The Ignition Project: Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine

Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine

Keith Gable — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:01:00 -0500

I bought Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I expected it to run on my drivechipped Wii (chipped for homebrew btw). Well, it’s the first Wii game that’s dual layer, and the WiiKey incorrectly assumes that all dual layer discs are GameCube multi-game discs. Great assumption, as it was true. Now it’s not. And unfortunately, WiiKey’s Website is showing the default RHEL test page and apparently has been for some time now.

Shit.

So Googling around, I found out that the WiiKey is compatible with the OpenWii firmware. Great! Except the sucky part is that OpenWii requires programming the chip directly rather than using a DVD. Not that big of a problem, I guess. The biggest problem I’m going to encounter in swapping my WiiKey to run OpenWii is the fact I have to solder on SMD chips and I don’t have good enough magnification (I could probably use a jewelers magnification thingy). Also my soldering iron tip is quite large and my soldering iron doesn’t really have a selection of bits for it with a finer point than what I have. Meh. Also I have to take apart the Wii again, which is an adventure in itself…

So… What am I going to do? I could just desolder the WiiKey and say “screw it”, but that defeats the purpose of it (especially since huge strides have been made in homebrew). So, I think I’m going to do this:

Using this guide I’m going to rewire my WiiKey (yes, I’ll take pictures) and put a port on the back of my Wii which will connect to a modified parallel port cable.
While I have the Wii open, I’ll take it apart the rest of the way and put it in a new awesome case.
I’ll also install a switch on the Wii so that I can turn off the modchip if needed (this switch would be required because the diagram shows that the WiiKey requires power from the parallel port during programming, and I don’t want the possibility of shorting the Wii - so I’ll probably install two switches, one for programmer power ON/OFF and one for DVDROM power ON/OFF). This will avoid this problem from ever occuring again.

Though, like an idiot, I “quicksoldered” the thing to my Wii. In hindsight, it would have been faster to actually use wire, since I ended up tearing a trace off the drive and had to solder to the actual drive chip (luckily the “debug port” pins that were left on the drive are just shortcuts to the pins on the actual chip).

I’ll keep everyone posted with updates.

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine" by Keith Gable

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:59:22 -0500

Yeah, I noticed. It came up the day after I started to rewire my Wiikey and ended up taking a solder pad with my Wiikey when I removed it. So, I have to either figure out how to solder to the chip without bridging the two pins or I have to use a different modchip (e.g. Wasabi).

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine" by TPC

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:42:01 -0500

the weiikey website is back up, and the new firmware fixes the problem with SSBB and other dual layer disks.

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine" by Keith Gable

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:42:42 -0500

Yeah, burning the game works because the DVD mediatype is set so that the WiiKey emulates a retail game. On the retail dual-layer game, the DVD mediatype is set differently, and the WiiKey thinks it’s a GameCube backup or something. Here’s how I imagine the code looks (if it were written in Ruby):

if disc[:booktype] == :dvd_master && disc[:system] == :wii
   boot_wii_disc_without_patching
elsif disc[:booktype] == :dvd_master && disc[:system] == :gamecube
   boot_gc_disc_without_patching
else
   boot_disc_with_patch
end

Except the disc doesn’t need to be patched, and the booktype must be different than a standard DVD (well, it’s not, it’s dual layer). It’s probably a one-line fix. It’s not open source so it’s not like I can go and fix that one line. OpenWii, however, IS open source, and I’ll probably end up switching, unless WiiKey fixes this before I get my Wii apart again.

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine" by Jeremy

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:24:14 -0500

I should have mentioned that I did not set a layer break either. K3B did all the work for me.

"Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine" by Jeremy

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:20:08 -0500

I have a ntsc wii with a wiikey. The wiikey is 1.9g (?), whatever the latest update was. I also have SSBB and it works just fine. The trick is to back up the game and use the burnt copy. I used the newest version of k3b (I use linux) and I used Fujifilm dvd+R dl burning at 2.4x. I did not have to do anything like regionfrii or any of that other crap you may find online. Just burned the ssbb .iso and it updated the wii to 3.2e or u or whatever it is. Then it played fine. Good luck:)