Thanks to the mysterious (and sexy) The Goat Keeper, I’m now the not-so-proud owner of a US version of the Wii stinker “Heatseeker”. Of course, I knew it was going to be rubbish, but that wasn’t the point. No – I needed something to test if my UK Wii could play imports.
And, of course, it can:
I show that the disc isn’t recognised by the Wii, then fire up the Homebrew Channel and from there load Gecko OS. One of the Gecko settings lets you region-free your console, so I pick that and boot the game. Then I play for 20 seconds and crash my plane. Yeah, Heatseeker is crap.
So, how to do it?
Firstly, you need to Twilight Hack your Wii. This isn’t as difficult (or painful) as it sounds – you just need to download a modified Zelda: Twilight Princess save, load Zelda, and the hack takes over. Using this, you can install the Homebrew Channel.
This page here tells you everything you need to know.
Then, once you have the Homebrew Channel installed, you can start installing homebrew apps on your Wii’s SD card. This is made easier if you install the Homebrew Browser first, as it lets you connect to the internet directly on the Wii, and install new apps that way. Simply download the browser on your computer, and copy the files to your SD card (as detailed here).
Finally, install Gecko OS either by downloading it via your computer to your SD card, or by using the Homebrew Browser. Stick your import game in, load Gecko and set it to Region Free, and launch your game!
Easy!
Disclaimer: If your break your Wii, then don’t blame me. These steps worked fine for me and many other people, but if you’ve already modified your Wii in some way, do something wrong, or have a newer version of the Wii firmware than that available as of today, then things may go wrong. You’ve been warned!
