So I recently bought an old wii, specifically for the purpose of homebrewing. I’m able to understand so far as to what needs downloaded on the Wii and how to backup, but I can’t find any sites with games. I noticed Vimms Lair wasn’t an option anymore, and other sites I look through use ROMs for emulators. (Unless, those do work on the console). I think you need .wbfs files, and I’d really appreciate if I was pointed in the right direction
Are you planning to run backups from discs or an external drive? Scene releases from the era were .iso backups of retail discs. I can’t quite remember for sure but I think .wbfs was for WiiWare i.e. smaller downloadable games. I used to just burn the .iso to a DVD and run it through the homebrew channel.
Torrentleech has a Wii category, just check it isn’t a Wii U game
I was trying to play games directly off an SD card, but I can’t seem to find the right files. I keep hearing the actual console needs .wbfs files, but I’m not entirely sure on .iso.
I’ll try torrentleech but I’m pretty new to pirating in general (I just keep seeing its easy to homebrew a wii.) I found some files on archive.org but can’t get them to transfer onto the SD card.
I think you’ll download .iso’s, then convert them to .wbfs using Wii backup manager, which should also manage the folder structure / transfer to your SD card. I don’t think the console needs .wbfs per se - it’s the method you choose for running the backups which determines format restrictions instead - but Wii backup manager was fairly straightforward to use in my recollection so that should be a good option.
There might be some repository online already in .wbfs, it just used to be standard to convert from an .iso because that’s the standard container a disc backup will be dumped into. There’s nothing too special about .wbfs other than it omits the garbage data included in retail disc backup .iso’s to pad the discs to 4.3gb, so .wbfs will be smaller
.wbfs is short for Wii Backup File System iirc. I used to convert my ripped or downloaded .iso files to .wbfs files for them to be read from an external HDD. Don’t know much more about it anymore though.
Edit for OP: Vimm’s Lair is still listing Wii games for download. You can even choose .wbfs file format. If you also search for ‘wbfs manager’ it should guide you in the right direction. For Wii U there was some program on Windows which let you organize your HDD of backup games and download said games from the official servers. Don’t know if any of the Wii (or Wii U) servers are still online but might be worth a shot.