Keptquisling’s Weblog

What I’ve been upto since school

The Twilight hack literally opened the floodgates for the Wii homebrew scene a few years ago. The Twilight hack, achieved by saving a game from the Wii version of The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, and using cheat codes to modify Epona’s name to something beyond the allowed character limit crashes the game whenever any non-player character mentions the horse’s name.

From crashing the system, hackers have been able to launch homebrew files, from installing new channels on the system (Wad files), to booting up operating systems and modifying the system’s region locks (Dol files).

I’ve personally installed wad files on mine, and have been able to download a variety of virtual console games for free. What’s more, the system will think you’ve legitimately purchased these games from the Wii shop, so in any case you lose them, you can “officially” download them from Nintendo itself!

Nintendo has yet to take any official measures against the Wii homebrew scene, probably because they make a profit for every Wii sold, regardless if the owner plays legitimate games. The only thing to look out for is to make sure you download virtual console games from the same region as your Wii.

I’ve been lately checking more and more for traces of things I used to enjoy online. Scavenging bits and pieces of companies, magazines and chat rooms I used to frequent when I was younger. And I’m finding more and more of them fading away, leaving just an article in Wikipedia proving that these things once existed. I couldn’t really say if last year was a good year. I gained a lot of things I can’t live without now, but lost others that I’ve depended on for most of my life. Aren’t I too young to be reminiscing? I’m just 29 after all, but I feel so much older.

What loss am I going to suffer next? I’ve already lost two houses, homes I grew up in. Lost a grandmother I’ve lived with for 20+ years, and everyone has left our home, leaving just me in a house with 6 empty rooms, and broken chandeliers that look like they’re going to drop any second. Cob webs are literally coating everything, from unused toothpaste tubes to clothes in the closets left behind exactly as they were when the people who were using them went away. I’ve been reluctant to use or take over any of these objects, as if touching them or using them would be a betrayal of a family member’s memory. Suddenly ten years doesn’t seem to be long enough time to have everything change so dramatically. Apparently, I’ve yet to deal with everything, and just end up feeling solemn and empty. Sometimes I can’t help but expect that everyone will suddenly come home one day. Even though I know that can’t be, and that things change, people live their own lives, and dead people can’t be brought back to life.

One thought keeps coming back to me when I think of my past, it was a time when all my brothers were around, my grandmother was cooking, and our yaya’s were helping out. My brothers were on the coach, excitedly gleaming over copies of various videogame magazines, gameplayers, egm, and gamepro. Their friends were there, all arguing about the best games, and best articles, with a mini-tourney going on in the back ground for streetfighter. My sister was busy playing with her best friend, and mom and dad dropped by to bring food. It was busy, noisy, and everyone was fighting over controllers. The rule was, if nobody can beat you, you get to keep playing. Now though, those magazines are gone, all except the worst of them, Gamepro. Four out of six friends we had over back then all live in the US now, two of my brothers live over seas, one in China and another in Singapore. My sister lives on a ship. My grandmother is dead, and two of the four houses we had were sold. Things change, no matter how much you might not want them to.

Speeches are funny. They can be overly ambiguous, with nary a word making sense, or optimistic and filled with unrealistic promises. I guess it is too much to expect anyone to be free from hypocrites, sometimes one just has to go with the flow if you’d ever want to get anywhere. Still, it’s very depressing to have ideals dented before even getting started.

Bits and pieces of my world fall out of place. Pillars give way in my crumbling house. A window sees me coming, a life all about waiting, passing the time on a moving chair, whistling, humming away at the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years. It could have been different, if it only weren’t so forced. There were other choices, if I could have stayed, if I could have been focused, if I had known. Everything I’ve ever thought impossible, unfolding in front of my eyes. I knew, but I hadn’t “known”, it was an illusion, a religious deceit, that until that time had never been tested.