Now the incredibly popular and anticipated Super Smash Bros Brawl is at best a 3 month delay between Japan release and the Australian release. We PAL gamers are again left in the lurch. That is, until now, with the recent release of the Wii Freeloader, a device that will unlock your Wii to the world of games that are cheaper, uncensored and not delayed.
Owners of this generations other consoles will be well aware that their consoles are region free, Nintendo’s own DS and the Sony PSP also employ no region mechanism. Only the Wii has such a prehistoric, unnecessary feature included. Thankfully, the Freeloader has hit and, like it’s GameCube brother, promises to open your Wii to the world - and it does.
So what did we test?
- Super Smash Bros Brawl (US & JP) - Booted fine after following alternative method Note: Did not boot with system with modchip
- No More Heroes (US) - Booted and plays
- Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (US) - Booted and plays
- Super Mario Galaxy (US) - Booted and plays
- Super Paper Mario (US) - Booted and plays
- Trauma Centre Second Opinion (US) - Booted and plays
- Ghost Squad (US) - Booted and plays
- Rayman Raving Rabbids (US) - Booted and plays
- Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles (US) - Booted and plays
- Zack and Wiki: Quest Barbaro's Treasure (US) - Booted and plays
- Wario Ware Smooth Moves (US) - Booted and plays
- Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz (US) - Booted and plays
- Nitrobike (US) - Booted and plays
- Trauma Center: New Blood (US) - Booted and plays
We also had a handful of GameCube games on hand to test with varied results. While the box of the Freeloader never actually mentions GameCube compatibility it does work in limited cases. Please note that we had the console set to 60 Hz which is what a NTSC GameCube or Wii in GameCube mode would have to put out.
- Timesplitters 3: Future Perfect (US) - Booted and works
- Resident Evil 4 (US) -Booted and plays
Sadly, that’s all the games we had on hand that worked, other games we tested included (all US versions) did not load...
- Alien Hominid
- Battalion Wars
- Chibi Robo
- Geist (loads but crashes on loading screen)
- Killer 7
- Viewtiful Joe 2
- Viewtiful Joe: Red Hot Rumble