Twilight Hack
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The Twilight Hack is currently the only safe, public way to run homebrew on an unmodded Wii. The Twilight Hack is achieved by playing a hacked game save for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess which executes a homebrew elf file, boot.elf, on an external SD card. Examples of such homebrew elf files can be found on the Homebrew apps page.
Download
- Mirror of version 3a by chaoshq.de
- Mirror of version 3a by Oste Hovel
- Mirror of version 3a by otto888
Enjoy!
-- Team Twiizers
Thanks to Crediar for hosting!
Fanmail goes here: Twiizers Fanmail
Changelog
0.1alpha3b
- Experimental version with FAT32 support. Only try this if you receive an error message while loading boot.elf.
0.1alpha3b Mirrors: Mirror by chaoshq.de • Mirror by Oste Hovel • Mirror by otto888
0.1alpha3a
- Correctly loads geckoloader code from USBGecko flash.
0.1alpha3a Mirrors: Mirror by chaoshq.de • Mirror by Oste Hovel • Mirror by otto888
0.1alpha3
- Front SD slot is now supported; SDGecko slot support has been removed.
- FAT16 is now supported; you should save your ELF executable on your SD card as "boot.elf".
- RZDJ is now supported.
- Added support for Geckoloader stub: If you have a USBGecko installed and have already run the Geckoloader program to install into flash, then the Twilight Hack will try to load that stub if it does not detect an SD card.
Usage
Required Materials:
- SD card formatted as FAT16 (There seems to be a problem with formatting an SD card as FAT 16 in OS X, try to format your card in Windows.)
- SD card reader
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess that has been played at least once
- (Optional) GameCube controller
- (Optional) USBGecko
Inside the zip archive you will find several savegame files; you will need to choose the correct one based on your version of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The easiest way to check your version is to compare the text string which is on the inner cycle of the data surface with the ones below.
| Region | Inner circle text | File |
|---|---|---|
| Europe/Australia | RVL-RZDP-0A-0 JPN | rzdp0.bin |
| Asia | RVL-RZDJ-0A-0 JPN | rzdj0.bin |
| America | RVL-RZDE-0A-0 JPN | rzde0.bin |
| America | RVL-RZDE-0A-0 USA | rzde0.bin |
| America | RVL-RZDE-0A-2 USA | rzde2.bin |
Begin by formatting your SD card to FAT16 if it is not already (in Windows it's just called "FAT"). If you get an error such as "FAT_ReadFile(boot.elf) failed with error -1" then reformatting your SD card with Official SD Card Format Tool may help. Make a directory on the SD card called "/private/wii/title/RZDx/" Replace "RZDx" with RZDE, RZDP or RZDJ as appropriate (See above table). If a file called data.bin already exists in this folder you may wish to back it up as it contains your save file for the game. In any case, copy the appropriate bin file from the download into this directory, renaming it to "data.bin". Take your homebrew Wii executable (elf file) and save it in the root directory of your SD card as "boot.elf".
Now, put the SD card into your Wii and turn it on. Go into Wii Options --> Data Management --> Save Data --> Wii. Find your Zelda save, click on it, click "Erase", and click Yes. Open the SD card and select the "Twilight Hack" save. The icon should say "Wiibrew Loader". Click copy and then yes. Now exit out of the menu.
Insert The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess game disc and run the game. Load file A and either walk backwards or talk to the man standing in front of you.
Explanation
The Twilight Hack works by employing a lengthly character name for the horse in the game ('Epona') in order to facilitate a stack smash. This gets triggered when talking to the man next to you when you start the savegame as he loads the name to use it in his dialog or upon attempting to enter the next zone, before the man talks to you and reminds you to go the other way to get the horse.
FAQ
- Can it load files from the internal SD slot?
- Yes.
- Can I load GameCube homebrew with this?
- No.
- What about if I use doltool or dol2elf?
- No. These tools merely change the container file format, it does not convert between GameCube/Wii code.
- Can we use games other than Zelda to achieve the same effect?
- Eventually.
Main FAQ Page: Wiibrew FAQ
Known bug
- After you load the save, the Wii Remote pointer may move to the bottom of the screen and stay there. It is purely a cosmetic bug and does not affect operation. The Wiimote pointer will return to normal after a reboot.