Old School Nintendo – Wii?

mario.jpgSo you love Wii but miss those Old School greats like Tecmo Bowl or the Super Mario that started it all?  Well now there’s a way!  OK a free way.

Since it’s launch you could “Wii Shop” and purchase old school games for $5-10 each to play on the Wii Emulator.  Tempting for some, too costly for most people.  For a $1/game I’d be all over it – but when I can dust off the old NES in the closet for free… spending $100 grabbing my favorite games (again) is just too much.  It’s the principal of re-buying games mostly.

Enter Homebrew!  The Homebrew (Hack) Channel allows you to install non-Nintendo, open source (free) programs to add functionality to your Wii.   The most popular are the console emulators: NES, Super NES, Sega, Atari, etc.  While Homebrew has been around for a while – it required a certain level of tech savy and hassle that kept it out of the mainstream…  however, the latest brew is fairly straightforward.  Note: if you don’t know what a ROM is you can stop reading now.  The rest of you grab a spare SD card, your ROMs and the freeware below to start brewing…

  1. Upgrade Wii Menu to latest (4.0) version
  2. Format  SD card FAT32
  3. Follow Bannerbomb Homebrew Setup Instructions
  4. Once HB is Setup install Emulators
  5. Add ROMs to the proper Emulator folders
  6. Rock it old school