How To Load Usb On Wii

I want to play a game from my usb device(32GB) but usb loader gx wont find my usb stick. I have formatted it to wbfs and tried both usb ports, but it won't work. I know that I have to patch my ios, but I don't know how, and what to patch. I have tried to installed something, but it won't work. I ran a syscheck and here's the results: sysCheck v2.1.0b13 by DoubleA and R2-D2199.runs on IOS58.

If you followed my previous post on attaching a USB hard drive to your Wii, you now should have the convenience of loading games directly from your hard drive without ever having to worry about swapping discs. Yet having to load the Homebrew channel, then going through to your USB loader can feel cumbersome sometimes. Getting channels to go directly to the games, or the USB Loader is easier than you would think.

  1. Wii Backup Manager is a program to copy Wii games from your computer to a USB drive so you can play the games on your Wii. It also can download game covers from GameTDB and can be used to list what games you have. This tutorial will tell you how to copy over games from your computer to your USB drive.
  2. Select “USB Mass Storage Device”. Insert any game disc, and press “+” to install it. This may take some time depending on the size of the game. Repeat last step for each and every game you want to install.
  3. Plug your USB hard drive back into your Wii, load up WAD manager via homebrew, find the wad you just created and install it. If at any time you need to uninstall this channel, simply load up the WAD manager, find your wad, and select “uninstall” instead of install.

You obviously need to have the Homebrew Channel plus a USB loader installed before you can do any of this. If you don’t, follow these steps then come back here once you’re done. Please note that the steps here can and might damage your Wii! I very highly recommend you install BootMii into boot2 and back up your NAND before attempting any of the following steps. Should anything go wrong, you have a backup you can fall back on, otherwise you are continuing at your own risk!

Prerequisite Steps

  • Download and install WAD Manager.
  • Create a “/wad” folder on your SD card (must be on the root of the card!) Any channels that you want to install must be placed here or else the WAD Manager will be unable to find them.

There’s two options from here on out, and you’re welcome to do both. You can just install a usb forwarder channel that will allow you to access your USB Loader from the main menu, or install channels for individual games so that they show up on the main menu.

Installing USB Loader Forwarder Channel

There’s quite a few USB forwarder channels out there, but they all do pretty much the same thing. A USB forwarder channel looks in specific directories for an installed USB loader and tries to run it. The advantage of this is that it makes it simple to upgrade your USB loader without ever having to mess with the forwarder channel, since you can just swap the boot.dol to a newer version.

To make things easier, you can download the one I use: Universal Forwarder Channel by Narolez. This forwarder looks in the following locations for a USB Loader boot.dol:

  • sd:/apps/usbloader_cfg/boot.dol
  • sd:/apps/usbloader/boot.dol
  • usb:/apps/usbloader_cfg/boot.dol
  • usb:/apps/usbloader/boot.dol

Forwarder Installation

  • Copy the .wad file to “sd:/wad”.
  • Load up WAD Manager in homebrew, find your wad, and choose to install.

You should now have the channel correctly installed, and should be able to access your USB loader directly from the main menu! If at any time you need to uninstall the channel from your Wii, you can follow the installation steps above, choose the same wad file, then choose to uninstall and the channel will be removed from your system.

Installing Channels for Individual Games

Installing games already on your USB hard drive is pretty simple, just be sure you already have the games loaded onto you hard drive via USB Loader. You also need to download CRAP in order to assist with the channel creation.

Channel Installation Steps

  • Plug in your usb hard drive to your computer.
  • Launch CRAP.
  • Select the drive letter of your USB hard drive, i.e. J:.
  • Choose the game which you wish to create a channel for.
  • Select a loader. Most of the time you should be fine with using USB Loader 1.6, but you may need to use a different loader depending on what options you want to apply to the channel.
  • Click on “create channel”
  • Your wad will be saved in the WAD directory of your CRAP folder, so you will need to copy/move this wad to your USB hard drive.
  • Plug your USB hard drive back into your Wii, load up WAD manager via homebrew, find the wad you just created and install it.
  • If at any time you need to uninstall this channel, simply load up the WAD manager, find your wad, and select “uninstall” instead of install.
Downloading wii games on usb

You should now have a channel listed on your main menu for your game, and you can repeat the above steps for any additional games you wish to install.

There may be an occasional issue with a couple of games depending on what version of cIOS38 your are currently running. cIOS38 rev. 14 unfortunately breaks dual-layed disc compatibility, so games such as Smash Bros. Brawl or Metroid Prime Trilogy will not work in USB Loader. Wii Sports Resort will not work via the channel method if you >13 installed, so you may want to pick and choose what cIOS38 you are running based on what games you want to install as channels.

Name (Version if Applicable)ResultNotesRegionRevision
007 - Quantum of Solace Works runs slowly but it loads fine and is playable. Screen is sideways USA r185
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth Works Slow, especially when displaying dialogue. USA r180
Advance Wars: Dual Strike Works Press any button to skip first screen. Speed and music is slow but functional. USA r185
Again Works Works perfectly. next Rev needs a side view mode USA r154
Age Of Empires - The Age of Kings Works Sound is buggy but speed is rather accurate. Playable USA r185
Alice in Wonderland Works Playable but sound is buggy and it runs very slowly. USA r185
Alvin & the Chipmunks Title Screen Music is buggy and unable to select the main menu. USA r185
Animal Crossing: Wild World Works Runs at a slow pace, can't read dilog, slow reading speed, Sound is constant buzz. USA r185
Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney Works Slow, especially when displaying dialogue. USA r180
Aquarium DS Works Slow but playable USA r185
Arthur & the Invisibles Works playable and emulates at a reasonable speed. USA r185
Assassin's Creed Altair's Chronicles Works Slow but playable USA r185
ATV Quad Frenzy Works Runs slow but playable. Pixels seems to be stretched out USA r185
Avatar The Last Airbender Works Sound is buggy, dilog stacks up making it unreadable. Very slow, seems to be playable USA r185
Backyard Baseball 2010 Works Loads fast and playable. Plays at about 50% speed USA r185
Bakugan Battle Brawlers Title Screen Super slow loading time. Cannot progress past title. USA r79
Bakugan Battle Trainer Title Screen Cannot choose new game, or any option USA r79
Biker Mice From Mars Works Loads fast, sound is good. There is no video on the top screen when playing the game. USA r79
Bionicle Heroes Title Screen Loads fast and sounds good. Cannot get past the options screen before gameplay. USA r79
Black Sigil - Blade of the Exile Works Slightly slow, has a fuzzy sound issue sometimes. USA r180
Bomberman Land Touch! Title Screen Cannot get past title without stylus. USA r79
Call of Duty Modern Warfare Works Runs slow. Once in the game movement is really slow and cannot see much of anything in the top screen. USA r79
Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Mobilized Works Runs slow. Once in the game movement is really slow and cannot see much of anything in the top screen. USA r79
Call of Duty World at War Works Gets past title screen and past difficulty select screen to the Boot Camp main screen but doesn't progress past that. USA r79
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Works Very slow. Save file creation need few minutes. USA r180
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Works Very slow. Save file creation need few minutes. USA r180
Chrono Trigger Works Game is playable sound is near perfect, little lag happen sometime, the only problem seem for now is saving take a lot of time USA r180
Crash of the Titans Title Screen Freezes right before entering gameplay. Black screen, have to hard reboot. USA r79
CSI: Dark Motives Works Loads fast sound is bad during opening cutscene, but fine after. Cannot access bottom screen without stylus. USA r79
Custom Robo Arena Works Very slow. EUR r184
Deca Sports Works Loads to title screen but cannot use the stylus. A little lag in the audio/video USA r73
Dementium: The Ward Works Slow but playable. Bad Sound EUR r184
Digimon World - Dawn Works It is slow, but playable. USA r154
Digimon World - Dusk Works Plays very well. Some slowdown during battles, but I played for 15 minutes. USA r79
DK Jungle Climber Works Playable, but slow and contains graphical errors. EUR r154
Dokapon Journey Works Sound and game runs what seems like 50+% speed but playable USA r185
Dragonology Title Screen Loads fast and has good sound. Black screen after saving screen. USA r79
Elite Beat Agents Works Slow, static music, good sounds, graphics seem to be normal. Overall unplayable, but works. USA r185
Exit Works Loads fast, the sound is good. Just cannot figure out where the guy I am controlling is...:) USA r79
Feel the Magic: XY/XX Uses microphone Some parts of the game require the microphone, making you unable to progress. But the game seems to run good enough. USA r184
Final Fantasy IV Works Very slow but playable. Sound glitches some times EUR r184
Final Fantasy XII - Revenant Wings Sound Slow. Constant static. USA r184
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Rings Of Fate Works Slow. Occasional inverted colors on top screen. USA r184
Final Fantasy Fables - Chocobo Tales Works Runs at 20%. Audio static during intro. USA r184
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 Grimoire of the Rift Works Slow. Some sound loop errors. USA r184
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 - Grimoire of the Rift Title Screen Slow,freezes after selecting difficulty EUR r154
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon Works Loads fast, runs kinda slow in spots and the sound is good. Plays almost perfectly USA r79
From the Abyss Works Plays at about 60% speed. Sound is good too! USA r79
Gardening Mama Title Screen Runs a little slow and cannot get past title screen. USA r79
Ghostbusters Works Loads slow and only the bottom screen has any graphics. The sounds is unbearable.... USA r79
Harvest Moon Sunshine Islands Works Really slow but playable. USA r184
Hell's Kitchen Title Screen Sound is terrible. Cannot get past typing in name. USA r79
Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine Title Screen Sounds is terrible, cannot progress pat title screen. USA r79
Jump! Ultimate Stars(English Patched) Works Playable but sound is buggy and it runs very slowly. JAP r185
Kamen Rider Battle Ganbaride Card Battle Taisen Works Very slow; PCM based sound effects and voice clips come out as garbled nonsense, palette errors in card selection screen; small graphical glitches JPN r185
Kirby Super Star Ultra Works Loads slow, runs slow music is fine. Completely playable. USA r79
Kirby Squeak Squad Works Runs slowly, sound appears fine, noticable delays when loading (going through doors, etc). Could be considered playable despite the slowness. PAL r122
Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning Title Screen Plays Music Only USA r77
Legend of Spyro: Shadow Legacy Works Slow, but works USA r180
Lego Battles Title Screen Sound is bad. Loads very slowly. USA r79
Lionel Trains: On Track Works All aboard. (E) r185
Luminous Arc Works Slow during battles. Bad sound some times EUR r184
Luminous Arc 2 Title Screen Cannot see/use stylus to get past. Boots back to HBC just fine USA r73
Lux Pain Works Slow,Colours flash,sound is terrible(static) USA r79
Mario Hoops 3-on-3 Title Screen Loads up to menu with horrible Sound and once started game goes all weird.. USA r77
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Title Screen Slow cutscenes. fast menus. Cannot progress past opening cutscenes to gameplay. USA r79
Mario Party DS Works Playable, Should work fine. Works on r79 as well USA r77
Mario Kart DS Works Playable, Should work fine USA r167
Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time Works Plays Nice and smoothly USA r77
Mega Man Battle Network 5: Double Team DS Title Screen After selecting new game and Team, it's all since You can't go through intro text (still no reaction to keys since r169 and probably olders, tested on GameCube controller) USA r179
Mega Man Star Force series Works Play slow USA r169
Mega Man ZX Works Play slow, music fine. USA r140
Mega Man ZX Advent Works Play slow, music fine. USA r140
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes Works Runs slow, sound works, to get to a fight you have to do a tutorial first (tested with Fusing tutorial). During fight, horrible flickering on both screens, top screen has negative colors. USA r79
Monster Jam: Urban Assault Works Bad sound. Once racing you cannot see the road or other vehicles, just the on-screen display. USA r79
Moon Title Screen Bad sound. No video on top screen. Never makes it past choosing difficulty. USA r79
Naruto Shippuden: Ninja Council 4 Works Gets to title very fast. Once in the game though you cannot see your character. USA r79
Nintendogs: Chihuahua & Friends Works A litte Laggy, But Playable USA r77
New Super Mario Bros. Work The 3D is not support yet; skips a bit USA/PAL r122, r167
Osu! Takatae! Ouendan! First cutscene Freezes right when first mission cutscene ends. But before that, the game runs rather nicely, with a bit of slowdown and graphical glitches here and there Japan r184
Pac-Man World 3 1/2 Title Screen Loads up Nice looks Playable, But dosent load up to Title screen... USA r77
Phoenix Wright: Trials and Tribulations Works Slow, especially when displaying dialogue. USA r180 + r185
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Works Slow, especially when displaying dialogue. USA r180 + r185
Phoenix Wright: Justice for All Works Slow, especially when displaying dialogue. USA r180 + r185
Ping Pals Works White screen few minutes, then game runs fine. USA r176
Pokemon Black Works Runs very slow speed. Frame Skip doesn't seem to help... JPN r208
Pokemon Dash Working A little slow but playable. USA r180
Pokemon Diamond Works Very slow. But speed is a little better then before. USA r185
Pokemon Heart Gold Works Very slow. USA r180
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team Works Runs at 1/2 to 1/4 speed. USA r180
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Darkness Works Runs at 1/2 to 1/4 speed. USA r180
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky Works Runs at 1/2 to 1/4 speed. USA r180
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time Works Runs at 1/2 speed mostly, some graphic issues, nothing serious. also, wont save. USA r154
Pokemon Platinum Works Very slow but playable USA r185
Pokemon Soul Silver Works Too slow to play(frame skipping does not help), at least the game works. USA r180
Pokémon SoulSilver Black screen It is slow, but it starts. After Prof. Oak's explanation you get a black screen J r154
Pokemon White Works Runs at a very slow speed. USA r185
Populous DS Title Screen Bottom screen does not show once on title screen. Cannot progress past it. USA r79
Price is Right 2010 Works Gets to the screen to make a character and cannot use/see stylus. Boots to HBC just fine. USA r79
Prince of Persia: The Fallen King Title Screen Sound is terrible. Cannot get past language selection screen. Europe r79
Professor Layton and the Curious Village Title Screen Gets to Title Screen with working sound, but no stylus to progress past this point. Europe r122
Ragnarok DS Title Screen Sound horrible, slow, load Title but could not start game USA r86
Rayman DS: The Great Scape Works Very slow but playable. EUR r184
Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party Title Screen Gets stuck at the 'saving game do not turn off' screen. Have to hard reboot. USA r79
Sonic Rush Adventure Works Reformatting save data screen, just turn off the wii and load the game again. USA r180
Sonic Rush Works White screen, grab a beer and wait until game starts, only happens on first load. USA r180
Super Mario 64 DS Works Slow but playable, freezes in first level, then back to HBC. USA r154
Super Monkey Ball Touch and Roll Works Very very Slow but other than that, it's perfect(even loads 3D) USA r154
Super Robot Wars OG Saga - Endless Frontier Title Screen Load sponsor but could not pass Title screen USA r86
Sims 2, Pets Works Graphics Good, Playable, Slow loading USA r170
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Barely playable Works, but it's unbearable at it's current state. Slow, awful sound, and the screens are badly colored. Europe r184
SBK: Snowboard Kids Works Very slow, but no graphic or audio glitches whatsoever. USA r184
Tales of Innocence Title Screen Up to the title screen it sounds like static and things flash a lot. After starting a new game, the first cut scene just shows a black and green flashing screen instead of any characters. Dialogue stuff still shows up. USA r200
Tetris DS Title Screen Loads fine, title has abnormal coloring, operational at this point, but beyond this, only the music works USA r154
Time Hollow Title Screen Loads fine til titlescreen, music is great... freezes as soon as you start the game. USA r185
Tomb Raider Underworld Title Screen The sound is unbearable and the graphics are a bit slow. Boots to HBC just fine. USA r79
Trackmania DS Works Works, but is really slow. Only fun if you like snailracing. EU r154
Tony Hawk's American Sk8land Title Screen Sound replaced with static; returns to HBC immediately after choosing your skin color. USA r184
Trauma Center: Under the Knife 1 Works Sort of slow, but no graphical glitches. Sound runs fine regardless of speed, and cutscenes run 100% USA r184
Wario: Master of Disguise Works Sound is replaced with loud stuttering and screeching. Long loads. playble. USA r122
Warioware D.I.Y. Works works but very slow. stylus now visible USA r154
Warioware Touched! Works Movies are around 3/4 speed. Minigames run at full speed USA/EU r154
Worms - Open Warfare Works 100% Speed with frame skip. Definitely playable. USA r182
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Title Screen Graphics run fast. Boots back to HBC just fine. USA r79
Yoshi's Island DS Works Sky might be a different colour. Best rom to play right now because it does not require stylus usage and runs at just a little under full speed. music is also a little sluggish. - r170 the graphics are near perfect, with frame skipping set one up the speed is 100%. USA/EUR r170
Zoo Keeper Works Slow, but seems fully playable US r79

Set-up on your SD Card

  1. Goto the downloads page and download the latest featured release.
    Download file: DeSmuME Wii r185.zip
    (DeSmuME Wii Revision 185) Jun 28, 2010 file size: 637.88KB
  2. Extract it into your apps folder. Make sure the path is along the lines of root:/apps/namethisfolderanything/boot.dol
  3. Place your DS ROMs in sd:/DSROM/ to make your life easier
    You can select any ROM to play that is stored anywhere on your SD Card.
    The default directory is sd:/DSROM/

Nintendo DS ROMs Working on Wii?

Wii
  • Right now, most NDS ROMs work.
    If anyone knows of a good compatibility chart, let us know please :)

Known Issues with GX

Now that Desmume can run on native GX (translation: hardware acceleration baby!), let's look at some of the pitfalls and problems that plague us.

Wii To Usb Cable

Problems and Roadblocks

1. The GPU renders things in lines. I do not know where the sprites are stored. Speaking with the 'Vanilla' Desmume developers, it seems that they are taken directly from the DS game. What does this mean? It means (unless there IS a big storage place that houses all the sprite layers, which would be awesome) that it may be very difficult to convert the individual lines into 4x4 texels, since each line would not comprise all the information that a 4x4 texel would need. Again, I am not 100% sure about this, so maybe there is hope.

2. This may involve significant rewriting of the Desmume GPU code in order to get native GX to run at full efficiency. This may affect the software renderer. This is just a possibility, however. Someone more familiar with the software renderer should be able to address this better than I.

What's wrong with GX?

There is actually very little wrong with GX, it is actually Desmume, and how it does its work, that is causing the trouble when we move to native GX code.

Problems: **Sprites** Textures

I will be using Super Mario 64 DS as an example. If you load up the game, you will see something very, very odd: What looks like four blue buttons on the top screen and blue gibberish on the bottom screen. What? It's broken! Not so. Here is why it does this:

I direct your gaze to the Draw() function in main.cpp. When we use the software renderer, everything ends up coming out in the wrong format, so we need to convert it to be 4x4 texels (what the Wii likes) in order to render it to the screen. Notice the line:

if(current3Dcore 1)

If current3Dcore is one, then we want to use GX, (if it is two, we use the software renderer). Notice that within that if statement we are not 'converting' the image before we render it to the screen. If you comment this out, you will see that the text is fine, but woe! The 3D has become gibberish! This is because GX will, obviously, render 3D in the correct format! But, the sprites (text) are not in the correct format, since these are generated via the Desmume software.

This also leads into the discussion of textures. You may still call the 3D star at the start of SM64DS a failure since it is clearly the wrong color, but in actuality I believe this is due to the same problem that we have rendering sprites: incorrect format. I am not 100% certain that this is the case, however. I could be wrong.

Possible Solutions

So what's the solution? Thankfully, I think I have managed to track down what is needed to be done, and I have a few possible alternatives.

1. Convert the Sprites, but not the 3D.

How

This would involve finding the source of the sprite generation. What we could do is apply the 'texel conversion' normally done in the Draw() function to the sprite upon its creation.

2. Render in layers.

Desmume uses a layered structure for its rendering engine. It will loop through every line and apply the background, sprites, 3D, and more sprites on top of that.

  • The start of line 2087 does the background layer
  • Line 2133 renders sprites with the function: 'gpu->spriteRender'
  • 3D is rendered on line 2180: 'gpu->setFinalColor3d'
  • And the final sprites are done on line 2212: 'gpu->setFinalColorSpr'

There's some more in there but this is a good example. The software will compare alpha combine pixels for each layer in the line. This is (I believe) accomplished in the function: GPU_RenderLine_layer in GPU.cpp.

It is possible to render each layer as a separate entity, convert the sprite layers, and combine them with the rendered 3D image (it's a texture) as a multi-layered texture using the GX hardware.

How To Load Games From Usb On Wii

How To Load Usb On Wii

3. 'Unconvert' the 3D.

I do not like this one, but I thought that I should suggest it nonetheless. This would involve doing the exact opposite of the 4x4 texel conversion to the rendered 3D image. That way, when we convert it later, it will look correct. This, obviously, would involve more rather than less CPU cycles; the entire reason to use GX in the first place. This could be a quick-fix until a more permanent solution is found.

Conclusion

I would vote for the 'Render in Layers' approach. I believe the tradeoffs (having to hold space for each layer) would be offset by the fact that the hardware could combine them at a FAR greater efficiency than the software ever could. Look in the function '