Hacking Wii Homebrew has reached Maturity, what are your top apps for it?

abdezca

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I would pick these (aside from homebrew channel obviously)?

1.- Wii Flow best loader out there for me. It requires work, but gets the job done.

2.- DEvolution, it plays all my back ups with no headaches.

3.- Tantric emulators, so much love for these. I play every now and then snes library and games that I missed on my youth.

What are your picks?
 

Jayro

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Any Emulator ending with "GX" in the title is a winner. CFG Loader wins for games hands-down, and cMIOS for my gamecube mini DVD-R backups with Neogamma's Gamecube Backup Launcher. For movies and Youtube, WiiMC, always. Plays 480p MKVs I encode myself using DVDFab Platinum.
 

endoverend

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WiiXplorer. So useful it's not even funny.

CFG Loader MOD for all Wii games and DIOS MIOS.

NEEK2O for the best brick-proof wii sandbox you can get, plus extra NAND storage.

And of course, Priiloader.
Oh, and WiiMC.
 

The Real Jdbye

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My must have apps are Priiloader, USB Loader GX (it used to be WiiFlow for a while but when I saw the banner view in USB Loader GX i fell in love), and MMM as an all-in-one manager for stuff. BootMii boot2 is a must if possible. All the GX emulators are great of course, and do emulation very well although most probably have other devices that do the job just as well besides a PC. neek2o is nice, Devolution seems great but have not been able to try t since I didn't feel like formatting the drive containing all my wbfs games and such to fat32. Nintendont seems pretty good too but needs work.

I think the most advanced homebrew currently is stuff like Nintendont and Devolution, even Quadforce. With those they had to start from the ground up and reverse engineer most of the system to figure out how to make things work, which is pretty impressive. Emulators are nice but nothing new, GX emulators are based on existing emulators so they are not that impressive compared to if they were made from the ground up.

Wii has had a pretty great homebrew scene, although it seems a bit lacking in unique homebrew games worth playing, like there were a few of for DS and GBA for example. But everything except for homebrew games, it's great. It's hard to pick a list of my top apps so I just listed the must haves, there are so many more I could have mentioned but I could not list them all.
 
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VatoLoco

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ive actually been diving into the wii a bit more lately. trying to update my stale apps and such.
anyhow, off the top o' me head:

- Priiloader
- bootmii v2
- HB channel
- *WiiXplorer
- *Scummvm
- *WiiMC
- *WiiSX
- *Mednafen (+1 for virtualboy emulation)
- *FceuGX
- *Snes9xGX
- Devolution
- postLoader frontend for;
cfg loader, wiiware/vc, gamecube [dml, nintendont, quadforce], retroarch

*+1 for any Wii emulator/app that supports network/samba share =D


as for PC apps for the Wii:
- ModMii
- ShowMeWads
- WiiBackupManager
 

the_randomizer

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RetroArch Wii, solely because the emulators don't have frame skipping or the odd libogc menu with the tinny sound glitch. (Snes9x Next being the best Snes emulator on the Wii since even the most demanding games run full speed now)
USB Loader GX
CFG USB Loader
 

mat128

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I have no idea why people still use Tantric's emulators, they're all outdated and unfinished while the RetroArch cores all run much better and provide a ton of extra features. It also brings over plenty of emulators that never got a GX port.
 

Cyan

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Tantric emulators are the historically used ones. People didn't update for a while (like me, I didn't test Retoarch yet).
having multiple emulators may also feel difficult to setup everything properly. it probably isn't.
 

Chaos Rush

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I have no idea why people still use Tantric's emulators, they're all outdated and unfinished while the RetroArch cores all run much better and provide a ton of extra features. It also brings over plenty of emulators that never got a GX port.
Because RetroArch Wii's GUI is just awful. It doesn't let you save per-core resolution settings (even when you enable per-core settings for everything else), and such it's a pain in the ass to get the emulators displaying in the correct resolution of the original hardware. This isn't a problem with Tantric's emulators or the real Genesis Plus GX because the correct resolution is literally the only option. Yeah, I know someone made a page documenting what the correct resolution settings should be for each core over on RetroArch's forums, but the fact that you have to do it manually is such a pain in the ass, not to mention the actual resolution settings itself doesn't save when switching cores.

Another problem is the stupid fictional "RetroPad". Why the hell can't I have per-core controller settings instead of using this stupid imaginary controller system? What if I want "Y=B, B=A" for NES games but default for SNES games? Then I have to change it every single time which is also a pain in the ass.

And lastly, libertyernie's recent VBA GX updates makes it the only GB/GBC emulator with Super Game Boy border support, and for me SGB borders are an absolute must when playing GB and GBC games on a TV. Gambatte has no such option on Wii.

Until these major issues are solved (particularly the resolution settings), I'm sticking with Tantric's emulators. While they're not perfect, at least they display in the correct resolution, let you have different controller settings per emulator, and not to mention they play the games I play just fine.

As for Genesis Plus GX, there is literally no advantage in using the RetroArch Wii version, since it's the exact same thing except with shittier resolution settings. The "real" Genesis Plus GX is flat out perfect.
 

the_randomizer

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Tantric emulators are the historically used ones. People didn't update for a while (like me, I didn't test Retoarch yet).
having multiple emulators may also feel difficult to setup everything properly. it probably isn't.


It's pretty straightforward, and are better than Tantric's emulators for a variety of reasons. One, they don't use frame skipping, so on Snes9x Next (based off of 1.52), games that struggled to run full speed on Snes9x GX like Star Fox, or Final Fantasy VI, run full speed. Two, the infamous open/close menu glitch that had tinny sound? Nonexistent. You just pick the emulator core you want, load the game, viola! You have the best Snes emulation on the Wii/Wii U. NES, uses the Nestopia Undead 1.43 core, runs full speed and doesn't have the v-sync issues FceuGX has. Not to rain down on Tantric's/dborth's emulators, for a long time, they were quite good and still are.
 

Apostrophe

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It's pretty straightforward, and are better than Tantric's emulators for a variety of reasons. One, they don't use frame skipping, so on Snes9x Next (based off of 1.52), games that struggled to run full speed on Snes9x GX like Star Fox, or Final Fantasy VI, run full speed. Two, the infamous open/close menu glitch that had tinny sound? Nonexistent. You just pick the emulator core you want, load the game, viola! You have the best Snes emulation on the Wii/Wii U. NES, uses the Nestopia Undead 1.43 core, runs full speed and doesn't have the v-sync issues FceuGX has. Not to rain down on Tantric's/dborth's emulators, for a long time, they were quite good and still are.


Really? I've had problems playing Snes, Genesis, and GBA games using retroarch. The first games I tested on each of those cores, Kirby Super Star, Sonic, and Fire Emblem, all ran slow or had very noticeable sound problems. That's why I only use retroarch for games not covered by any of the GX emulators.
 

the_randomizer

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Really? I've had problems playing Snes, Genesis, and GBA games using retroarch. The first games I tested on each of those cores, Kirby Super Star, Sonic, and Fire Emblem, all ran slow or had very noticeable sound problems. That's why I only use retroarch for games not covered by any of the GX emulators.


Well, what version did you use? Not all GBA games run full speed, no, but many do. Kirby's Super Star ran full speed on my end and you might have used an older version. Genesis games run full speed, not sure what version you were using then.
 

Apostrophe

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Well, what version did you use? Not all GBA games run full speed, no, but many do. Kirby's Super Star ran full speed on my end and you might have used an older version. Genesis games run full speed, not sure what version you were using then.


Wow. I must have been using an outdated version or something, all 3 of the games I complained about work just as good if not better than on the tantric emulators. However, as Chaos Rush said, I'm not a fan of the settings not saving when switching cores, so I'll probably stick with Retroarch for CPS, Neo Geo, and as a back up.
 

the_randomizer

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Wow. I must have been using an outdated version or something, all 3 of the games I complained about work just as good if not better than on the tantric emulators. However, as Chaos Rush said, I'm not a fan of the settings not saving when switching cores, so I'll probably stick with Retroarch for CPS, Neo Geo, and as a back up.


There's a feature that you can actually load the ROM and it will detect the core automatically, I personally haven't tried that option yet. It should be under "Load Content (detect core)" or something, that should make loading various ROMs easier.
 

duffmmann

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ive actually been diving into the wii a bit more lately. trying to update my stale apps and such.
anyhow, off the top o' me head:

- Priiloader
- bootmii v2
- HB channel
- *WiiXplorer
- *Scummvm
- *WiiMC
- *WiiSX
- *Mednafen (+1 for virtualboy emulation)
- *FceuGX
- *Snes9xGX
- Devolution
- postLoader frontend for;
cfg loader, wiiware/vc, gamecube [dml, nintendont, quadforce], retroarch

*+1 for any Wii emulator/app that supports network/samba share =D


as for PC apps for the Wii:
- ModMii
- ShowMeWads
- WiiBackupManager


Are you aware there is a separate Virtual Boy emulator than the Mednafen for the Wii (known as Wiirtual boy: http://code.google.com/p/wiirtual-boy/)? I only know this because I don't use Mednafen, and have separate channels for each emulator including Virtual Boy.
 

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