Anascape, a texas based company, sued Nintendo for violating a patent of Anascape's controllers. Nintendo lost the lawsuit. Instead of paying the $21 Million bond, Nintendo has decided to take all the controllers off the shelves.
This isn't the first time Nintendo has been sued, but none have ended like this. As of July 23rd, no more Gamecube or Wii Classic controllers will be sold in the US.... bummer.
The Homebrew Channel is a homebrew application loader by Team Twiizers which allows users to load homebrew applications without having to run the Twilight Hack every time. Once installed, users can access the channel from the Wii Menu just like any other Wii channel. It can launch homebrew applications in dol or elf -- either from an SD card, or via TCP or USB Gecko using Wiiload. It is also capable of downloading online updates for itself.
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 entering the next zone when the game loads the horse for you to ride.
Even better than Hello World, the hackers at 24c3 have figured out how to run their own code on the Wii. By using what they call a 'tweaser' method, they were able to launch the Wii in Gamecube mode then trick the chips into dumping their contents. After rummaging through the dumps they were able to pull out the encryption keys and used a hole in Lego Star Wars cd to boot their own code. The app they demo in the video shows output coming from the Wii-Mote, proving that it is running in Wii mode and not in Gamecube mode.Previously all homebrew was done in GC mode where memory and hardware was limited. Now with access to the Wii mode, homebrew developers can begin to write apps that take advantage of all the hardware, including wiimote, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc.
There are no additional details on when the information will be released so others may write their own apps from the wii. The next step is to get libraries built or obtain an sdk so more apps can begin to get ported to the Wii. It sounds like lots of work still needs to be done before we will see any useful applications come from the Wii homebrew scene, but 2008 is going to be a good year for wii hackers! Stay tuned@!
* They got the wii keys, and we could use them without hacking our wii again. * This hack requires a drive modchip to execute the code. * There is not any tool to sign the code, but it’s coming soon. * They are working to access to the SD thought EXI. * There is not any stack homebrew for bluetooth * A linux port for Wii will be released easily.
I came across this on Ajaxian. It looks like opera has opened up the Wii Internet Channel to developers. You can now use Javascript to poll data from all 4 wiimotes.
The Wii Remote data is accessed through the opera.wiiremote object. This object offers a single method opera.wiiremote.update(n) which is used to obtain the status of an individual Wii Remote. The method expects a single parameter; the Wii Remote number. The number is zero-based, so it starts at 0 for the first remote, and ends at 3 for the fourth remote. The method returns a KpadStatus object, which has several properties that give information about the remote. [source]
You may be already aware of this, but the Wii has a maintenance mode that can be accessed by pushing the + and - buttons and then pushing A at start up. I just got a reply from Nintendo about an Inquiry. Feel free to post it. Here is the message unedited:
Message(#6851-000631-3638\6313638)
Hello,
At this time, the “Maintenance Mode” you discovered has no functionality for consumers. If at some future point a consumer application for this mode is made available, it will be revealed on our website (www.nintendo.com).
Even though it appears—with the exception of the Wii Message Board—that everything functions normally in this mode, we do not recommend using it at this time.
I have managed to connect the Wiimote as a 'remote control' in System Preferences, but as yet no additional control. Does your system allow for moving the mouse yet? I bought a battery-powered Sensor Bar, so ought to be good to go!
