So I recently bought an old wii, specifically for the purpose of homebrewing. I’m able to understand so far as to what needs downloaded on the Wii and how to backup, but I can’t find any sites with games. I noticed Vimms Lair wasn’t an option anymore, and other sites I look through use ROMs for emulators. (Unless, those do work on the console). I think you need .wbfs files, and I’d really appreciate if I was pointed in the right direction

  • FloofahNZ@lemmy.nzEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    I’m not a gamer but remember seeing Wii files on Usenet, just took a look and there’s lots of listings like this one

    Mister Bumblebee Racing Champion (Europe) (WiiWare).wad

    Don’t know if this is what you are after, but there’s loads like that up there.

  • gila@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Are you planning to run backups from discs or an external drive? Scene releases from the era were .iso backups of retail discs. I can’t quite remember for sure but I think .wbfs was for WiiWare i.e. smaller downloadable games. I used to just burn the .iso to a DVD and run it through the homebrew channel.

    Torrentleech has a Wii category, just check it isn’t a Wii U game

    • BadlyTimedLuck@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      I was trying to play games directly off an SD card, but I can’t seem to find the right files. I keep hearing the actual console needs .wbfs files, but I’m not entirely sure on .iso.

      I’ll try torrentleech but I’m pretty new to pirating in general (I just keep seeing its easy to homebrew a wii.) I found some files on archive.org but can’t get them to transfer onto the SD card.

      • gila@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        I think you’ll download .iso’s, then convert them to .wbfs using Wii backup manager, which should also manage the folder structure / transfer to your SD card. I don’t think the console needs .wbfs per se - it’s the method you choose for running the backups which determines format restrictions instead - but Wii backup manager was fairly straightforward to use in my recollection so that should be a good option.

        There might be some repository online already in .wbfs, it just used to be standard to convert from an .iso because that’s the standard container a disc backup will be dumped into. There’s nothing too special about .wbfs other than it omits the garbage data included in retail disc backup .iso’s to pad the discs to 4.3gb, so .wbfs will be smaller