In this episode Shannon hacks the Wii and shares her favorite homebrew with us. Matt connects 3CX to the PSTN and Darren sets up a network monkey client in Linux.

Show Notes

Twilight Hack

Wii Homebrew

You need a few things:

* wii
* wii mote controller
* computer
* internet access
* small sd card formatted as FAT.
* Zelda Twilight Princess for Wii

The Wii Brew Wiki
Homebrew Channel

How to install the Wii Homebrew Channel on your Wii using the Twilight Hack.

Download the Twilight Hack. There are two versions, one for Wii system 3.3, and one for 3.4. I haven’t updated mine, so I’m still on 3.3.

Download the Homebrew Channel zip file.

Also, if you want, go ahead and download some apps from the HackMii website. I suggest the Homebrew Browser so you dont have to copy apps to the SD card every time you wanna download something new.

You’ll need a small SD card 2 gig or smaller. Make sure to format your SD card as FAT. Do to this, right click on the SD card, and choose format. Simple!

Put the SD card in your Wii, then turn it on. Go to the Wii Options–>Data management–>Save Data–>Wii section of the menu. Find your Zelda: Twilight Princess saved file, and copy it. If you havent played it yet, you might not have a saved file, so go ahead and play a bit. Put your SD card in your computer and copy the “Private” folder from the card to your comp, just in case you may need it in the future.

Move the homebrew executable that you extract from the zip file to your SD card root directory and save it as boot.dol or boot.elf.

Also, save the Twilight Hack Private folder from the extracted zip file to your SD card.

Now, check out your Twilight Princess game CD. It should have some hard to read serial numbers inscribed on the inner circle. Match this serial with the corresponding “Save slot”.
RVL-RZDE-0A-0 JPN /private/wii/title/rzde/data.bin TwilightHack0RVL-RZDE-0A-0 USA /private/wii/title/rzde/data.bin TwilightHack0RVL-RZDE-0A-2 USA /private/wii/title/rzde/data.bin TwilightHack2
Region Inner circle text File Save slot
Europe/Australia RVL-RZDP-0A-0 JPN /private/wii/title/rzdp/data.bin Twilight Hack
Asia (JPN) RVL-RZDJ-0A-0 JPN /private/wii/title/rzdj/data.bin Twilight Hack
America (USA)
America (USA)
America (USA)

Inside the private–>wii–>title folder are 3 folders with letters corresponding to the serials. Delete the two that don’t match your cd.

Put your SD card back in the Wii. Go to Wii Options–>Data management–>Save Data–>Wii and erase the Zelda save now. Open the SD card menu and choose Twilight Hack. Copy to the Wii.

Stick your game CD in your Wii and boot up Zelda! Choose the save slot that corresponds with your serial. Mine was TwilightHack0. Go ahead and skip the intro, it doesn’t hurt the hack. Once you see Link as a playable character, either walk backwards or talk to the guy in front of you. This will start up the hack install process, so just choose “Agree” to everything.

You’re done! Now you can play on the homebrew channel. Yay!

Get the homebrew browser so you can download apps straight from the channel instead of shuffling your SD card around.

To do that, simply stick the sd in your computer and create a folder called apps. Copy the homebrew browser folder and its contents over to the sd and back it goes to your wii!

If you have some cool homebrew for the Wii, tell me about it or ask me any questions at Snubs@hak5.org.

Don’t forget to submit your questions@hak5.org and feedback@hak5.org and thanks for your contributions.

Pokemon Ranger DS is about your quest to become a great pokemon ranger.  You travel from village to village and are given missions from the senior rangers to help citizens and get to a higher level.  These bad guys called the Go-Rock Squad end up stealing special equipment from the good guy pokemon rangers team, and they use this to capture pokemon for their evil deeds.

The world you play PR in is pretty small.  You get to choose between a male or female character and name them as you want.  My characters name was Snubs (go figure).  Capturing pokemon is fun.  Now, you don’t throw them in a Pokeball and battle other characters.  You capture wild pokemon, they follow you around as you travel, then you use them once and they are freed.  Of course, you can capture them again if you want.  You can talk to all the characters in the game, and their conversations give me the idea this game is made for children and teens.

Leveling up is probably the main reason I’m still playing this.  I was able to get through the game in about 3-4 days, and every time I leveled up, I wanted to get to the next level.    You also can get up to a Rank 10 in the game as a pokemone ranger.

My least favorite part about the game is the cut scenes.  The chat bubbles are slow (even on the fastest speed), and if something is happening that requires a part of the plot, you dont have the choice to skip.  This is annoying if you fail a mission and have to restart.  You have to sit through all the information again…

I’d give this game a 7 / 10.  All around a fun, cute game.  It’s easy to pass the time with Pokemon Ranger DS, and it’s a bit different from other pokemon games.  I wish I could skip cut scenes and I wish the game was longer. 

Mario Kart Wii

It’s a really fun game.  I definetly spent a good afternoon playing Mario Kart Wii with DK while he was visiting.  It’s the perfect game to just play circuit after circuit with a friend and pass the controller back and forth.  I think the races are a little easy.  We were able to unlock all the circuits in no time, getting first place in all but… I think 3 races.  Of course, the feeling of acheivement was great!  Everytime we unlocked a new car/character/racetrack, I got so excited!!  I wanted to keep playing all night!

Mario Kart Wii comes with a new nifty little wheel that you can set your Wiimote in, to ‘drive’ during the game.  We found the wheel to be incredibly stupid, and I tried various ways of playing.  Because the game is on Wii, you have the choice of playing with the wheel, wiimote, classic controller, etc.  I chose the classic controller and found it to be the easiest by far.  It’s just like playing the old school games from the old consoles.

The graphics are well done.  The edges around some characters and tracks are rough, but the coloring and scenery of racetracks from old games is pure awesomeness.  Nintendo kept some of the older racetracks!!  There are also quite a few new racetracks too, and I have to say, I love the new Rainbow Road.  It’s so colorful and pretty and ghey! lol

The music kicks ass.  Whenever you change menues, the music follows you.  It doesnt change songs, but changes the mood of the same track by just a bit.  It’s really cool! Hey! Listen!

The only issue I had with gameplay was that anytime you get hit by something, it seems like things pile up on you.  For example, if I got hit with a red shell, as soon as I get hit, I also get hit with a blue shell, a squid, a green shell, and I get run over by Bowser.  It happened to computer characters as well.  I’d hit them, and they’d get hit a few more times by other people.  It’s annoying!

All in all, great video game.  It’s perfect for families, parties, etc.  There isn’t any violence at all. It’s so fun!!  Even Molly Wood likes it. 

Smash Brothers Brawl had a huge cult following and almost all my friends were excited about the new game for Nintendo Wii.  Darren reserved his copy and we waited in line while playing Tetris DS (and I pwned him, btw) while chilling inside the mall.  I’ve never been a big Smash Brothers gamer, but I’ve played my fair share of each of the games.

The first thing I noticed was the graphics.  The graphics kick ass, and I love the special effects whenever you use your final attack during a battle.  The characters are beautiful, and the cut scenes are made so well.  Nintendo is really starting to show off what the Wii can do as far as graphics go with this game, as well as with Mario Galaxy.

When you first play the game, I suggest playing with various controllers to figure out which one you would want to use.  I personally like the Wiimote + nunchuck, but Darren used the Classic controller.  It really just depends on your style.

There’s SO MUCH to do in this game.  When you play Brawl (playing against up to 4 people without an internet connection), you can unlock new characters and basically try out each of the available characters and maps to find your favorite.  I did not play any of the other battle modes, but I did take some time to check out the trophies, stickers, and maps you can make.  I really have no clue why there are stickers and trophies in this game other than to raise your e-peen, but  they are interesting to look at non-the-less.  There are a few minigames which are fun, but didn’t peek my interest that much.  My favorite thing to do, other than playing Brawl tourneys, was creating my own maps.  Really cool!  There’s lots of different ways you can create a map, and you can even choose your favorite music.

Apparently you can play this game online with other people, but since my Wii isn’t hooked up, I wasn’t able to do this.  O wells

All in all, it’s a great game and I suggest it to anyone who likes old school style battle zone type games.

What would I do without you?  You give me company while between classes.  You are my companion late at night when I’m bored.  I can play as much as I want without you getting tired… Man, what a nice battery life you have.  Now that you have a lovely Mod chip that can fit 20 games at once, I feel free as a bird, able to play to my hearts consent.  And best of all, you’re pink.  Yes, pink.  Let me just say, I love you <3

-Snubs

I love my pink DS.  It’s a nice lil toy   Specially since Darren got me that mod chip.  I beat Cooking Mama last night.  Not hard.  I think that game was made for 2 year olds.  This new game I started to play- Dragon Quest Heroes- is really strange.  I play a character that is a blob.  It’s very weird!

I bought my graduation announcements yesterday.  This is it, I’m really graduating in 2 months.  It finally occured to me that it’s really going to happen!