Homebrew Noob-friendly explanation of what's necessary to play games (SNES, N64, GC, Wii, WiiU) from external

[rczrider]

Every project/emulator/injector/loader seems have its own how-to or tutorial, but I cannot for the life of me find an overarching "this is what you need from start to finish". Yes, I can spend hours dinking around until I figure it out, but I figure someone here can explain it in 5 minutes or less and save me (and others, especially with the recent GameStop $70/$90 sale on used units!) quite a bit of time.

My setup: 32GB black Wii U with 64GB SD card and 128GB USB flash/thumb in one of the back USB ports.

So I've followed the awesome Wii U Hacks Guide and used Haxchi on my unit to set up custom firmware (CFW), as well as the HomeBrew channel (HBC). So far, so good.

I've used Wii U USB Helper to pull down those games I already own from previous systems (a moral decision I'm okay with, though pass no judgment on going further than that). That means SNES, N64, GameCube, and Wii games. They've been added to the SD card using the Helper tool. A couple required the ISO, so I provided those and the tool did the injection (I think that's what was happening).

But now what? I understand that I can use the WUP Installer GX2 (installed as part of the Haxchi process) can be used to "install" the games to external storage...but then?

There's things like Nintendont, vWii, VC injection, RetroArch...where do I even begin? I'm happy to follow the tutorials for each project that is necessary, but I'm not sure which projects those are! As of October 2019, what is the best way to play games for each of the systems I mentioned?

 

[EmulateLife]

I can help with Wii/GC use this program

https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-wiivc-injector-script-gc-wii-homebrew-support.483577/

But I recommend you invest in an external hard drive with y-cable or one that plugs into the wall, those flash drives usually die over time because they're not made to play games. You're lucky if they last 1 year.

Well since you said Wii U also google "reddit Wii U Usb helper workaround" and install that program, you can download any Wii U game from it. Since you have a 64 gb sd card you can install any size game to your hard drive with Wup Installer GX.

Edit: I see you're already using usb helper so just continue for all your Wii U/Eshop games. For Wii/GC while usb helper might work I still recommend the program I linked to above but if you got it working just continue.

For Gamecube you will need to install Nintendont to your sd card for the injects to work.

 

[ChiefReginod]

This is maybe the best non-inject setup.

Nintendont:
- Install Nintendont to the SD (note that it's still technically a Wii app, so install it as such).
- Install the Wii U Nintendont forwarder with WUP Installer. That way you can launch Nintendont (vWii) from the Wii U main menu. There's also version of the forwarder that lets you play games with the Wii U gamepad.
- Copy games to SD with the following naming convention:
sd:\games\Pokemon Colosseum [GC6E01]\game.iso
- You can use WIIMS ISO Tools to compress GC ISOs to CISO. Nintendont will detect them but other loaders might not. I've not noticed any speed differences.

RetroArch:
- This has the best emulation (compared to the emulators for Wii) for basically everything except for N64.
- Note that this version uses all forward slashes in playlist entry paths. Try manually loading a few games and then look at the content_history.lpl file to see how paths should be formatted in your playlists.
- You'll probably want to put all your ROMs on the SD card. I've never gotten it to load from USB.

N64 emulation:
- Use not64 in vWii. You can use the gamepad if you launch it from the gamepad-enabled Homebrew Channel forwarder.
- If you're going to use N64 VC injects, I've read that vWii is better for N64 injects for some reason, though even that doesn't work as well as not64 for a lot of games.

vWii:
- I use a second USB drive (FAT32 / 32 KB clusters).
- The Wii U will nag you to format the FAT32 drive. You can use "uStealth" to hide it from the Wii U while still being accessible by vWii apps, though not all apps can read uStealth drives.
- Install the gamepad-enabled Homebrew Channel forwarder to your Wii U main menu with WUP Installer. You can use some homebrew with the gamepad this way (but not all).

USB/SD drive setup:
- Dedicated Micro SD + USB adapter for Wii U games.
- USB hard drive with separate power supply for vWii (mainly for Wii games). A Micro SD + USB adapter would work as well if the read speeds are decent.
- SD card for GC games and all other ROMs. FAT 32 / 32 KB clusters.
- Partition Wizard free edition works great for formatting them properly. Windows format tool doesn't always let you use the right settings.
- Flash drives are generally much slower and more expensive per-GB than the equivalent Micro SD + USB adapter, so not even worth it.

Also, there's a way to overclock vWii apps (particularly useful for not64) but it slips me at the moment. Maybe someone else can chime in.