bypassing installing .wads this way would be appreciated.

Homebrew Emulation vs Virtual Console

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