WiiBits

In an effort to thwart would be pirates and game importers, in the latest revision of the Wii Nintendo has altered the circuit layout.

“The new Wiis, which are part of new shipments of the console, have an altered circuit layout that makes modification more difficult than in earlier versions. Users attempting to mod the new consoles using current modchips are very likely to damage the system, the sources pointed out.”

This shouldn’t keep modders at bay for long, as I’m sure they’ll have a new modchip up and ready to go almost as soon as the new version of the console hits stores. Piracy and playing “backup” copies of rented games is wrong, but modchips are also necessary for Nintendo fans who like to import Japanese games to play on their US systems.

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It is currently possible to buy two modchips for the Nintendo Wii gaming system with another one becoming available every day now. The available modchips are called Wiinja and cyclowiz, the one that comes out soon Wiikey. All three are connected to the Wii drive and prevent that the drive reports whether a original or copied disk has been entered. This however has the disadvantage that those chips will not be able to defeat the region code of the games.

Wiinja, Cyclowiz and Wiikey are able to play Wii and Gamecube backups from the same region and the Wiikey seems to have a good success rate to play games from other NTSC regions. This means that it could be possible to play Japanese games on a US Wii system. It is however not likely that you can play NTSC games on a PAL system with those modchips. […]

Read the full story at gHacks Tech News.