A reason to break out your Wii U again 

Dude, the Wii U is the ultimate Nintendo console to softmod. It gives you native access to GameCube, Wii, and Wii U games. And like you said, you can use any modern controller you want to play games. And of course, you can load it up with emulators.

I would still disable system updates, we've seen instances where companies release patches post console shutdown specifically to fix these exploits, just because.

You missed a few things with pretendo: 1. They have backed up all existing Mario Maker levels, idk if they uploaded them to their own server yet. This means that your levels should arrive there soon as well and that it won't be so deserted anymore 2. Some features for some games are still a work in progress and take some time, including the 100 Mario challenge. Progress can be viewed on the Pretendo website 3. You only need to use your new Pretendo Account for accessing the Miiverse replacement, you can use your old WiiU account for normal online play If I missed something else you missed I'll update the comment

5:06 kinda makes sense since 1. The name Homebrew sounds a lot like brewing coffee at home And 2. The Wii u’s code name was “Project Cafe”.

Zombii u has a whole new meaning now.

...Even in the glamour shots the WiiU Pad is dirty. I don't blame you, but why is the WiiU gamepad so impossible to clean!?!

The Wii U is dead. Long live the Wii U!

I actually soft modded mine last year after not using it for years, found many new uses for it, and absolutely loving it ! It's an emulation powerhouse ! Also it's extremely fun to play ds games with the top screen on the TV and bottom screen on the gamepad

8:20 "say it again for the people in the back" 🗣🗣

Bob Wulff: the John Wick of Gaming.

I honestly loved the WiiU... It lacked 3rd party support, and had a somewhat slow loading OS. But Nintendo really did put in the high gear when it came to their own games. And the machine, together with the 3DS had a lot of that wonderful "Nintendo charm": Mii's, Miiverse, Mii Plaza, Street Pass, Miiverse game integration etc. the whole ecosystem felt lively and fun (The switch feels dead on the other hand with your friends acting like mindless "ghosts" playing games on their devices occassionally). Nintendo also had a lot of goodwill towards its fan base during those difficult years, "The Ambassador program" for 3DS, "Nintendo Selects", good sales etc... Something that was lost after Iwata's passing and the release of the Switch. It honestly feels like the Switch became an outsourced hardware/software project that just happened to play Nintendo games. And the only thing Nintendo has truly innovated on during the Switch generation has been how to extract the most money out of consumers. (with paid online subscription services, increased prices, deprecating games early etc). Yeah, I'm more of a WiiU fan than a Switch fan these days... The Switch had potential, But Nintendo never really tapped into that potential with OS updates that fixed things like. making "friends" meaningful (like adding messaging, chat, picture chats), having colorful themes, sounds and music... Anything to make the device feel more interesting to pick up.

The Wii U having HDMI is what urged me to make the switch from my modded Wii

I honestly have more fun modding console than actually playing it. It’s pretty cool we can unlock features in these tech to bring it back to life and more. And it’s super satisfying when you follow a well edited video instructions and it actually works.

Everyone seems to be talking about the Wii U again 🥹

You'll be happy to hear that Pretendo already announced plans for an archival version of Mario Maker servers! They scraped all levels uploaded before the servers went down, and plan to set up a second server that is just an archive of every level uploaded to MM1 from 2015 to 2021!

interestingly only posthumously there is interest.

You really nailed how smudgy the wiiU gets. 10/10

bro when the ad started I literally thought "whats with that shitty keyboard? I know Bob has better than that" and then you started beating it up and I about died laughing lmao 10/10 ad spot again man

Would love if years down the line Analogue made a console that reads 3DS/DS games and allows Wii U Pad and others to connect. 3DS/DS on TVs needs to happen more.

All I can say is Pee U to Wii U for shutting down ! #wulffdendad

I game daily since thed Game Cube and even then, I thought this was a Wii add-on for many years. Marketing courses need to teach about this fiasco Nintendo pulled back in 2012.

For me, I have so many memories with the Wii U. And now that it no longer has online capabilities, it can now be considered dead. However for me, it will always be alive in my heart. It has so many great games and hopefully it will never be forgotten.

Bob out here talking about Fight Club again. Love your work

This generation was the best with backwards compatibility. The Wii U was literally an upgraded wii, which was an upgraded GameCube. So you have 3 generations on that alone. The 3ds is the best portable ever, with backwards compatibility with literally all the portables before it nativley. Not all games, but GB and GBC games had virtual console, with NES, SNES, and the 3ds supports native GBA and DS. (You can literally get all the pokemon games to run natively)

This is why I didn't get rid of my wiiu. Fuckers are gonna sell them at stupid prices soon

Honestly, this video doesn't really do a modded Wii U justice. Obviously, you have easy access to native Wii and GameCube games and they can even be put on the homescreen for nice organization. Then because of Nintendo's built-in virtual console emulators, you can inject games from any Nintendo console before the Wii U because it supported all of them. Then, as is mentioned, any controller imaginable can be used and works with any game. On top of all of this, 3DS games can be streamed to it with full gamepad support, creating pretty much the best way to play many 3DS games. Oh and also mods. The Wii U is the ultimate Nintendo machine!

Our old king! You try to get rid of him, but the king is everywhere! You can't get rid of him! EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!

I honestly don't think it could be that expensive for Nintendo to keep the servers online for the Wii u so it's really a shame that they don't just leave them up.

As an avid Splatoon fan, no, the WiiU was a dope concept that Nintendo fumbled, and Ive always been a fan. Splatoon has improved in so many ways but they cant give me back that bottom screen functionality.

I really only want like 3 things from the new Nintendo console; Streetpass, for the love of everything in existence, bring back streetpass. 1080p 60fps as the minimum standard across the board for first party games, 4K 60fps or 1080p 120fps would be great but its Nintendo so I'm only expecting so much. Better hardware in the dock. This one is a stretch, but I want the new console to be a reverse Wii U where you can stream the "top/main" screen from the tablet to the dock and play WiiU and DS/3DS games. It could of course also use the dock for upscaling to 4K or something along those lines.

NOT THE KAWAII 😂😂😂 I love it hahahahhaa

Had my Wii U since 2013, my mom got it because my original Wii stopped working. If that didn’t happen, I probably would’ve never knew what the Wii u was until later.I still play it to this day.

Picked one up in January and installed Aroma, with the games, Pretendo and the fact I can pair my Switch Pro Controller I've been having a blast, it's been the perfect companion to my Switch OLED

Fun fact: The CFW is called Tiramisu and Aroma because the Wii U's code name is cafe. Why? IDK, Nintendo's codenames are always weird.

Still play my modded Wii from time to time. It's amazing how much it increases the life of these old consoles

I loved the sturdiness of the Wiii U! The full size jockstick, the easy grabable shape, not too heavy, comfortable! I guess I'll give it a go!

what do you mean break out “again”? doesn’t everybody still have theirs plugged in and ready to go? guys??

I did mine a while ago and added more functionality recently. I love how weird and wacky the Wii U is.

Literally just pulled out my wii u two days ago, the timing on your video is impeccable 👌🏻

I also backed the Ayaneo Flip DS! I don't have mine yet, but I'm super excited for it!

I did the Pretendo stuff on my 3DS the day after the Nintendo network was shut down. And I told all my friends who own Wii U’s that they should hack theirs as well

100 Mario Challenge was the only reason to play Mario Maker! Hopefully it starts working on Pretendo soon!

The Wii U was a really fun console. I still use my PS4 a bunch too but my favorite 8th gen games were mostly on Wii U. It’ll be seen as a wonderful collector’s item in 20 years, I think, like the Sega Saturn and Dreamcast.

Im re-hacking my wiiu this weekend, ive been savoring this moment for a while. It had a previous sonewhat clunky hack from early years but im looking forward to updating

Super glad to see you modding Wii U, however, I definitely think it's worth going back sometime to mod the vWii and emulate GameCube games.

I miss this console oh so much

5:06 the wiiu's code name was café

what makes this console one of the best consoles ever made is, when u mod it, it can run Wii Wii U Gamecube Games Natively (and u can also play Gamecube games on the Gamepad without needing a tv)

Watching this video on my TV while playing Yoshi's Woolly World on my GamePad

I watched this video on my Wii U. I'm so happy I modded it!

Video title before clicking: "They tried to shut it down, but the Wii U is alive again." Video title after clicking: "A reason to break out your Wii U again" Not a big deal, but it bothers me a bit when a title changes after publishing.

I want to see someone restore the online servers for 3ds games like pokemon

picked up a "broken" wii u for £20, wii motes and pro controller etc included. after poking fun at the wii u for ever, im actually really taken back my it, its great other than slow menus etc. if it could play 3ds games too it would be amazing, big screen gaming with 2 screens. beautiful

not really the point of the video but i wanted to just comment on the shade thrown towards beloved wiiu!! i know this is quite niche, but i loved the gamepad dearly. as someone visually disabled, it was really exciting to be able to play games with friends and actually have a screen right in front of me instead of having to sit in front of everyone and still struggle. And even in solo play, the gamepad just performed Fantastically. It never had from my memory any of the performwnce issues an undocked switch often runs onto, and im sorry, but i just hate the joycons compared to the feel and responsiveness of the gamepad ! i think everyone is too mean to the base console, and as a modded machine, shes even better 💖

I never even had a Wii U to begin with (I can't tell you how insanely happy I was when LEGO City Undercover finally got ported to PS/XBox/PC as well), so I guess fuck me lol

For clarification, does this allow for ripping your physical copies of all your physical games you can run on a Wii U, or just Wii U games?

Can’t wait for the Ayaneo flip DS video that thing looks awesome

Dude hasn't played on his Wii U for 5 years

Haircut looking fresh my dude

luckily we have a community that's willing to step up

Even if you find more of those in various thrift stores, you might mod them good enough even if you try upgrading to a 512GB to 1TB SD card.

I missed word “out” at first. I read the title as “A reason to break your Wii U again.”

Honestly, the best reason to break out the Wii U is if you want to play Wii games on an HDMI TV. Using adapters from composite on the Wii is not ideal, especially for modern TVs.

SMM1 is much better than SMM2. The boo button is a disadvantage.

Can you do this without a SD card? Tried a few tears back and couldn't do it, think my SD card slot is broken.

I would honestly buy the Wii U if the online store was back. I had no idea about the DS ports when it was out.

2:55 😂 First off, what did that keyboard do to you?! Secondly, I'm happy that folks online care more about game preservation than game companies do.

I'm now glued to Mario Maker 1 with Pretendo on Cemu on my Steam Deck.

I bought one used a couple of months ago and it has been a blast. I’ll mod the battery on the gamepad to get a little more runtime

"Break out your Wii U again" implies a bad purchasing decision on my part and i resent that greatly

If only Mario maker 2 transferred everything over from the first one 😢

The regular wii is also a great console for modding! You can do the same things such as dumping save files, downloading emulators etc.

I had my WiiU since launch and still use it regularly. Hands down the best home console in my opinion. Can play every Nintendo game on it pre switch. All other 8-bit and 16-bit games and so on. Its a gaming beast really.

Sonic mania on Wii U is on par with official releases in many ways, GTA 3 and VC are so good on Wii U, and there are a number of obscure ports like Bendy and the ink machine, baldis basics, and the Sonic 1, 2, and CD decomps (designed for tiramisu) that are also here. The ability to play certain Wii games on the Wii U gamepad is also notable. Love playing Sonic colors while having the gamepad emulate a Wii classic controller (Teconmoons Wii vc injector is your best friend). GameCube too, even if everyone’s mileage may vary. Flawless compatibility. Even Triforce games are playable on Wii U (Mario kart arcade gp 1 and 2) via Nintendont. Like the ps vita is for vita, psp, and ps1 games, the Wii U is perfect for Wii U, Wii, and GameCube. Oh and ds virtual console is so awesome!

Finally the video i was waiting for, bob messing around with a wii u

Hacking a wii u was the most fun

Cinema intro, build up music, talk talk talk, what we all want is just the Wulffden logo

ironically my gamepad is also covered in dust

I hear Bob is still smashing that keyboard today

theres a good number of Smash Bros mods that i remember being the defining reason why i hacked my wii u. the Chaos mod is absolute gold.

Even if people don't want to jailbreak their Wii U they can simply change some DNS settings to get onto Pretendo's servers. And if you don't want to play online, you should at least boot up your Wii U every now and then to prevent some internals from failing.

I keep my Wii-U around only to play Wii Fit and do yoga.😂

That intro hits hard

Hey bob when you make videos a suggestion would be to add the commands or series of button presses you use to make X happen. A great example is when you needed to bring up the homebrew plugins. seeing the commands you used just as an asset would be super useful! Otherwise W video

I found my wii u in a milk carton in my mom's room in December of 2023. The first thing i did was buy a new battery for it, (last one was imploded), and modded it.

Just remember to look at it this way if you're hesitant, if a console manufacturer literally abandons a platform anything on that platform including a software is fair game. You can't steal from a platform that has been abandoned by the company who created it.

Since I learned how to rip my game saves from my WiiU and transfer to Cemu on my Steam Deck. I've barely used my WiiU. Fyi, Wind Waker HD looks gorgeous on Deck Oled

thanks for pointing out that you need to link your pretendo account to your wii u BEFORE dumping the online files to use with cemu. i had made that mistake and wouldve kept wondering what the problem was for a very long time if you hadn't mentioned it in this video

9:09 Plugins Keyboard shortcut L - Dipad Down - Select

I did the no hack way to use pretendo and i love it...i have splatoon 3 but i only like 1 so i love this

you can make a pretendo account on your wii u itself and its a lot easier

dang, wii u are gonna get a price bump

This dude is giving me an anxiety 😢

Dude the tv controls is the best part

I did not get the Wii U back in the day for monetary issues and honestly i did not care that much about consoles by the time I was able to afford it, although I did grab a Switch around 2017. But nowadays since its dirt cheap and EOL I am very interested in grabbing it, especially since I can connect it to my component having CRT TV without buying expensive adapters and I can use Moonlight on it to stream stuff on it, it seems

The intros feel like a metro prime intro.

I liked the content and you saved me from installing Aroma, it would render my Retroarch seles (I have 70gb of ROMs in it and it was a pain to configure). But please, use a compressor plug-in in your voice track, the parts you speak with low volume / projection is hard to listen on a TV or computer.

I keep saying this, wii u is my ultimate legacy console for playing everything nintendo related, literally all from wii u and previous generations is playable once you jailbreak it...

4:50 made my day

11:00 There`s two methods. First like you described(harder), second is JUST CREATE PNID LIKE NNID WITH INKAY ENABLED ON WII U. I used second and it's really easy