Alternative Server For After the Nintendo Wi-Fi Shutdown

[Heavenly Spoon]

Guys, guys, guys, guys, GUYS!

As you are all aware the 20th of May is the official date of the Nintendo Wi-Fi apocalypse, with many Wii and DS games (amongst which the DS Pokémon games) losing their online capabilities.

Now, the nice people of the Mario Kart Wii community have come up with a way to use their own custom servers to do all the Wi-Fi shenanigans you might want to do. I'm not sure how it works yet and I'm not sure what you'll need to do to make it work, but that doesn't matter right now, what matters right now is that if you do not register your friend codes on their site before the 18th of May you will not be able to use your current codes for online play. That means having to restart you Pokémon game, having to unlock every character again in Mario Kart or Brawl and other annoying things you'll have to do which aren't simply playing the game.

This probably isn't as relevant for Brawl (because, honestly, who's still going to play that once SSB4 comes out) and Mario Kart Wii (although it might still be unique enough to warrant the occasional game even when MK8 comes out), but for your old Pokémon games, your own Animal Crossing villages and stuff like that this might be important. If anything, it's a zero-risk high-reward kind of proposition.

An important note is that you apparently need not only your own FC but the FC of someone who has you added, so get your friends to register as well. (On that note, bacon, PMJ, anyone else who has me added on MKW or SSBB, I'm in there.)

Here's a video explaining stuff.

Here's where you need to go to join the cool-kids-club.

If anyone has any more details on how and why this will work, feel free to share. I don't have the time to do much research at the moment, but I figured I'd best get the word out as soon as possible, because the deadline is approaching rapidly.

Good luck!

 

[Chariblaze]

The short of it: Backup your Wii games, backup your DS games if you're so inclined, using custom servers on Wii will require homebrew, and using custom servers on DS might only be possible with flash carts.

That means having to restart you Pokémon game, having to unlock every character again in Mario Kart or Brawl and other annoying things you'll have to do which aren't simply playing the game.

If I'm understanding things correctly, you won't have to worry much about DS games and their FCs. With Wii games the only real way to get a new FC (which is what you'd need if you don't do this) is to delete your profile/data and start again. But with DS games, getting a new FC is almost trivial--just pop the game into a different DS, connect to Wi-Fi, and after some complaining explaining that connecting will cause you to lose your current WFC ID and get a new one, you'll get a new FC. Pop that game back into your main DS, connect, and you'll get another new FC.

Anyone who shuffles DSs and plays Pokemon online can tell you about the odd times their FC randomly changed and they lost all their Pal Pad friends--this is exactly the thing that's happening, and losing your Pal Pad entries and getting a new FC is basically the extent of the harm suffered by doing this (if you do this in games like Picross DS, where you upload levels to the Internet for others to download, you will apparently lose access to those levels if you don't have them saved on your cart, but I think that's basically the worst effect).

If you don't have two DSs to do this with, I'm pretty sure going into the Wi-Fi settings and deleting your WFC ID will cause you to get a new one. Obviously, doing that will affect the WFC stuff in all your games, but that shouldn't be too big of a problem.

HOWEVER: If you're in the unlikely situation of having ONLY a 3DS, having the very few DS games that CAN connect to WPA encrypted access points, and having NO way to change your router settings to use WEP or no encryption, then yes, you should probably back up your stuff, which is probably limited to the 5th Gen games and DSiWare. DSiWare is a bit more restrictive than normal DS games in that they're linked to your console, so you should back those up if you can't change your Wi-Fi from WPA to WEP/None down the road.

This just in, there is now a utility to upload your MK Wii data to the custom servers after the shutdown.

This probably isn't as relevant for Brawl (because, honestly, who's still going to play that once SSB4 comes out) and Mario Kart Wii (although it might still be unique enough to warrant the occasional game even when MK8 comes out), but for your old Pokémon games, your own Animal Crossing villages and stuff like that this might be important. If anything, it's a zero-risk high-reward kind of proposition.

Well, they were motivated enough to do this for Mario Kart. The analogue on handhelds for the Mario Kart situation would be MK DS to MK 7; DS has different tracks and a few quirks (can't hold items behind you; can only use certain items; these were limitations of the DS/early Wi-Fi, but I suppose they actually provide a different ruleset), but MK7 definitely replaced MK DS for most people. MK8 will, well, also replace MK Wii for most people, but MK Wii is in the unique situation of having unauthorized user-generated content in the form of tracks and modes. CTGP Revolution is a popular way to play these (many) tracks and (well, like, one) modes online, and is sort of why the community started developing alternate servers (however the crap they did that, seriously, blows my mind). So yeah, move to MK8, and you lose all that work. :X

An important note is that you apparently need not only your own FC but the FC of someone who has you added, so get your friends to register as well. (On that note, bacon, PMJ, anyone else who has me added on MKW or SSBB, I'm in there.)

True, you need to have a friend registered for this to work, but you only need to register your own FC (comments from the video uploader about this).

If anyone has any more details on how and why this will work, feel free to share. I don't have the time to do much research at the moment, but I figured I'd best get the word out as soon as possible, because the deadline is approaching rapidly.

Good luck!

How this will work: Using custom servers is going to require a few things. All Nintendo WFC games connect to servers encrypted with HTTPS. You need to get around that in order to use custom servers, which basically amounts to hacking the game:

For Wii games: The basic requirement is that you have homebrew installed. Homebrew utilities will allow you to patch the games so that you can use custom servers. In Mario Kart Wii's case, you'll be able to get the patch through CTGP Revolution, or through separate utilities.

For DS games: This gets a bit trickier, as the limited DS homebrew scene relies on you having a flash cart. Basically, the only way to patch these games is by patching the ROMs themselves with "No HTTPS" patches... and the only way to play those patched ROMs on a DS is with a flashcart. I might be wrong about this, but this is what I gleamed from the various Wii-Homebrew.com threads.


Why this will work: I don't know how the custom servers are actually working, but this import-Friend-Code-through-form thing will work because there's apparently a way to connect to Nintendo's servers and download the information of a user's friends. So following the 18th, when they actually set about downloading all this data, they'll look up your Friend Codes, see that you have friends, go to those friends, see that they're friends with you, and get the information from that, or something.


Other notes:

Finding Game IDs: Entering Friend Codes in the form requires you to know the game's Game ID. They have a list of popular games and their IDs on the form site, so look there first for your game. If you can't find it there, they link to GameTDB, which lets you search for some games and find their IDs. If you can't find your needed ID there:

Wii games: If you look at the disc, you'll see a number at the bottom. "RVL - XXXX - USA" | RVL is short for Revolution, the Wii's codename. USA obviously shows that the disc was for sale in the US (I think). You're interested in the XXXX, which will be the actual Game ID.

DS games: Similar situation. The number is at the bottom of the cartridge label, and instead of "RVL", it's "NTR", short for Nitro.

DSiWare games: The number is at the end of the in-game instruction manual. Just load up the game, look for "Instructions" or "Help", and go from there.

WiiWare games: Not sure about this one, but I think you can just check the Operations Manual. Get there by booting the game, pressing Home, and selecting "Operations", or if it's not there, check the Wii Shop entry.

If you add a Game ID that isn't registered in this database, you can add its name in the bottom form. Note, the ID needs to actually be in the database before you can add names.


Note about Game IDs and region: MrBean mentions using the correct letter for your region for the last digit of your MK Wii Game ID, but this isn't required--no matter what letter you put, everything is registered under XXXJ. So don't fret if you get that part wrong. Link to discussion with the video uploader about this.


Note about getting "Some Inputs were not correct. Please recheck them.": Some games, especially DS games, seem to plumb not work when you register them. With DS games I'd say this doesn't matter much (see above), but if you can't register a Wii game, you might want to report it in the people's thread: "If something is not working as it should do, please report it here: WHB-Forum: Friend code web formula".

 

[Heavenly Spoon]

For Wii games: The basic requirement is that you have homebrew installed. Homebrew utilities will allow you to patch the games so that you can use custom servers. In Mario Kart Wii's case, you'll be able to get the patch through CTGP Revolution, or through separate utilities.

I hear they're working on a hackless version for Project M (which will obviously be usable for Brawl as well), which would work via the same exploit Project M uses for NTSC Brawl discs. If this pans out all you'll need to play PM/Brawl online is an SD card. I don't think any similar exploit has been found for MKW, though, so hacking will probably be necessary for that (which isn't that hard to do, honestly, I think most LEGO games can be used for that, it's been a while since I've hacked my Wii).

And yeah, I wasn't sure about DS games, but I figured I might as well mention them just to be safe.

Anyhow, thanks for explaining things in a lot more detail. I didn't really have the time to research all this properly, I'm glad someone did.

 

[bacon]

...nah. I'll just sit tight and wait a few months before I get the chance to cream you at MK again, Spoon. ;>

But really, this seems cool.

 

[Saix]

I just registered for the wrong game and I can't register again... What do I do???

 

[Professor Palutena]

Note that the service only works for Animal Crossing: City Folk and Mario Kart Wii right now! Support for Animal Crossing: Wild World, Mario Kart DS, Mario Strikers Charged, Pokemon Diamond, Pokemon Pearl, Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 and Super Smash Bros. Brawl is coming.

I don't bother with Nintendo WFC too much but it's nice knowing that the option exists for people who do use it frequently.

 

[Chariblaze]

I just registered for the wrong game and I can't register again... What do I do???

What game were you trying to register, and what Game ID did you end up using?

 

[Saix]

I just registered for the wrong game and I can't register again... What do I do???

What game were you trying to register, and what Game ID did you end up using?

I tried to register Pokemon Black, but I registered Pokemon Black 2.

 

[Chariblaze]

What game were you trying to register, and what Game ID did you end up using?

I tried to register Pokemon Black, but I registered Pokemon Black 2.

Ooh. Well, since it's a DS game, you'll be fine if you temporarily connect to Wi-Fi down the road with a different DS, or if you go into some settings and delete your WFC ID. Don't worry too much.

 

[Dnomy]

Hello, I came across this mid 2015, and was wondering if I could still connect to the fake servers with a pokemon game/how I would go about doing that. Resetting the FC is not a problem, as I have multiple DS family systems.