HDN

You know, I hear a lot about the Wii optical drive failing. I was talking to some of my buddies about the Wii the other day, and a lot of them seemed surprised that mine "still worked". Apparently, this is a pretty common problem, or at least from what I've seen. I think that part of the reason that mine still works is that I've barely used the drive. "Barely" relative to the rest of the time spent on the Wii. That thing has gotten a lot of use. My dad said when we got it that he didn't think that thing would last 20 years (that's how old his SNES was at the time). We're quickly approaching the halfway mark on that one! So far, so good.

Attack of the Timelord! Magnavox Odyssey 2 Difficulty: 1 High Score: 481 October 16, 2020

I plan on doing my DSi because 1. The SD on it is easily accessible and regular-sized, 2. You don’t need a Flashcart, and 3. There is very little risk of bricking the system, from what I’ve read at least. I’m too chicken to touch my 3DS as well. With the N3DS, the micro SD is underneath the back panel of the system. That thing is super worn out. I’m afraid it won’t go back on. I haven’t tried taking it off since last year when what I just described was very close to actually happening. I didn’t mod the Wii U part of the system... yet. All I did was mod the vWii part of it. For those who don’t know, the Wii U comes in two parts. There’s the normal Wii U system menu, but there’s also a fully-fledged Wii menu as well. So far, I have only modded the OG Wii part. That thing was completely barren, so no real risks. Plus, I could just reuse the stuff from the original Wii and copy it to a new SD card.

Since I have gotten the new O2 emulator on my Wii and Wii U, I have been playing along with @nosweargamer during Odyssey 2 month. By playing along, I mean checking out some of the games myself. Here are my thoughts on a few that he has reviewed so far: Pick Axe Pete! Confusing at first, but really fun once you understand what it is you’re supposed to do. I mean, really, really fun. Check this one out, now! K.C. Munchkin! A really fun maze game. The game offers a ton of different options including a level editor. Great sound design. Very satisfying, fun, and addictive. However, I feel it’s a tad overrated. It’s great, but not as good as some others on the system. Attack of the Timelord! Probably my favorite O2 game. The game “attacks” all my “time”. I get sucked in, big time. Unfortunately no voice emulation, though that’s expected. Computer Golf! Only marginally better than Atari golf, which as NSG mentioned came later. I like the little fits the dude throws. It’s aged a bit, but it’s very charming. Electronic Table Soccer! Is fantastic. It’s so much fun! A real hidden gem on the system. Controls aren’t great, but don’t ruin the game for me.

It is very easy to do on a Wii or Wii U if you would like to! There’s a way to do it that’s easier and more efficient, but I used the LEGO Star Wars “Return of the Jodi” method to mod the vWii mode on the Wii U. It’s so bizarre, almost like a playground rumor. It reminds me a lot of stuff like “L is real 2401”. I’m still really surprised that said rumor turned out to be true after all. A beta build of Super Mario 64 that contained the scrapped Luigi was leaked 24 years and 1 month after the original game’s release. Interesting, huh? But yeah, you should mod your Wii if you haven’t already. I plan on modding my DSi soon to get Stella on it. Nothing is better than on-the-go Tunnel Tunner! But anyways, a Wii softmod is very easy to do.

Just once, I wanted to break 10,000. But I think 9850 is the best I’m going to get tonight. A childhood favorite revisited. This game kicked my ass, but I had a blast playing it. I’m also pretty happy about getting MAME finally set up. I think I’m going to continue playing after this challenge is over. I look foreword to our next one! I’m ready to emulate whatever I face! Unless it’s VIC-20... This game was played on my newly-modded Wii U system!

As many of you know, I set up my Christmas stuff last week. It was a process, all right! The only Christmas stuff we have set up is in my (Game)Room, not the rest of the house. However, we did help my grandparents set up their outside decorations last Monday. My sister and I wrote a stupid Christmas story today using the C64 BASIC prompt. It was very stupid. Does anyone know of a good floppy disc C64 word processor?

How I choose to spend a Saturday night. Waiting for a program I typed in to roll a pair of dice 1,000,000 times. In BASIC. Not exactly known for its speed. Let’s see how long this takes us. After this, I plan on typing in another program from 1978’s “101 BASIC Computer Games” by David Ahl: Russian Roulette. I am thoroughly enjoying my time with this book. The presentation is wonderful and it is quite educational on the basics of text-based BASIC commands. I especially love all the little illustrations of the robots playing all the different games, a lot of which are quite imaginative. The games themselves also are quite unique and varied. Not sure how good they are as I haven’t gotten any to work except this dice one. I’m assuming not great, but not terrible. There’s only so much you can do with text-based games in BASIC. You can’t expect someone to sit there and type out a full text adventure. I do wish I had a physical copy of the book, but the PDF is fine.

Temple of Rom was more for my dad than myself. But I'll take a look at this Apshai series. What's it on? The Atari 8 bit line was one I was really excited to try out. I would love to try some of the games that were also on the 5200 as well. Great! I will post one sometime soon. I should also thank my godfather. He's the one who hacked the Wii back in 2011 and he also walked me through my Wii U jailbreak. Hence the "Ha Ha" rating. No, no, don't be sorry! Stuff like this is why I make these types of threads in the first place.

One of the cool things about this emulator is that there are several different options for loading games, from what I can gather. There's the "real 1541 emulation mode", which has a little disclaimer saying that it may be slow. There's also a standard loading mode, so you can load it normally. That's all speculation; the only thing I have really focused on was the BASIC prompt thing. I looked around the emulator settings and UI and stuff, and that's what I saw. I'll have to test it out myself. And isn't that part of the experience? What's the point of a game if you can't watch the entire Godfather trilogy while it's loading? There is none!

Here I am again with another "Adventures" thread. I plan to update this frequently like I do my "Harry's Adventures in 7800 Collecting" topic. And look at that-- when I tried to type a quotations symbol for that last sentence, I accidentally typed an @. Yup. I'm learning BASIC on my new Commodore 64. Well, not actually. I don't have a C64 (yet), but if you've been following my posts you would notice that I have been adding a bunch of new emulators to my Nintendo Wii. Since then, I've also modded the "Virtual Wii" mode that's on the Wii U. So now I have two emulation devices: one downstairs in the Game Room (the Vader-Wii), and one upstairs in the (Game)Room (the Wii U). Anyways, we had an old USB keyboard that nobody had used in years since we got rid of our desktop around 2014. I decided to get a Commodore 64 emulator going on it. Ever since learning a lot about vintage computers (and Commodore specifically) from The 8-Bit Guy YouTube channel back in 2018, I had always wanted to learn BASIC. It's just so cool! I tried getting emulators in the past, but none worked on my stupid Windows Vista laptop. I had even considered picking up BASIC Programming on 2600. I'm very glad I have this new emulator. So far, I haven't loaded up any games on the SD card for the Commodore 64. The emulator is a port of the "Frodo" emulator for the Wii, and it seems to have an option for full 1541 disk drive emulation on it, as well as saving to it. I wonder if there was a way I could get the image for a blank floppy disk and save some of my BASIC programs to it. Before we get to my first BASIC experience, let's talk about the keyboard I'm using. It's USB as previously mentioned, and has a modern layout. Not great for C64 typing, I found. Lots of the characters are in very foreign spots compared to what I'm used to. The ( symbol, for instance, is SHIFT and 8 instead of SHIFT and 9. What's more, + and - are flip-flopped. I tinkered with the emulator for a few hours and eventually got used to it, but now that I'm back to the normal layout while making this post, I'm having problems. On the plus side, the Arrow Keys act as cursors instead of those stupid ones on the OG Commodore 64. Overall, the keyboard isn't bad at all, just something you need to get used to. I'm having fun learning BASIC, too. It reminds me a lot of Scratch, but with text. Last night, I spent a few hours typing up a Bowling program from the classic book "101 BASIC Computer Games". I bet a lot of you remembered that one. I never got "Harrison's Funky-Ass Bowling" to work right (I don't think it was meant for C64 BASIC), but I did learn a few valuable commands, like some variables and whatnot. I think I'll type another program up on my new "computer" tonight. Oh, I love the Wii U so much. I'll defend that thing until the day I die. It's a great system. In the future, once I get the BASICs (get it?) of the Commodore 64 down, I hope to get some other vintage computer emulators on my Wii and Wii U. There are quite a few available; I'm most interested in getting the Apple II one and Atari 8-bit one. But the 64 is where I'm starting my adventure. I'm kind of bummed that there's no VIC-20 or TRS-80 computer emulators for the system; I'd pick the VIC over the 64 for a starting computer. But this is fine. Anyways, that's where I am in my other adventure right now. I have some questions for you all: What Commodore 64 games would you recommend I load onto my card and try out? Do you have any good BASIC games or programs I could type out that will be cool/fun and help me to understand the language better? What "computer" should I get next? What games should I try out for it? Did they port Temple of Rom to any system besides the TRS-80? Would you like to see a "Harry's Adventures in Wii Hacking" thread? Can someone please help me stop pressing @ when I want a "? Thanks for reading my thread! I expect to update this frequently whenever I experience something new that relates to the topic. Take care.

Now that I have it set up, I think we should do some more MAME challenges as well. I also happened to jailbreak my Wii U, using the virtual Wii menu. It's a weird way you set it up. It involves LEGO Star Wars. I know there's an easier way nowadays, but this method is just so strange that I had to use it! Works like a charm. We should also do some more 7800 challenges.

This thing ends Sunday, right? I can improve enough to post a score in that time. So far, all of my scores are far too embarassing! Which is odd given that I used to play this game all the time when I was like 8 or 9. I was never good at it, though. This is a fun one. The graphics remind me of arcade Jungle Hunt. Could it be running on the same or similar hardware? They're both by the same company.

Hey, Wade! Glad you came over. I'm from Wisconsin myself. Glad you found us.

I can't help you, man. I'm in a similar situation here. I played the old stuff as well as the modern Nintendo stuff. It's so different than the PlayStation and XBOX consoles. I only have the OG XBOX and no PlayStations. I feel I could get my groove on with the PS1, maybe the PS2, but that's about it. The PS3 I have no experience with. About the only thing I use my XBOX for is arcade compilations. I can't think of any good games for you. However, you could pick up some games from the PS1 and PS2. I'm pretty sure that model of PS3 is backwards compatible with them both.

I use the Wii U for the same purpose. It comes with HDMI, but will work with the Wii’s composite cables. I actually bought another set just for that purpose. Netflix and YouTube. Not like my CRT is compatible with composite right out of the box! I use a separate RF modulator to get the composite signals to go through coax.

Yes, you will have to do that. I noticed that as well. Pretty cool thing you got there. OG Sunnyvale cart. I think I missed one of the launch games; Centipede. Neither of us have that one in a cool, shutter door dust cover shell! And your CIB 2600 "Launch Nine", @chas10e. Pretty cool. I have just one question however; what are those inside of? It almost looks like a kiosk or store shelf, though I could be mistaken. Please, let us know!

Even if your new Wii doesn't end up working, it's not that big of a problem. I only use the disc drive for my GameCube games. In my opinion, the Wii's library is mediocre at best. Most of the games are cash-grab "waggle the Wii remote" family and casual-oriented minigame compilations. Even Nintendo's own first party offerings are lacking compared to what has come before and since the Wii. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are no Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, or Breath of the Wild. Super Mario Galaxy, while beloved by many, just doesn't seem to interest me. And don't even get me started on Metroid: Other M! Not to say the Wii didn't have good games. It did; though I think of all the Nintendo consoles, the Wii's library is probably the worst. The original DS has a similar problem, but at least that one had some real greats like Super Mario 64 DS, my favorite Mario game. The Wii U had a library much better suited to my tastes as a Nintendo fan, and so did the GameCube. I love my Vader Wii. I have spent a lot of time with it and have some fantastic memories. However, most of those memories were spent with either FCE-Ultra GX, Wii 2600, or the GameCube compatibility. You'll have to mod this Wii, @RickR. TL;DR: If your revitalization attempts on your new Wii fail, turn it into an emulation slave!

Wow, @chas10e, that’s a cool collection! I believe that’s all the launch games except for the two I have: Dig Dug and Galaga. The latter I plan on giving away soon! I got the green light from the parents. Maybe you would win it and add another to your collection. And a 1984 Pole Position II as well! Awesome! My guess is that these 7800 shells were leftovers from the 1984 release. They aren’t cheap like the Tramiel ones. Both of my spring-loaded cartridges are from later years.

Oh, I see. Last time, you only showed it from the side, that's why I thought we had the same model. You can tell because of the way the text is oriented on the side with the disc drive. Mine is meant to be standing up, while yours is meant to lay on its side. I believe that one's called the "family edition". So I guess I'm still alone in the "cool Wii" club. Eh. More for me! EDIT: This (above post) showed up, literally, the exact second I posted this. Vader-Wii high five, @RickR! My Wii and I have been spending a lot of time together today. I've been setting up MAME, Odyssey 2, and 7800 emulation. I can't wait to play some O2 with my dad. He was pretty happy when he say the rainbow-colored SELECT GAME screen come up. I surprised him with it. I should make a post recounting our O2 adventures later today.

The newer models aren't, but the older ones are. This model is. How do I know? This is my Wii! The same model, at least. When I was little, I thought it was pretty cool that I had the black Wii while everyone else had the white one. You really don't see these too often. In fact, @RickR here is the only other person I know personally who owns the thing, unless someone else here has one that I don't know about. I've seen the occasional YouTuber have one in the background, but no one I knew. So that's cool. The black Wii looks wayyy cooler. It's like the Vader Model of the Wii world.

Here's a video I watched today and used as a guide to set up the Odyssey 2 emulator. It's very helpful. This guy also has a pretty cool "console libraries" series, in which he takes a look at a console, does a quick "first impression" thing, and then rates it. He's done a fair amount of Atari systems so far, including the 7800. But I digress. Watch this video or just skip to the system you would want to see first. If you have questions, I will try to help the best I can. I'm relatively new to this, but I can help a little bit.