Technology: Wiibrew.org
Demo Leader: Lawrence
Disclaimer: Doing actions such as this can void the warranty on your system and allow you to do things which are not legal under The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I do not endorse nor encourage these actions be taken and would advise against any of it if you are not sure what you are doing.
Summary:
Wiibrew is a special hack you can do to a Nintendo Wii Game System. First, you run one of several available exploits the the exploit crashes the Wii and runs unsigned code in the form of a .dol/.elf file on the root of your SD Card. All you need is an SD card which is bigger than 256MB and a game title from the list provided at the wiki page or you can run a sequence called letterbomb to do that hack if you do not have one of the listed games. The website makes sure to discourage against piracy and will not troubleshoot issues when trying to use a pirated game to do an exploit. The act of installing Wiibrew and using the intended apps is not inherently illegal, the issue comes when people use the unlocked systems to attempt to play ROMs. It is currently illegal to play non authentic copies of games even if you own the original copy and got it legally.
Reflections:
Wiibrew is a way to unlock the full potential of your Wii system and even allows you to play DVD movies (can not on a standard system). The problem is once this is done your Wii is now technically a computer system and has the same capabilities as any other home computer for the most part. You can even load a special version of Linux which is compatible with all Wii peripherals as well as a standard mouse and keyboard while also maintaining the dvd drive functionality.
Quick comparison to super portable computers.
| Nintendo Wii | Intel Compute Stick | Acer Chromebook | |
| Price | $79.99 | $258.99 | $249.99 |
| CPU | Power-PC | Core m3 | Intel Celeron |
| # of Cores | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| CPU Speed | 729MHz | 1.6 GHz | 1.6 GHz |
| GPU | ATI Hollywood | Integrated | Integrated |
| GPU Speed | 243 MHz | N/A | N/A |
| RAM | 2GB | 4GB | 4GB |
| Disk Drive | 512MB | 64GB | 32GB |
| Disc Drive | Yes | No | No |
| Card Reader | Yes SDXC | Yes SDXC | Yes |
| LAN | No | No | No |
| WLAN | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB 2.0 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| USB 3.0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
How to install using Letterbomb:
- Go to please.hackmii.com
- Select your region
- Enter your MAC Address from the Wii into the boxes
- Make sure the HackMii installer is bundled with your download (check box)
- Cut the red wire to download the .zip file and unzip it
- Copy “private” folder and “boot.elf” to your SD Card (recommended 4GB non SDHC)
- Insert the SD card to your Wii and go to Wii Messageboard
- You should see a red envelope
