Thanks for the U8 archive tip! Now I have all the files extracted.
I have a lot of questions though.
I realized the target being analyzed was not a virtual console, so I decided to drop the target and get a real Virtual Console wad.
What questions me is that I thought wad files were in a emulator+rom+resources form, but it turned out to be a standalone game, not a game from another console. Which makes wonder, what are wad files anyway? So far I understand that they're an installer format targeted specifically for the Wii like microsoft windows installer .msi files, but where do those wad files come from in the first place? I think I read somewhere that you can download games officially from nintendo(haven't tried it out yet, I just bought my Wii), so my thought is that when you download a game from the official nintendo server through the Wii channel, it actually downloads the wad file of the game and merely installs it. The wad file could be either a game from another console, making it contain an emulator or a rom, or just a standalone game created for wii. Those wad files are created internally from Nintendo, and all the .wad game files created by the community is done by just leaving everything alone in the wad file to preserve the functionality of the emulator, and merely replacing the rom, and update banners and icons and such. And people call those a "Virtual Console" wad, and the one I was just analyzing is a "Wiiware" wad. Am I correct so far? Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm all new to this Wii hacking scene and I'm willing to learn more so I could possibly give something back to the community.
Now after extracting everything, I had 2 files left that didn't seem to be a U8 archive. So I looked into it in a hex editor and confirmed that it was a .dol file. One of them had several names of SNES games in it so I'm assuming it's the emulator part. The other one... I just can't guess really. If my memory is correct, Wii runs one .dol file at a time, so what would be the need for 2 .dol files? What is the other one?
While writing this post, I got curious and converted the .dol file to .elf and loaded it to IDA to see if I can find some clues but the .dol file doesn't even have a proper entry point and IDA fails! The other .dol that I assumed as emulator loads fine.
So what is this other .dol? If it doesn't have an entrypoint, it won't execute so seems like garbage to me. Any advice/pointers?