There's apparently been another "massive" Nintendo leak, but there's no need to worry about it spoiling the surprise for anyone as the findings have nothing to do with the Japanese company's current generation of gaming.
A ResetEra user by the name of Atheerios explains what exactly all the fuss is about:
As you may be aware, in the last few weeks in 4chan multiple Nintendo-related old things have been leaking, starting with old Pokémon debug ROMs and source code, then most recent 3DS debug ROMs, then keys for all consoles up until the DSi and now the biggest of them all: the full source code, design files, documentation and pretty much everything used to create the Revolution, aka Wii.
So, how did this happen? The servers of BroadOn were supposedly hacked. This company was hired by Nintendo during the Wii generation to develop both hardware and software. The same post goes on to explain how "the biggest and craziest thing" about the leak are the datasheets, block diagram, and Verilog files for every component:
Verilog is a hardware description language; is used to describe circuits via code, so with this we can learn how every single piece of the Wii was made.
There is even some "gamecube and iQue stuff" within the same leak, and below is video footage of one of the many Nintendo 64 demos that have now been uploaded online. This is believed to be a demo ROM used by Nintendo to test the system:
If we see or hear anything else exciting about this leak, we'll be sure to let you know.
[source resetera.com, via nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 69
Was Wiikii Leaks involved? I will see myself out.
Fascinating stuff, its a shame how we found out about all of thia though. This would have made for an interesting read if Nintendo published a book on how they made the Wii.
@NIN10DOXD don’t leave! We need more comedy gold! 🤣
What’s up with the new blue color on this article? Much easier on my eyes 👀👍🏼
Whoa, strange blue! Wiird.
As much as I love new information on old consoles and games, I don't appreciate people hacking into private servers and stealing that info.
This article is pretty much someone prizing open the doors of a security van, the money blows down the street and journalists jumping in the air to catch what they can, thinking it must be ok hehe.
It's certainly interesting but I mean, they are kept secret for a reason probably.
This is so exciting this can be helpful for emulators especially n64. I hope some betas can leak like mario sunshine (that game looked so different in the demos) mother 3 64, mario 64, etc.
very interesting leak, I'm excited
@Freddyfred
It is baffling how none of the N64 emulators out there seem to run well on wii. I have yet to find one that doesn't struggle with running alot of games unless you have a pretty powerful PC.
I hope this doesn't have a negative impact on Nintendo's future.
This is probably just some disgruntled teenager who happens to have a parent who works at the company. The easiest way to get back at a parent with a job at a company like this during quarntine is to go onto their computer in the middle of the night and upload a bunch of stuff related to their job.
First the Last of Us 2 leaks and now this?!
@alexybubble not naked pictures? 😂
And i agree. The blue is lovely.
Finally they'll be able to hack the Wii...
I can’t believe I never got the chance to play Mirror House Cornflakes. I missed out on so much...
This leak is fake.
@SapphireBlaze you joke but... if that video is legit I can see elements of ideas that Nintendo has explored many times since.
The panning back camera to show more of the maze is a use of 3D but it also hints towards the idea of there being more to see than one player normally can at one time - the risk/reward between what can be seen and movement. The genesis of the Wii U.
I can easily imagine Miyomoto playing around in his head with those ideas and eventually coming up with Pac Man Vs.
@mesome713 no they are not. Why would they be fake? Multiple people that have a history of digging through codes related to nintendo and studying it confirmed that these leaks are real and they are sure for 99%, the 1% lacking is nintendo’s confirmation is needed which will never happen.
@StuTwo I was being semi-serious, the premise and the voice over made me laugh out loud.
But of course, there are many features here that were revolutionary for Nintendo, the camera control of course, but more advanced polygon manipulation seen in the start screen and a greater ability than before to use real voice clips.
Please stop hacking Nintendo!!
Ah, this blue colour scheme brings back memories. Remember when the NL logo was blue and black and not red and black?
@Zeldafan79 I haven’t had many problems using the N64 emulator on Wii. I’ve only really played WWF No Mercy, Goldeneye and 1080 on it though, maybe other games make it run slow.
@Nookingtons they literally say it comes from 4chan in the first line of the post, i'm not sure what you're getting at?
Hopefully we'll get a proper N64 emulater now.
Wii64 and Not64 are fine but have issues.
It's always been weird how protective Nintendo is of their ip's while also making it impossible to pay for them legally.
@Zeldafan79 Never had any problems with N64 emulation on the Wii. For most of the games, I use this one, and for the tougher to run games, or games that don't run at all on that first emulator, I use Not64, which for example also runs Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Sure, there's still a couple of games that don't work or only run slowly or with some artifacts/glitches, but I've been able to play most of the games that I also own on the actual N64.
On a side note: that PSX emulator in that first link is great as well. And the games look SO much better on the Wii...
EDIT:
And here's another, slightly newer version of Not64.
@Zeldafan79 It’s the data transfer that makes emulation hard for N64 games, that problem persists on the Wii U
This is Sony’s way of saying “hey, others have leaks too” hahahaha. Way too late BTW. The Wii has been hacked in and out.
@mesome713 I faked it. I reverse engineered the gold, silver, and crystal source code and intentionally made the programming super incompotent as a joke. I did it in DMG assembly, my favorite programming language, as a gag. I then proceed to do that 600 more times with very minor tweaks to the translation also as a joke. I then wrote code by iwata that wasn't incompotent as a joke. I also made a new bad gameboy emulator as a joke. I then drew hundreds of sprites ranging from barely started to completely finalized and wrote dex entries and fake moves for everything as a joke. I also wrote hundreds of fake emails, you guessed it, as a joke. I also intentionally programmed in bugs, made fake bug reports, and refused to address the bugs all for a laugh. and I did this in six languages as a joke.
I also created fake sdks for the n64, gamecube, and wii. I reverse engineered them in my basement and created hundreds of microcode snippets as a gaff. you morons are all playing into my hands.
you all fell for it.
I really hope I don't need the /s, it's just a copypasta.
Suggesting something of this caliber is fake though. It's extremely unlikely.
Though one thing we did learn from the Wii schematics is that "Bollywood" was the name of a cost reduced Hollywood chip.
@Supadav03 during the wii/wiiu era the entire site was this blue.
Then they introduced contextual color schemes, so the default is red, anything related to the Wii(u) is blue, etc.
@Late I 100% agree with your comment. While I like learning about source code and how things tick - it factors into my profession and interests - I highly disagree with how this information was leaked to begin with.
@Freddyfred I dont think mother 64 was that far into development tho. I thought they were just tech demos.
All they need to do now is leak Earthbound 64!
@Nookingtons ...are you trying to say a 4chan anon isn't a literal who? Someone with literally no name or identity?
I don't think anyone is trying to piggyback off of anything, it's a forum post. They don't exactly get to choose whether they're used as a source or not.
Mirror House Cornflakes reminds me of Bomberman without the bombs...
@ThanosReXXX
I have Not 64 and Wii 64 on my wii and they do run a decent number of games but goldeneye, Star wars episode 1 racer and perfect dark among a few others still seemed slow and buggy. I have not heard of wiisx so I'll give that one a try. Thanks for the help!
@Zeldafan79 You're welcome.
As for both Wii64 and Not64, you also need to tweak the settings a bit. For starters, and just in case: You'll almost NEVER have to set CPU to "Interpeter", because it only enhances compatibility to some extent, but does serious damage to performance.
On video settings, leave "CPU Framebuffer" and "FB Textures" switched off. The latter especially impacts performance.
And the "2xSaI Tex" setting is only useful in some games, so in general, that can also be switched off, but you can try it on various games, to see if it improves performance or not.
Those two links I pointed out for Not64 might also still be worthwhile, since it's two different versions, and that might still make some difference.
A final tip: for WiiSX, you'll need to make or download ISO or bin files of the PSX games. Like Wii64, the compatibility isn't 100%, but especially platformers and racers seem to work pretty good.
It has some trouble with a number of Tomb Raider games, for whatever reason, but that could also be because there's SO many different versions of the same games online. I've tried several versions of the second game, and while one did work, another version didn't. Tried both PAL and NTSC versions, but I have no idea what the problem ultimately was. I simply stopped wondering, when I finally had versions of all the various games that worked...
Some Mother 3 leaks and Ura Zelda would be nice. Throw up some demo roms.
@Zeldafan79 Tiny correction to the previous comment:
for WiiSX, all game files need to be in "bin" format, not in ISO.
To get an idea of which games run really well, here's the list of PSX games that I currently have on my Wii:
EDIT:
I do have to add that there's probably plenty more games that work, and for some games, I just removed other parts in the series, either because I've already played them, or because the game I left on there was the best in the series (in my opinion). And obviously, I haven't tried out the ENTIRE catalog, but if you wonder about certain titles, I might at least be able to confirm some of them as working or not. For example:
I previously had the two disc game Heart of Darkness on there as well, and that also worked perfectly.
@ThanosReXXX I find that the rom hacks don't run great on Wii, like Mario Odyssey 64.
@NookMiler For ROM hacks, I always use Not64, and I've tried several, mainly Goldeneye and Banjo Kazooie ROM hacks, and they all run just fine for me.
@ThanosReXXX I just tried the latest Not64 from their Github, ran Mario Odyssey 64, and it runs poor with sound distortion and the pitch is altered significantly. Perhaps if you tried it, you might get better results, but it's not working well for me.
@NookMiler Although I haven't tried out that particular ROM hack for myself, I think that the newer mods are simply too complicated and/or demanding for simple emulators like those on consoles.
You're better off running them on PC, either with Project64 or with the N64 module in Dolphin.
Hopefully with this info we can finally have perfect n64 emulation! Maybe even perfect n64 emulation on the wii l, 3ds and Vitw/psp!
@ThanosReXXX castlevania SOTN runs great on wiisxr. Just an fyi
Nintendo Rev, they dont use the codenames but the could have used the first 3 letters
bazillion times better that the 3 letters they used lol
@darkswabber I was joking, why would someone fake an acient leak.
I'm so jazzed we can finally learn to emulate the N64 better! I'd love nothing more than to be able to sit down at my computer and play Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2 with perfect emulation.
But man, I hope those leakers took some beta Zelda games while they were in there... It was my dream to play Ura Zelda as a kid! Fingers crossed!
@ThanosReXXX On my Ouya it works fine though and that thing has like 1 gb of ram. But the Wii has significantly less, so that's probably why.
@NookMiler Well, there's your answer, then: the Wii only has 88 MB main memory (24 MB internal 1T-SRAM integrated into graphics package, 64 MB external GDDR3 SDRAM) and then added to that, but not accessible for every application, was 3 MB embedded GPU texture memory, so basically, only a little over 100MB of RAM.
It's actually a miracle how it could run some of the more complex 3D games with such a small memory footprint, if you realize all that.
And just in case you're thinking it's different on the Wii U: it isn't, because you'd still be using the N64 emulator in Wii mode, and in Wii mode, the main memory of the Wii U isn't accessible.
@SapphireBlaze The best thing about the Cornflakes demo, which you are all determined to avoid mentioning, is that the character clearly cries "Oh yeah, Yakuza baby!" on clearing the maze.
@ThanosReXXX Yeah, it is crazy how it can run those big AAA titles on just 100MB of ram, but that's probably Nintendo's superior optimization for their games.
@ThanosReXXX
Since we're on the subject of modding consoles i was considering modding my wii U but I'm somewhat hesitant due to it not being fully discontinued yet. By that i mean the eshop is still in service and the online still works so if i were to mod my wii U could i be banned from the eshop or the servers altogether?
I know new updates at this point are highly unlikey but Should i wait until the online stuff is dropped?
I thought maybe if i did mod it i should stick to the wii mode side and leave the main Wii U side alone.
99% of 4chan leaks aren't trustworthy even if they claim that Earth goes round the Sun (and even video materials are fabricable), but if this is professionally verifiable material, then...
Yeah. Then where do I act surprised that a fan newsblog gleefully shares illegally obtained data in broad daylight?
"If we see or hear anything else exciting about this leak, we'll be sure to let you know"
This paragraph right here, Your Honour.😏
So the actual source is 4chan, but Nintendolife mentions Reeee era as the source?
Typical.
Can't wait to read about Switch hardware leaks in 2031.
@NookMiler That too, but I was also thinking of the many third party efforts that really looked quite good, for a non-HD console.
@Zeldafan79 It's perfectly safe to do. Go here and follow the instructions to the letter. After that, you can move on to modding the virtual Wii inside the Wii U on that same site.
After the entire process is finished, you can update Wii U titles from within an app that's then installed.
@Gwynbleidd yes someone's seeing the silver lining.
@ThanosReXXX
Any sites like that for the Wii? I just got one for modding but haven't yet.
@Priceless_Spork Yes there is, here you go.
I'd advice you to do the Letterbomb hack. It's the easiest, contrary to what is mentioned on that site.
And once you're done, I'd also advice taking this USB Loader instead of the two they use. This modded version of a USB Loader has better compatibility with GameCube games and so on. If you also want to add that, we'll get to that later.
And here's a bundle of three different forwarder channels for that one.
I'd go for "stripes". It's the original forwarder channel, and it's also the one I use myself....
EDIT:
Also, go to this page, and get the two files called "neek2o.dol" and "mighty.dol" and put them on the root of the SD card, once you're finished modding the Wii.
@Zeldafan79 The part of the above comment starting from the USB Loader also goes for you...
@ThanosReXXX
Wow dude thank you. Im excited to do this.
@Priceless_Spork You're welcome. Feel free to ask me any question if you're stuck or not sure about any of the steps.
@Priceless_Spork Oh, and you're gonna want to order one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B000FGNM6I/ref=dp_olp_afts?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Or better yet: buy two and make a backup of the first once you're done.
In case you're wondering: the process works the best with a non-HC card, and this is one of the few brands left that still offers those, but if you can get them cheaper or in another brand that you might prefer, then that's also okay. Long as you make sure that it's not a High Capacity card, like most modern SD cards are.
@ThanosReXXX
I had one last question before i start modding my wii U. If i want to access the eshop once my mod is done will i still be able to?
I remember one of the steps to wii u hacking is to block nintendo updates and i think the e-shop is involved with that... so how do i access it to buy games or dlc?
@Zeldafan79 It's mentioned in the tutorial itself. You can either use a hack for that, or do some kind of temporary disabling of the hack.
I haven't personally modded my Wii U, because I had already hacked my Wii, and I'm personally not interested in playing pirated Wii U games.
I also primarily modded my Wii to be able to store all my GameCube games on a hard drive, and to be able to turn my Wii into the ultimate retro box, with tons of emulators.
So, if you only mod the Wii part of the Wii U, then the Wii U part of it will still function as normal, for the most part.
My advice would be to just read through the entire tutorial first, and if I'm not mistaken, there's also an e-mail address in there, or a forum link, where you'll probably get a far better and more precise answer to your question.
@ThanosReXXX
Okay thanks. I was only wanting to back up my games too. It sounds like messing around with the wii u's main part is way more risky and involved. I'll just stick with modding the regular Wii section. Sorry if i seemed kinda cluless and worried about the whole thing. This is my first attempt at doing it on wii u.
@Zeldafan79 No worries, man. And no apologies needed, I completely understand. I also felt kind of anxious the first time I soft-modded my Wii, because I was afraid I would brick it, but ultimately, simply following all the steps to the letter, nothing will go wrong.
Just do those things that you're comfortable with, and leave the rest alone. The nice thing of only hacking the vWii is that it doesn't affect any functions on the Wii U side of things.
Do make sure that you start here, instead of on the main page of the Wii U hack guide, otherwise you'll be hacking your Wii U after all...
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