WiiFlow Setup, Part 2: Games & Plugins
So you’ve got WiiFlow running on your Wii, congratulations! Now what’s next?
Running games (and emulators) with WiiFlow, that’s what!
Wiiflow 4.3 Download Pack. WiiFlow 4 The Masterpiece Pack by Abz P.S. For all the news and downloads check the new website The pack that has it all, Now with more. Log in or Sign up. Search titles only; Posted by Member.WiiFlow v4.2.3 Mastermod (72 plugins) loaded with 6 pages of source menu icons.
Abz’s WiiFlow MasterMod Pack
A member of the Wii modding community made a useful compilation of everything you’ll need to install on your USB hard drive (or SD card) with Wiiflow.
- I have the mastermod version of WiiFlow. I'm not 100% sure if it's using wii64 or Not64. The icon on WiiFlow is labels not64 but the ini file points to directories for games and covers labeled wii64. I don't know what the issue could be considering it worked for awhile and now it doesn't. I haven't deliberately messed with any files or settings.
- With this release you must replace your bins and imgs folders or wiiflow may crash. Move or rename those folders to back them up in case you need to go back to previous version. Changes: fixed crash when pressing 1/x or 2/y buttons (change coverflow layout) when no covers are loaded.
My goal of these tutorials is to simplify the Wii modding process as much as possible. When you extract this folder, unfortunately, it will look anything but simple. There are lots and lots of files here, but you won’t need them all– probably not even most of them. So, let me try and break it down for you.
First of all, it’s a .7z file, so you’ll need the free program 7zip to extract it. Now, let’s see what the official “info” file included in this archive has to say about what’s included (and then I’ll simplify it all):
Simplified explanation
So, the purpose of all these files is to give you everything you’ll possibly need to set up and configure WiiFlow. It includes everything from the WiiFlow application itself, to emulators and plugins required to use them, to custom themes. However, you probably won’t need 90% of this stuff.
It’s very useful if you want the quickest setup with minimal configuration. I’d recommend extracting it to a folder on your computer, and then copying only what you need to your Wii drive. I’ll go over this more down below.
Configuring your Wii drive
I recommend storing games, plugins, and emulators on a USB drive. This guide assumes the user is using USB; however, you can use an SD card for everything if you prefer.
To prepare your USB drive to work with the Wii, format it to FAT32 using GUI Format
If you are going with USB, make sure WiiFlow reads from it. To do so, run WiiFlow on your Wii. Then, go to options, and make sure “SD only” is set to off.
Adding Wii games
To get WiiFlow to read your Wii games, they must be in WBFS format. Use Wii Backup Manager to convert your dumped Wii ISOs if you need to.
Then, they must be stored in a folder called “wbfs” at the root of your hard drive. The naming format is a little particular, and requires the Title ID of your game:
wbfs/game title [game ID]/game ID.wbfs
Example: SD/wbfs/Mario Kart Wii [RMCE01]/RMCE01.wbfs
Adding GameCube games
Nintendont is required to play GameCube backups on a Wii. Download it here if you haven’t already, scroll down to the readme, and follow the steps under “quick installation”.
GameCube games must be formatted differently than Wii games. First of all, they must be in ISO format. Then, they must be placed in a folder called “games” in the root of your SD card or hard drive:
games/game name/game.iso
Example: SD/games/Mario Kart Double Dash!/game.iso
Adding retro games
To make emulated games directly accessible in the WiiFlow interface, we will set them up as plugins. If you’re using a USB drive, this is the only part of the WiiFlow program we’ll store on that instead of the SD card.
The Plugins folder
On your Wii USB drive, create a wiiflow folder if it’s not already there. Then, inside of that, create a plugins folder. Inside USB://wiiflow/plugins is where everything plugin-related is configured.
For every emulator you want to include, you’ll need the .dol file, as well as a .ini config file and a .ogg sound file to go with it.
We can make use of the WiiFlow MasterMod Pack here to save some time. You can copy everything from MasterMod Pack/wiiflow/plugins to USB://wiiflow/plugins. This will include every emulator for the Wii already pre-configured.
Or, you can configure everything manually like I did:
Configuring Emulators
List of Emulators available on Wii
The Emulators I recommend most are:
FCEUGX (NES)
Snes9xGX (SNES)
Not64 (N64)
Place each .dol file in the plugins folder. As stated above, for every emulator plugin, there’s also a .ini config file and a .ogg sound file to go with it
Here’s an example of what one of the .ini files looks like – more info below.
Adding ROMs
The default game storage location for ROMs (and save games) will differ with each emulator. You will have to read up for each emulator you download for where on your USB drive to store your games, and then change the “romdir” parameter in the .ini file to match it. The default for the emulators listed above is:
FCEUGX – sd root/fceugx/roms
Snes9xGX – sd root/snes9xgx/roms
Not64 – sd root/not64/roms
Also, read here for information on how to obtain your own ROMs
Adding Game Covers
Another thing you may notice inside the wiiflow folder from the MasterMod is a folder called “boxcovers”. This is where cover information for all your games are stored.
For Wii and GameCube games
This is nice and straightforward. You can download box art directly using WiiFlow if your Wii is connected to the internet. Alternatively, you can get your own from a site like gametdb.com. Make sure the cover is a PNG file with the game’s title ID as its name, and place it inside the boxcovers folder.
For retro games
A folder corresponding to the emulator must be placed inside the boxcovers folder. Then, the box art PNG file must have the same name as the ROM it corresponds to. Finally, the “coverfolder” parameter in the .ini file must point to that directory.
More information
Check out the WiiFlow Wiki, it’s got lots more information that can help answer many questions you might have.
And we have plenty more Wii Modding information and guides here at the Ellis Workshop!
Thanks for reading!
Click here to read Part 1 of this guide.
Further reading:The Ellis Workshop’s Wii Hacking Guide
If you need help for anything regarding this tutorial, please join the RiiConnect24 Discord server (recommended) or e-mail us at [email protected].
This is a quick start guide on how to use WiiFlow, a USB loader for the Wii that’s used to play games from a USB drive or SD card.
Wiiflow Mastermod Pack
What you need
- A Wii
- A USB drive and/or SD card
Make sure you have installed cIOS before following this!
We recommend you copy games over with Wii Backup Manager if you use Windows, Witgui if you use macOS, or Wii Backup Fusion for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
If you want to play games that are in NKit format, use this program to convert them to ISO first. You can also use a development build of Dolphin, right click on a game, and use “Convert File” to convert it.
If you are not copying games using Wii Backup Manager, Witgui, or Wii Backup Fusion, make a folder on the root of the USB drive or SD card named “wbfs” and put the games in there.
To play games, we recommend using an external hard drive for your Wii. Flash drives should be usable too, but external hard drives are recommended as they are more reliable, and can store more games.
Unlike USB Loader GX, WiiFlow can load games of an SD card.
Make sure your USB drive and/or SD card is formatted as FAT32 or NTFS. Do not format it as other types such as extFS or WBFS, the latter is an old format of storing Wii games.
Instructions
Downloading
- Extract WiiFlow and put the
appsandWiiFlowfolders on your USB drive or SD card. - Insert your USB drive, and SD card if you’re using one, into your Wii and launch WiiFlow from the Homebrew Channel.
Getting Started
This is not a full comprehensive guide on using WiiFlow. This is intended to help you learn how to use it, by giving you a quick start. You should be able to figure out all the great features of WiiFlow by using it.
- WiiFlow by default is set to only find games on the SD card. This can be changed by going in to settings, startup settings then turn off “Mount SD Only”.
- You can toggle between viewing Wii games, GameCube games, Wii Channels, Plugins, Homebrew apps by clicking the button second to last button on the right.
- You can download game covers by going to “Settings” then “Download Covers and Banners”
User Interface
When WiiFlow detects games, they are displayed in flow view. When you click on a game you are given these options:
- Star - Adds game to favorites.
- Bookshelf - Adds the game to 1 of 6 categories of your choosing.
- Gears - Opens the settings menu for the specific game. Changing settings here will only effect the game you changed the settings for.
- X - Deletes the game from the USB drive or SD card
When you bring the cursor to the bottom of the screen while in flow view, there are 6 icons:
- Bookshelf - View the games that are sorted in the categories you chose.
- Star - View games you favorited.
- Gears - Opens WiiFlow Settings.
- Game Type - Toggles between different types of apps/games. The logo changes depending on what game type you have selected.
- Disc - Loads game that is in disc drive.
- House - Will open this menu. This menu can also be launched by pressing the home button.
- Help Guide - Shows all the controls you can use in WiiFlow.
- Reload Cache - Press this when WiiFlow is not detecting a new game on the USB drive or SD card.
- File Explorer - Allows you to boot games/apps from anywhere on your USB drive or SD card.
- Select Plugins - Allows you to select plugins.
- Credits - Shows the people who worked on WiiFlow.
- Shutdown - Allows you to either go into full shutdown, or Standby mode.
- Exit To - Lets you exit to Wii Menu, HBC, neek2o, Priiloader and Bootmii.
- Settings - Will open the WiiFlow Settings menu
Options once complete
WiiFlowiki
WiiFlowiki is a great resource with information about WiiFlow.
Wiiflow Mastermod Download
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