What is the Ultimate Wii U setup method in 2023? (GameCube, Wii, DS and more)

[simbin]

Revisiting this.. back when I started, it was convenient to make custom Virtual Console injects for the other games (putting everything on a single drive).. but you still had that 300 title limitation. With storage costs lower than ever, I'm wondering what's the best way to do all this now? Ideally, having full GameCube and DS libraries - on SD? reserving the 300 titles, solely for Wii U games. Is it finally possible to have a separate drive partitioned for Wii, without any of the nag screens to format the drive? It of course would be great to have everything on one big drive, but I'm guessing that will never be possible. What do you all think? Thanks

 

[tmnr1992]

Currently there are a few options, and depending on who you ask you will get different setups. For me the best one is using Tiramisu for Retroarch, Aroma for everything else, and the EnvSwap plugin to quickly swap between the two. Get an SD card to put all your Retroarch games, then one hard drive for Wii U, DS, N64, and another one for Wii and Gamecube via USB Loader. If you want everything on a single drive you could instead put your Wii and Gamecube games on your SD card, except for the Wii games that have issues loading from SD (I think most of them will work, I've had issues with just a few), so put those on your hard drive as injects.

 

[simbin]

Looks like I have some work ahead of me. Back when I set this all up.. I did the region free mod, so I could load up most retail Wii U games without ever launching CFW.. for everything else, I simply launched the Haxchi injected DS game, when necessary.

I follow most of what you're saying.. but what do you mean by this statement - injected DS and N64?

one hard drive for Wii U, DS, N64

I'm hoping to avoid having the DS games count as part of that 300 title limit, since I would like to have as many as possible in this setup. Thanks

 

[Ettino]

I'm hoping to avoid having the DS games count as part of that 300 title limit

You'll need to be on Tiramisu side and use loadiine to run them ds games. As the DS roms will be store on the sd card and loadiine will load them from there. Switching between Tiramisu & Aroma is pretty simple as well.

 

[tmnr1992]

I'm hoping to avoid having the DS games count as part of that 300 title limit, since I would like to have as many as possible in this setup. Thanks

Yeah, I was talking about injecting them. You could inject around 200 DS games, (should be less, as I'm pretty sure some DS games don't work as injects), then maybe 15 N64 games (the rest should work fine by overclocking one of the Wii's N64 emulators), 50 Wii U games, and the rest can be Wii games that you want to keep handy or don't work from SD if using that setup. This should get you most if not all games worth playing for their respective console and just below the 300 title limit.

If for some reason you're planning on getting thousands of games for each console then the only other alternative would be to get a bunch of hard drives and plug the drive that has the game you currently want to play.

[EDIT]
Also what @Ettino said. People seem to really hate Loadiine because it's outdated, online play doesn't work and loading times are extremely long, but I've read that for small files they're not too terrible, so for DS and N64 games it should be somewhat playable.

 

[Ettino]

but I've read that for small files they're not too terrible, so for DS and N64 games it should be somewhat playable.

The loading time for the DS games are more or less the same as the injected counterparts. And yeah anything else that's not DS you can forget about it.

 

[mrmagicm]

@Ettino another good point for loadiine! +1 Do you now if it can read all DS games via loadiine?

 

[lordelan]

For me the best one is using Tiramisu for Retroarch, Aroma for everything else

Can you elaborate on why you do that?
Isn't Aroma superior to Tiramisu in every aspect?

 

[tmnr1992]

Can you elaborate on why you do that?
Isn't Aroma superior to Tiramisu in every aspect?

Retroarch does not work in Aroma yet.

 

[lordelan]

Retroarch does not work in Aroma yet.

Oh I thought that only affecty dynarec support for RetroArch. Thanks for the heads up!

 

[mrmagicm]

They are rumours that Retroarch might work for Aroma soon for end of the year.....

 

[jul16ares]

They are rumours that Retroarch might work for Aroma soon for end of the year.....

Yeah It would be a dream come true to have switching core, and complete retrarch frontend ozone/xmb working out of the box as it is on Tiramisu/haxchi

 

[Ettino]

@Ettino another good point for loadiine! +1 Do you now if it can read all DS games via loadiine?

I think the DSi games are still not working. But to be honest though, just use DS emulator on the phone or something to play them. So much easier to set up.