Twilight Hack....

...who here has utilized the Twilight Hack to run homebrew games on their Wii? I'd like to hear any stories or experiences regarding this. I'm thinking about doing it to my Wii next weekend once I get the supplies needed, so that I can check out the homebrew and emulation applications running on the Wii these days. The thought of playing my NGCD games on my Wii is very appealing since I have games but no system anymore....

I believe this is illegal..

It is illegal to play homemade games? No you are wrong, sorry. I think your are confused with emulation or backups. Homebrew games are public domain and completely legal, as they are homemade freeware games made by freelance programmers. Its also not illegal to use an emulator to play a legitimate game that you purchased and own. And it is surely not illegal to run a save file on your Zelda game that allows for open source coding to be applied to your Wii.

Dr_Ackula said:

It is illegal to play homemade games? No you are wrong, sorry. I think your are confused with emulation or backups. Homebrew games are public domain and completely legal, as they are homemade freeware games made by freelance programmers. Its also not illegal to use an emulator to play a legitimate game that you purchased and own. And it is surely not illegal to run a save file on your Zelda game that allows for open source coding to be applied to your Wii.

Click to expand...

Relax. :lol

I suppose the better wording would have been "I think this is illegal". Hope that's better for you.

Honestly... with Nintendo, I am not sure of their status with homebrews and developing.

At one point, they stated to me that you had to pay developer fees (even for all older systems) to develop home brews for them.

If you notice, homebrews tend to be made for systems in which the company is out of business OR got out of the console business. I was pursuing the home brew market at one point and had to do a lot of research into this. Nintendo made it very clear they charge developers for developing for older systems (and the Nintendo seal of quality).

NOW... with WiiWare, I do not know the story on this. Are they passing Twilight out for "independent developers" to make games? Do they provide an outlet for "non-professional" developers to look for the next best idea? I don't know.

Does anyone know this? Is Nintendo allowing development for WiiWare on any level?

This is a fuzzy area. Although... playing homebrews on a system and playing Neo CD games on the system is different. They do offer Neo CD games on the Virtual console now.

†B†V† :hat

Homebrew games are public domain and completely legal, as they are homemade freeware games made by freelance programmers.
Nobody said homebrew games aren't legal. The truth is, they are indeed completely legal, just as you say; however, the methods of playing said homebrew games CAN be illegal.

If you have connected to the Internet using your Wii, you digitally signed an agreement stating you would not modify your Wii in any way, shape, or form. So yes, it's illegal. They continue to patch it because it's illegal. That's what I've been told, at least. I'm no legal expert when it comes to these things. I'm not gonna say the Twilight Hack isn't fun. I have friends that have done it.


It's like the R4. Playing homebrew on the DS isn't illegal; however, the R4 is used mainly for pirating video games and as such has been declared by Nintendo to be an illegal, unauthorized product. Using it to play homebrew is still against the law, because the device you have to use in order to play it is illegal. The end most certainly does not justify the means.

Regardless of whether or not it's illegal, though, I'm going to lock the topic because it's discussion of modifications to video game consoles, which is against the board rules (rule #9, to be exact -- "anything else that is not made directly by the manufacturor or used in conjunction with the intended original system.")