Back in July of this year, bushing over at Hackmii announced that he had identified a potential security issue that would allow pirated games Wii games to be played on an unmodified Wii console. It appears that Nintendo did respond to his post and he has since begun a dialogue with them to explain his findings. It seems that now bushing is not the only one to have identify an exploit for playing DVD backups on an unmodded Wii. WiiGator at Tehskeen not only found an exploit, but he took it a step further and released a backup launcher complete with source code. The original thread has since been removed with this message posted:
UPDATE BY BRAKKEN: Due to the questionable nature of this application along with respect for [nuke] this thread has been purged of all of it’s posts (sorry) and closed. Please seek this application elsewhere as it will not be supported by TehSkeen. This should prove to the anti-brakken trolls that I’m not here to get hits.
– brakken
Of course, once such a thing has transpired there is no stopping it. VettaCossX has full details posted on downloading, installing, and running the Wii backup launcher. VettaCossX also has a list of games that will run with the Wii backup launcher. I don’t have any Wii backup DVDRs, so I haven’t tried running the backup launcher myself. However, it does appear to be legitimate from what I’m reading in several gaming message boards. This could possibly be the worst console piracy hack since the Sega Dreamcast. Here is a YouTube video demonstrating the launcher in action:
If you do decide to try it, proceed at your own risk. Don’t expect any support from Nintendo if you brick your Wii.
Update: Last week, a backup loader that Waninkoko was working on had been leaked, much to his displeasure. Due to the leak, he decided to abandon the project. WiiGator more or less picked up where Waninkoko left off, and developed his own backup loader. Apparently the one Waninkoko had put together was quite buggy, but from what I see on the compatibility list, WiiGator’s version seems to work much better.