Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Modify your Nintendo Wii in Greenhills

Brought our U.S-bought WII console to EYO Sales & Technologies in Greenhills Virramall. The shop was very crowded but I managed to catch the eye of one of the techs. Handed him the Wii and with no fanfare he quickly sat down to disassemble it.

Turns out that EYO sells two kinds of modchips that they install depending on the type of chip installed in your wii. There's the wiikey which costs P2000 and the more expensive D2Ckey which costs P5000. You can buy the wiikey mod chip cheaper online for only about $29 but then you'd have to solder it yourself so I'd rather let the experienced guys at EYO do it.

Anyway ours was the older D2B chip so the helpful tech went about soldering the wiikey. The unit was reassembled, had a software upgrade (via wi-fi) and and I was out of the shop within two hours.

Our wii can now play pirated CDs for P150 instead of the P2000 price tag of an original! It even connects to the internet and has no problem with Nintendo firmware updates.

TIPS:
1. Get to EYO early in the morning. It's a very popular repair center and it can get crowded with all the people bringing in their defective XBOX360s and PSPs.
2. Be careful of the pirated wii games. Some of them are actually old Gamecube games! Look carefully at the label. If you see a gamecube logo, then it was made for the Gamecube and not for the wii. It will still work with your console but it won't make full use of the wiimote "actions".

Here are pirated games that I've tried with the modified wii:
1. Metroid 3
2. Resident Evil 4 - highly recommended. Highly enjoyable with more than 100+ hours of gameplay.
3. Wii Boogie - It's a much simpler version of dance-revo where you just have to tap the wiimote to the beat. Successful tapping will let your character make fancy dance moves. It's very silly but I find it strangely addicting.
4. Sonic the hedgehog - Poorly designed menu system but once you get through the tutorials, it's fun to play. It's a bit too complicated for me because your character zips through so fast and you've got to have quick reflexes.
5. Legend of Zelda - doesn't work. Disc read error.
6. Prince of Persia - verrrry good game!

Rating: 0
Four pawikan points for the prompt attention that we received from the techs at EYO. Minus points because it's so crowded. It seems like they're the only ones offering this service which is why they can charge so much for it! But so far I'm happy that the wii works and I'm willing to pay for a job well done.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

i want my own wii! yay! yay!

Anonymous said...

Hi. We're from Cebu and we bought a modified Wii last week. You mentioned in your blog that you have no problems with Nintendo firmware updates. But I also have read some informations here on the net, that you can't update your Modified wii cause Nintendo won't allow you or your Wii will get broken after. We haven't updated our Wii since we bought it. We're afraid the same thing might happened like with our PSP when we updated it. We couldn't play downloaded games anymore. But it's fixed now though. Anyway, is it really safe? We do want to update our Wii. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh and I forgot to mention that Greenhills is really far from us, so if something bad happens with our Wii, we might not be able to find shops here that could fix it, so that's why we're cautious. We just want to know if it's really safe if we keep updating our Wii. =)

ReneGaviola said...

just another update for recent owners of wii like myself, i was initially hesitant to upgrade via wifi because of the warning but did some surfing and saw this post among others. i just upgraded via wifi and and still play pirated games including top spin 3 w/c further required an additional update via wifi. so i guess it's safe to do it after all. many thanks!

Blitz Macalma said...

I went to EYO yesterday to inquire about the MOD Chip (JTAG/RGH) for the XBOX Slim, and they are charging 6000 pesos! Ang mahal!

While in other stores 2,500 to 3,000 lang ang fee. I checked online and the MOD Chip costs around 1,500 pesos.. so at 6k ang laki ng TUBO ni EYO...

I don't know why this SHOP is well known but that price is outrageous..

I brought my XBOX to BESTBUY instead, (only 2,500) I also had a friends XBOX modified there. Cheaper, long Warranty and no issues! BESTBUY indeed.