Softmodding the Wii

Got hold of a refurbished Nintendo Wii console system from EB Games for $28. Proceeded to hack it for maximum gaming pleasure.

Lots of ways to hack the Wii, but the easiest, cheapest way to go is diskless softmod. For this, I used ModMii by XFlak. For n00bs like me, ModMii will do (almost) everything for you. It comes with a graphical front-end for point-and-click convenience. Choose what options you like, and type in the Wii MAC address. The required installers and patches are then downloaded on-the-fly from the internet and packaged nicely for you, ready to be copied over to the SD card and/or USB drive. Then it's all just a matter of connecting the media to the game console and following the custom-generated guide.

In my case, I just want the Wii soft-modded and a USB loader installed, so I can play my game backups.

1. First step is to install the Homebrew Channel (HBC) via BootMii. Copy all the necessary files onto the SD card. Boot the Wii with the SD card inserted. Go to the Messageboard, navigate to Yesterday, then click on the envelope with the bomb icon. This runs the Hackmii installer, which will install the HBC and Bootmii as IOS. In some cases, Hackmii doesn't run after clicking on the envelope. Make sure the SD card is formatted as FAT32 and not write-protected. If that doesn't work, try another SD card.
2. Once HBC is installed, first thing you want to do is do a NAND backup of the Wii, in case something goes wrong and you need to do a restore. Within HBC, press the Home button, then select Launch BootMii. You'll be presented with four icons. Press the Power button on the Wii (not the remote) to go to the last icon, then press Reset button to select. Press Reset again to choose the first option and start the NAND backup process. Copy the BootMii folder, nand.bin and keys.bin from the SD card, and keep them somewhere safe.
3. Next, we run the IOS236 installer from the HBC. If this doesn't work, run the Simple IOS Patcher instead.
4. Install Priiloader to enable some system menu hacks.
5. Install Multi-Mod Manager and install all the WADs that ModMii has downloaded.
6. That's it. The Wii is now soft-modded.

Like everything else, there's a YouTube video on how to do this if you need further clarification.

All that's left to do is to copy your game backups (ISO or WBFS) to the wbfs folder of your USB stick/drive. This is best done using a WBFS manager like Wii Backup Manager. This tool can convert between different file formats. It can also split game backups that are greater that 4GB.

At this point, you're probably saying, "I've misplaced most of my game discs. Where can I find game backups?" Your best bet is to check with your favourite torrent sites. Also try wiiuiso.com. Between ISO and WBFS, choose the latter as they're always smaller in size, as they only contain the game partition, and not the full disc dump. You might even come across some games in WIA (Wii ISO Archive) format, which is even more compressed. For these, you'll need WIT (Wiimms ISO Tools) to decompress into WBFS. Command syntax is: wit copy game.wia game.wbfs

By the way, the Wii has two USB ports. Make sure your USB drive is connected to the "outer" USB port. From the main menu, run the USB loader and play away.