Virtual Console Wads

• Virtual Console Wads Download
• N64 Virtual Console Wads
• Wii Virtual Console Games Wads

All Wii Virtual Console Games. Coming Soon Out Now Cancelled. North America UK/Europe Japan. Single Player 2+ Players 3+ Players 4+ Players 6+ Players 8. To see Virtual Console reviews visit vc-reviews.wad is basically a folder containing both an emulator and game. As no Game Boy Colour VC have been released yet. Giant Bomb's Let's Minecraft Together: The Home Game. The Community Spotlight 2020.08.29. The Community Spotlight 2020.08.22. Jul 25, 2010 At present no GBC games cannot be injected into.wad files.wad is basically a folder containing both an emulator and game. As no Game Boy Colour VC have been released yet, there is nothing to inject them into.

Nintendo launched the Wii in 2006, and with it came the virtual console. Part of the Wii Shop Channel, the virtual console offered a way to enjoy the games of yesteryear, but that era is coming to a close. Nintendo will begin the next phase of shutting down the Wii virtual console today. You can no longer buy content from the store, and any unspent Wii Points are now useless. That means some of Nintendo’s classic games are now unavailable on any modern platform, and this comes as the company intensifies its crackdown on ROM sites.

After more than 12 years, it’s understandable that Nintendo would want to sunset the Wii Shop Channel. After all, the Wii is now two generations out of date. The company also gave everyone warning last year that it planned to kill the feature, giving gamers time to spend their points. For the time being, you can still download the classic titles purchased in the virtual console. However, those titles will no longer work at some unannounced future date, and there’s no way to back them up.

You can still access a virtual console on the newer Wii U, but there’s an unfortunate trend here. While the Wii virtual console features nearly 400 titles, the Wii U has 140 fewer. So, there are a lot of games for older systems that you can’t purchase at all right now. The Wii U won’t last forever, either. When it’s gone, the selection of classic games is even thinner. The Switch only supports about 30 classic games, all of which are locked behind the subscription Switch Online service. Nintendo has promised to add more, but it’s clearly not a priority.

We’ve seen similar shutdowns over the years — when the bulk of consumers move away from older services, companies can shut off access to purchased content to save money. There aren’t enough people complaining to make a difference. Although, video game archivists point out some of these games may never be available for purchase again. Many young game designers take inspiration from old games, but what if there are fewer old games to play?

Gamers may increasingly turn to piracy to play retro games as their legal options dwindle. While Nintendo successfully shuttered the largest ROM sites on the internet, it’s not exactly hard to download classic Nintendo games. The company is certainly within its rights to go after these sites, but piracy isn’t going away. Still, it puts those who want to play by the rules in a difficult spot.

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This article is about Wii software packaging. For the data files used by Doom, see WiiDoom.

• 1General info
• 3WAD format

General info

The WAD file-format is a package that contains title information for the Wii, such as System Menus, IOS versions, and channels.

Piracy

Unfortunately, WAD files are often used to distribute pirated channels (both Virtual Console and WiiWare), due to the fact that they are also used by Nintendo and therefore easy to rip from the Wii and, for some WAD files, Nintendo's servers, and easy to create installers for. Wiibrew does not in any way endorse piracy, and as such these uses of WAD files should not be discussed.

If you wish to discuss legitimate WAD files, please ensure you make clear which file you are talking about and what you will use it for, to prevent people jumping to conclusions about your intentions.

System Menu

WAD files are often installed in the Wii System Menu to appear as channels, making launching easier. If a WiiBrew app isn't installed as a channel, it can usually only be launched from the Homebrew Channel itself. WAD file creation seems to be an intricate process and tools are difficult to locate, and most are based on the .NET framework. Associated with WAD file generation are forwarders, which when loaded simply load another arbitrary application. A common technique is to use a somewhat generalized WAD that can be easily customized to then forward to another WiiBrew application stored on the SD card.

Wii System Channel WAD files exist for WiiMC, ftpii, and numerous others.

Forwarders are somewhat easier to locate, a common one being the Narolez-NForwarder, for which source exists and is easily modifiable. One WAD generation system that still appears to be active is the CRAP system that appears to be .NET based. The Wadder system also seemed to be .NET based but it appears abandoned. Although these tools are often associated with piracy, there are clearly legitimate uses for them as well.

The WAD files themselves contain either still images or a collection of images to be animated, as well as sound data. In addition there is a .DOL file for the program to be run when launched.

WAD format

Installable WADs

Common format used for WAD files distributed in update partitions from Wii discs. Thanks to Segher for his source.

Sections are stored in installable WAD files in the same order from their headers (certificate chain, ticket, TMD, content data). Each section is aligned to a 0x40-byte boundary.

The encrypted content data section is composed of content files, which are stored following the same order from the TMD content records. These are encrypted using the decrypted titlekey from the Ticket and the content index as the IV (first two bytes, followed by 14 zeroes). The SHA-1 checksum of the decrypted content must match the hash from its corresponding TMD content record. Each content is individually aligned to a 0x40-byte boundary.

The footer is an optional, unencrypted timestamp / buildstamp. It's usually the first decrypted 0x40 bytes from the first content file.

In a hex editor, the beginning of any installable WAD will be 00 00 00 20 49 73 00 00. This can be useful to extract an embedded installable WAD from an ELF binary.

Backup WADs

Format used by content.bin files to store content data from a channel copied or transferred to the SD card, which get saved to /private/wii/title/<low_tid_ascii>/content.bin.

Virtual Console Wads Download

Also used by downloadable content data stored in the SD card, which gets saved to /private/wii/data/<low_tid_ascii>/<index>.bin - in this context, <index> represents a specific content index value from a TMD content record, expressed as a 3-digit number in base 10 notation (e.g. 000.bin).

Savegames use the same exact header, albeit with different fields filled and with an entirely different structure for the rest of the file.

Sections are stored in backup WAD files in the same order from their headers (TMD, content data). Each section is aligned to a 0x40-byte boundary.

The included contents bitfield serves to determine which contents from the TMD are part of the backup WAD. Up to 512 different contents (bits) can be toggled, separated in groups of 8 contents (byte), where the LSB represents the first content from the group and the MSB represents the last content. Shared contents are usually not included. For example, the bitfield for a backup WAD that holds a TMD with 10 content records, where indexes 4 and 8 are both shared contents, would be EF 02 (11101111 00000010), followed by 62 zeroes.

The encrypted content data section is composed of content files, which are stored following the same order from the TMD content records. These are encrypted using the console-specific PRNG key and the content index as the IV (first two bytes, followed by 14 zeroes). The SHA-1 checksum of the decrypted content must match the hash from its corresponding TMD content record. Each content is individually aligned to a 0x40-byte boundary.

N64 Virtual Console Wads

In a hex editor, the beginning of any backup WAD will be 00 00 00 70 42 6B 00 01. This can be useful to extract an embedded backup WAD from a bigger file (such as content.bin files).

Please note that, unlike content.bin files from channels, each <index>.bin file from transferred DLCs only holds a single encrypted content. This also means that a single bit from the entire included contents bitfield is enabled.

Wii Virtual Console Games Wads