My project for this weekend was to soft-mod my Wii in order to install and run Homebrew applications. Why mod your Wii? The homebrew scene offers tons of useful and fun games and applications for free! Also, once you soft-mod your Wii with the Twilight hack, you can run back-ups and even play DVD movies on your Wii. (If you choose to do that!)

This isn’t a tutorial, this is just to get you pointed in the right direction. Hopefully, save you a few hours of pain and all the time spent surfing the internets for directions, etc. Mostly, I put this stuff up here to refresh my memory when I have to mod my next Wii.

In order to run homebrew and install the Twilight hack, you will need a copy of Zelda: The Twilight Princess and you have to be running version 3.3 or 3.4 firmware on your Wii. You can check this by going into settings, it will show you the version number on the top right of the screen.

I can’t say for sure if you will be able to run it or not, depending on your firmware. If it doesn’t work for you then you may need to downgrade your firmware. Which is very risky and could brick your Wii, rendering it a pretty little paper weight.

In my case, I had to downgrade my firmware, but all went well. You can find the software to do this on the internets. I found a great and reliable source on PirateBay.

The Soft-Mod

And that’s it! The Homebrew channel also has a Homebrew browser, similar to the Wii shop, you can download everything right from your Wii.

If you want to run back-ups on your Wii, here is another great tutorial at instructables, How to Play Back-ups on Your Wii and another great tutorial here.

Anything you do to your Wii, you do so at your OWN RISK. Modifying anything on your console will void the warranty! Good luck!

Have an old thumbdrive just taking up space on your desk or maybe you got a new one over the holidays, portable apps are a great way to maximize the usage of your portable drives, both new and old.

• PortableApps.com Suite - An all-in-one suite that features a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, audio player, sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go. This is by far the most featured suite available and is extremely easy to use.
  
• TinyApps.org - A catalog of portable apps for Windows, Palm, and OS X
• Portable Freeware Collection - A massive list of freeware for your portable device.

Never be without access to your favorite software, favorite games, & bookmarks again.

VideoTwo Boys Reduced to Screaming Girls While Playing Doom 3 - A little over dramatic but still hilarious.

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Saving the best for last -

Schwarzenegger outlaws sex with corpses - This ones too easy to make fun of…discuss amongst yourselves.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) should come with warnings. Not for the content but for its addictiveness. I propose a dependency scale be made for such games. I wish someone would have warned me. We recently purchased Dark Age of Camelot. We bought the first game, no expansion packs, as I assumed that I wouldn’t like it enough to continue playing, let alone beef up the content. Growing ever so tired of first person shooters, I decided to try a different genre of games and for $10; Dark Age was a reasonable choice.

I never thought I’d see the day when I started using words like questing, guild, leveling, and XP. I’ve even found myself trying to recruit others to play.

At first, I couldn’t understand the fun in doing mundane tasks and slaying monsters. Until I realized that you’re just buffing up your character to participate in a large scale, realm-vs.-realm (player-vs.-player style) war.

I’m completely sucked in and I fear the day I decide to try Star Wars Galaxies.

Try Dark Age of Camelot for 7 days.

Since the arrival of our new computer, I’ve been taking advantage of PC gaming. Unfortunately, I’m getting a little burnt out on Unreal Tournament 2004. I recently bought Jedi Outcast but have quickly lost interest. Most of my friends aren’t into PC games, so having light saber battles with 12 year olds just isn’t too appealing any more. So now I’m currently on the hunt for a new game. I’m curious to what others have been playing and looking for some suggestions for something new. Something preferably different, meaning: A game that doesn’t involve the beaches of Normandy or the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I’ve been browsing through my hit logs and noticed quite a few search requests for calibrating the Dreamcast laser. I decided to post a quick, small tutorial to reviving a dead Dreamcast. Within the past couple of weeks, we had a total of 6 Dreamcasts in the house.

First we bought a complete system for my mom, yes, she loves video games. We had given her our old NES but it wasn’t working very well so we bought her a Dreamcast and I made her a disk full of her favorite NES roms. Anyway, the other 3 dreamcasts I picked up for $5.00 a piece because they were broken. One thing I’ve learned with taken apart my first Dreamcast is that the setup is very basic and with most Dreamcast problems you can fix them quite easily. Which is what I did with all three of the broken Dreamcasts. So technically I got 3 Dreamcasts for $15 and I know some of my friends aren’t complaining because I’ve been passing them out.

Here’s a quick trick for those of you that have a Dreamcast that has suddenly stopped spinning disks:

Open up your Dreamcast by removing all of the screws.

Push the laser to the back and lift it’s casing out towards the back.

Unfortunately my picture is a little blurry, but there’s a little knob-type things that I’m gripping with pliers, all you have to do is turn it clockwise just slightly. What I do is turn it, test it, repeat.

Here is a clearer image submitted by eniacpx. (Thank you!)

It’s so easy I taught my ferret to do the work for me:

That should do it. You might have to turn it a few times or just once but it’s been flawless for me.

12/29/2007 Update:Thank you dreamcast-scene.com for caching my post and saving the images for me!

I’ve been wanting to get my Dreamcast online so I can at least see what surfing the web is like on the DC. I have DSL and like everyone else I do not have a broadband adapter for the DC. I contacted Verizon to see if they had dial-up access for their broadband customers, like 5 hours free or something a month. I know Road Runner had that. However, Verizon just offers cheap dial-up access for their DSL customers at about $7.00 a month for 10 hours or something. I don’t need to have the Dreamcast access the net, I just want it to.

I refuse to pay for dial-up when I already pay for my DSL so I decided to use my old Netzero account to access the internet through the Dreamcast.

After establishing a connection, I realize how spoiled rotten I am with broadband. I do not have patience for dial-up. While waiting for the connection and the actual loading of the initial home page, I had time to coax myself out of being a broadband snob for a few minutes.

Anyway, so I surf around looking at webpages, okay, well about two pages and then I got booted. Then I retried, got booted, got mad, reconnected, decided to just write an entry on here, then I got booted in the middle and I ultimately gave up with my fascination with Dreamcast webtv.

The other day, Jake posted a comment and it gave me an idea.

Why not setup a dial-up server on my desktop and have the Dreamcast dial in to it and share its connection. While it’s limited to dial-up it’s still a dedicated connection without the mess of a tied up land line.

After setting up everything and applying a few tweaks, I attempted the connection.

Connected.

As exciting as this was, it didn’t last very long. It connected for a few seconds and the connection was lost, no carrier. I spent more time than I should have trying to make this work without success. I think I’ll set this project aside temporarily.

Our friends Amanda and Ashlye came over last night and Danielle and I finally got a chance to test out our multiplayer games on the Dreamcast. When it comes down to it, I’ll have to say that my favorite types of games are generally multiplayer games because it really adds to the video game experience when you have live competition. Not that single player games are less exciting but when you have friends over that actually like playing video games, multiplayer games can be very engaging.

Game One: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

Ah, everyone loves it. For quite some time now, I was under the impression that I had impenetrable Tony Hawk skills. I guess that depends on how you look at it. Everyone’s good but there will always be someone better. I found this out very quickly last night when Amanda dropped 300,000 points in less than 2 minutes with a statless skater. Needless to say, after a few rounds of Amanda being completely competitionless, it was time to move on.

Game Two: Re-Volt

This game reminds me of RC ProAm and Micro Machines for the NES. In Re-Volt you take control of remote control car and go head to head in racing. I am selective when it comes to racing games. I find repetitive driving in a circle to be rather dull but if the game throws in the ability to attack your opponents with bombs, guns, and missiles, I’m sold. We played all 4 players on this one, however, this was a very short lived game. The first course is a bit confusing and everyone found themselves going the wrong way very often. Racing RC style is cute, but wasn’t really drawing everyone into it. It was time for a free-for-all car destruction game.

Game Three: Vigilante 8 Second Offense

My all time favorite game of this style has to be Rogue Trip on the Playstation platform. Single player, multiplayer, whatever, Rogue Trip takes the cake. Rogue Trip had a nice soundtrack and unique game play. I’ll save that for another day since I’m supposed to be talking about Vigilante 8. I think I try to force myself to like this game but the truth is, in my opinion, that this particular game has one very large flaw: vehicle control. After a few rounds I’m just frustrated. It’s completely devoid of steering control regardless of which vehicle you choose. The fact of the matter is that it’s a bitch to turn the damn thing. After fifteen minutes of this game, I was ready to move on.

Game Four: Unreal Tournament

Unfortunately, Ashlye missed out on this one. This is my FAVORITE. There is nothing better than a head-to-head, explosive, deathmatch. Of all the games we played, this is the one I prevailed as the reigning champion. Although, I agree with most people when they say that the PC version is better than any platform port, but the way I look at it is, if it’s Unreal Tournament, I don’t care if it’s being played on Virtual Boy, it’s still fun. Okay, well, maybe not if it was on Virtual Boy, but the Dreamcast version is hot and I absolutely recommend it.

So this is my partial list of a few decent multiplayer Dreamcast games. I have more to play but haven’t played them yet. So I’ll be dragging people over for more Dreamcast nights in the days to come.

Danielle and I finally found a decent used game store: EBgames. A new edition to the many editions of strip malls that seem to be popping up all over Tampa. EBgames just recently opened up so we decided to go check out their offerings.

As I mentioned before, we’ve become overly addicted to our beloved Dreamcasts, so we always like to keep our eye out for games and accessories. Surprisingly, EBgames had quite a variety of both games and accessories.

Now, it’s true, some games are necessities. Tony Hawk is a necessity in our house. Unfortunately, the only Tony Hawk games we have are for our playstation and our playstation is officially dead. However, we found Tony Hawk 2 for the Dreamcast at EBgames for only $12.00.

I don’t know what it is about all the Tony Hawk games, but they are obscenely more addictive than crack. They have great replay value and it’s a great multiplayer game. Whether people like video games or not, when you offer the second controller to someone to play Tony Hawk with, I’ve never met anyone to refuse.

Also, Toys R Us still sells Dreamcast games, very limited selection of course, but they’re still there. I’d recommend EBgames though if you’re looking for a nice selection of used games, they had an entire shelf dedicated to Dreamcast.

I don’t buy into the whole Valentine’s Day thing and this year I tried to persuade Danielle from feeling pressured into giving into the flowers, candy, and dinner theme. So we opted to go to a flea market and peruse around. I love going to flea markets because every so often you will find a nice little game store there that’s moderately priced. Although, the past couple of places we went to, we hadn’t been so lucky. I remember this one guy trying to sell me Nintendo games at $20.00 a cartridge. Um, I don’t think so.

This time, however, we were much luckier. We have been fighting off the temptation of buying a PS2. I’ve wanted so badly to get my hands on a nice Dreamcast. And yesterday, we got incredibly lucky.

We found a nice little booth at the flea market that had a nice array of used consoles and games. We browsed through the NES games, that’s were priced between $3.99 and $9.99, I can handle that. We found a copy of M.U.S.C.L.E, and had to grab it regardless of the price. Out of curiosity I asked the guy how much he was selling his Dreamcasts for. He said, “Thirty-five dollars”. I said, “WHAT?! Does it work?!” He responded with, “Of course. But you know if it doesn’t, bring it back and I’ll give you your money back.”

We caved. We bought it. We also nabbed a couple of games and were on our way. We decided on the way home that we’d visit a couple of our favorite pawn shops and see if we can find some more games and accessories.

By the time we finally made it home, we had spent just under $70.00 and got a Dreamcast, 4 games, keyboard, web browser, and two memory cards.

So, I was the first to check it out, loaded Jet Grind Radio and indulged for a little. Then I let Danielle have her turn and what happens?

The Dreamcast stops working.

Okay, so I try to maintain my composure, but I’m pretty pissed. So I start fiddling around with the little guy, turns out it’s not spinning discs.

Argh.

It was getting late and I was a bit too tired to toy around with the DC so I put the project off for the morning.

After a cup of espresso, I decide to give it whirl and tinker with calibrating the laser. I take it apart, adjust the calibration device a bit and after a couple of tries, she’s fully revived and now I’m off to enjoy ye old Dreamcast.