Hacking Is there a way to install more than 300 games in the Wii U?

[Bimmel]

If he's gonna use emulators, he might as well use the nightly builds of RetroArch for Wii U and keep everything in one area. They're already very good and have access to more power then the vWii, meaning more accuracy over time.

Oh, I didn't know it's already there. Awesome, thank you!

 

[ChristopherLujan91]

If we see it from that point of view, that the Virtual Console WiiU games
are the same as the old Games (Oviously) because I can get more games
even faster than installing, compressing, decompressing and all that

Good Point, GENIUS (Irastris), THANKS

 

[ppeterr]

but if we are talking about nintendo releases, and i think that was the point - eshop, vc for wiiu

then retroarch would be no use, so wiiu usb loading + retroarch for al the classics, loadiine for eshop and vc

little overkill but hell he seems like a collector maniac (wich i can understand)

or does, retroarch run nds and N64 also ? [edit] seems it does, amazing

 

[WiiuGold]

You proably can change that number in settings in the nand about 300 move it up to 900

 

[ppeterr]

You proably can change that number in settings in the nand about 300 move it up to 900

or 9000 ?

 

[Ape8000]

You proably can change that number in settings in the nand about 300 move it up to 900

I would assume there is memory allocated to store Icon position. It might be a fixed amount that would also have to be modified.

 

[tunip3]

You are a genius, in this case I can take advantage of the MicroSD that I have in the WiiU which is 200 Gb at this moment I have over 170 Gb and can exactly serve me for Virtual Console games

Just leave research as to use it, since I never use it until a method to install games via USB, also, back then I did not have this MicroSD memory

Because I think I have to decompress the games for Loadiine and USB have to be compressed

Thank you for this information, I will investigate a little about Loadiine

GENIUS!!!

You can put your virtual console games in loadiine and the games that do not benefit from internet onto loadiine as well.

 

[BoxNinPlay]

I would assume there is memory allocated to store Icon position. It might be a fixed amount that would also have to be modified.

So is it possible or not to do this???

 

[snoofly]

Interesting you bring this thread up again.
I was wondering about something on these lines.

Firstly though, it is not easy. If you check
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-u-menu-sort.455132/
you'll see the layout for the icons and a defined 300 limit is embedded in the nature of the system code.
No simple change of a couple bytes is going to help us here.

However, I'm wondering if it maybe possible to access more than 300 titles via a 'trick':

My theory is your WiiU USB disk can hold any number of titles installed to it but it will only allow you to access 300 of them.
From what I understand from @Yardape8000 post, the titles displayed are those defined in

/storage_mlc/usr/save/00050010/10040200/user/80000001

in a file called BaristaAccountSaveFile.dat

So, if you configured a new BaristaAccountSaveFile.dat containing the non-displayed title ids already stored on your WIIU HDD, and switched it into place of the old one,
would this not then allow access to these titles.

If so, then all we'd need would be a simple homebrew to switch different active copies of BaristaAccountSaveFile.dat

 

[D34DL1N3R]

There aren't even 300 games worth playing on the Wii U even if you include VC titles, so I'm not sure why it even matters.

 

[snoofly]

There aren't even 300 games worth playing on the Wii U even if you include VC titles, so I'm not sure why it even matters.

I too don't particularly care about the games.
I probably play 2 or 3 at most at a time.
But it does matter to me at least because in spite of the fact everything else about the console is pretty much cracked open, defeating the 300 title limit still eludes us.
The fun is in the challenge of figuring out ways around it.

 

[snoofly]

OK, I've proven in theory this trick works.
Here was a test I just did:

1.

install backup of
0005000010135100 _ USA _ Darts up
to empty drive

move to 1st icon

use ftpiiu copy barista file

row301:

0005 0000 1013 5100 0000 0002 0000 0000

--
2.

install darts to 300 full usb
reboot - get nag "Not all software could be displayed"
- check to see title is not displayed

open ftpiiu

copy barista to pc

change line 301 from
0005 0000 1f60 0b00 0000 0002 0000 0000 (some mario game)
to
0005 0000 1013 5100 0000 0002 0000 0000

close to main wii u screen

get nag

Darts is in first icon slot and runs fine

 

[snoofly]

Thinking more. It maybe quite easy to avoid swapping .dat files simply by creating multiple users which will have their own personal manually crafted file

Not sure if it will somehow get overwritten through normal operations and you’d have to suffer clicking off the nag screen but if it works it’ll be a cleaner way to access more than 300 titles.

 

[nexusmtz]

Not sure if it will somehow get overwritten through normal operations

The usual trouble with icon sorting (manual or programatic) is that the icons un-sort if the menu is initialized without the USB drive connected.

 

[snoofly]

The usual trouble with icon sorting (manual or programatic) is that the icons un-sort if the menu is initialized without the USB drive connected.

Right. Hopefully that is the only case it would occur.
You’d rarely plan to ever disconnect the drive once setup (need to check the 2 drives connected/wup install issue tho), so it should be fine for general use.
Also, its easy to make a backup of the file to ftp it back in case you do get hit by an unsort anytime.

 

[snoofly]

Final comment on this tonight.

Switching users seems to work perfectly and is effortless, only one click to accept the limit message!

I think as long as you don't disconnect your drive and potentially get a re-sort you're fine so just be sure to take a backup of
the /storage_mlc/usr/save/00050010/10040200/user folder once you're happy with your setup and keep it safe some place
in case you do get a re-sort for whatever reason and need to ftpiiu it back.

At least I'm as happy as I'm pretty much going to get with this solution for now as it is so easy to do.

As you can have I think up to 10 users, you can have up to 3000 titles installed to your USB and access them all really easily
simply switching users.

Beautiful

 

[nexusmtz]

Switching users seems to work perfectly and is effortless

Effortless for you When I tried to explain the multi-user workaround in another thread, the user couldn't handle it.

One additional point that was brought up in that thread was to remember to copy the associated saves to the new ID. I'm sure that's obvious to you, but others trying it out might forget.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Edit: Did not realize the post I was replying to was this old. Disregard me.

 

[snoofly]

Effortless for you When I tried to explain the multi-user workaround in another thread, the user couldn't handle it.

One additional point that was brought up in that thread was to remember to copy the associated saves to the new ID. I'm sure that's obvious to you, but others trying it out might forget.

Right, if the game used a unique type save and you had multiple users able to access the same title there could be an issue so I wouldn’t plan to set up in that way.

Each user should have their own unique set of titles only they can access, aside from the common internal installed titles of course which I keep limited to utility homebrew, HBL, HBL2HBC Nintendont forwarders etc which all users may find useful.

So irrespective of which user plays the title, I assume there shouldn’t be any issue.

I’ll test it out when I get some time.

 

[nexusmtz]

if the game used a unique type save and you had multiple users able to access the same title there could be an issue

It's not so much that there's an issue, being that you're the same person, it's just that the other person was confused over where their progress went. Certainly, since you intend to keep the games unique, you'll be fine. And like you said...

its easy to make a backup