Wii Would Like to Play: Emulation is good, jailbreaking is better

All this talk of how good at emulation Linux Mint is, I need to remind myself that this is just a stopgap measure until I can get my Wii fixed. It doesn't matter how good Linux Mint turns out to be in the emulator department, the Wii is better at it by default.

First, we're going to hit the silicon barrier pretty quick on this computer because it's a laptop. It has 16 GB of RAM, but it only has a middling-quality CPU. I sort of had to trade performance for cost when I bought this thing back in 2020. But, at the time, I wasn't really thinking of using it for emulation much. The original idea was, I wanted a computer that I could play Classic Doom on during my breaks at work, something fairly light that started up rather quickly and could just slip back into my backpack after breaks so my boss wouldn't think I was committing identity theft. I had various other ideas about what to do with this machine, but it was principally intended to run ZDoom. Walmart was having a closeout sale on these computers because HP was discontinuing them, so I was able to get it for under $300 (2020 money), but the processor was 1 GHz and some change slower than the one in my Windows 7 studio computer. The next nearest laptop, with 3.3 GHz clockspeed and the same amount of RAM, cost $3000 and was marketing to STEM, so I figured 2.7 GHz was good enough and clicked "Add to Cart".

This is going to complicate this computer's ability to acceptably run Dolphin. I sometimes have problems with this on my studio computer (don't say anything about Windows 7 or I'm gonna steal something out of your house), so I don't imagine that a computer with a 2.7 GHz CPU and a low-end video chipset is going to be able to run much except maybe Animal Crossing on Dolphin. The computer already has slowdown issues with several Rareware games on M64Py. Even though Mednafen runs NES, SNES, and Mega Drive at nearly frame-perfect accuracy, I would like it if everything worked that well.

That's where the Wii comes in. At this stage, I've watched enough of Odd Tinkering's console restorations to know that, no matter what's wrong with the system, it can be repaired. But, in all probability, it's a loose WiFi antenna cable and a lot of dust causing the problem. She's never been dropped, or hit, or had anything spilled on her, or otherwise mistreated, she's just been a bit neglected. Leaving her plugged in and unused for 10 years probably didn't help either. But, I'm serious— dusting the inside of a game console has an almost magical effect on its ability to run. In a couple of cases, all that Odd had to do was blow an air duster into a jammed disc drive to unjam it. No other repair was needed.

Also, I've already jailbroken my Wii. I have the Homebrew Channel all set up. All I was waiting for back in November was to get my HDMI adapter so I could finish setup and carry on playing it. I guess I need to order another one of those adapters, since I sent the first one back, thinking it was broken.

Why jailbreak the Wii? Why not hold out for the Wii U like I said I was going to back in 2023? I'm not real interested in any Wii U games. Maybe one of the Mario platformers or Breath of the Wild, but I'm really more interested in GameCube and earlier, along with a scattering of Wii games that I remember fondly from the old days. The Wii U might be a more powerful emulation system from a standpoint of sheer tonnage, but the Wii is more desirable in my use case for 2 reasons. 1) As I said, I'm only interested in Wii and older games and 2) I already have a Wii. I don't need to buy an entirely new console in order to achieve my objectives.

What about the Switch? Isn't that the most powerful emulation console? No. Actually, it's a couple steps below the Wii in that regard. As of the time of writing, it is not possible to run GameCube, Wii, or Wii U games on the Classic Switch. It is also not possible to jailbreak this system, only modchip it, which doesn't really unlock the entire system in the same way that jailbreaking does. To further the metaphor, jailbreaking breaks your system out of jail, while modchipping just sends it to a larger cell with more windows.

How many systems can a jailbroken Wii play games for? By my count, twenty-nine. That doesn't include any home computers, just game consoles. I suppose you could bring the total up to 30 if you consider SegaNet and Satellaview to be separate from Mega Drive and Super NES, but I don't.

This is easily explained by the fact that the Wii is a dedicated gaming system. In a market full of consoles that were trying to be media players and internet browsers— stunted computers, basically— the Wii was a game system only. Well, at least until apps for YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu were added to the Wii Shop Channel. I'm pleased to say that I only ever used Wii YouTube as a spank-bank once. But, we weren't talking about that.