Hacking, Brewing, Unlocking; Is It All The Same Thing?
Many people who start out with an Internet search to find out what all the “Nintendo Wii homebrew” buzz is about find out that even the homebrew community seems divided or confused. “Homebrew”, “hacking”, or “unlocking” what do these mean and which is the right term? Hacking tends to carry a negative feeling because it reminds us of computer hackers that break into networks to steal Credit Card numbers. Unlocking, what exactly does that mean, and what in the world does homebrew, which is more commonly used to refer to homemade wine and beer, have to do with the Wii?
By now these three terms have been used interchangeably so much that for most people they pretty well mean the same thing; allowing the Wii do things Nintendo never intended by changing the system’s hardware or adding software applications. Well let’s see if we can’t clear things up just a little bit. This is how those of us at Wii Homebrew Review distinguish between hacking, unlocking, and homebrew.
First of all, hacking. It really does still have a negative feeling to it almost like the word “hacking” itself means something illegal has to be going on. Well it shouldn’t, at least not in this case. To “hack” your Wii is perfectly legal as long as you don’t use your Wii’s new found power to steal games or do anything that rips off some one or some company. Hacking is probably the original word for what we do and in the beginning it did involve literally opening up the console and fundamentally modifying the system by soldering on chips that change the way the Wii works. This method by-passes the physical hardware protocols that restrict the Wii to only doing things Nintendo’s way. Even though hacking has a much more general and broad meaning now it does have it’s roots in the, lets say, darker side of system modification.
Secondly, lets look at “unlocking”. Nintendo never really locked the Wii to begin with, they just made it to do the very limited number of things that they wanted it to do. The idea of it being locked and needing to be unlocked comes from the fact that we know it can do so much more and we take it upon ourselves to release the hidden potential and power that Nintendo never wanted us to realize existed. For the most part unlocking one’s Wii means going through the steps necessary to add homebrew to the system.
That brings us to our final term, homebrew. Today nearly all software-based “hacks” and modifications are labeled together as homebrew. Adding homebrew, and in most cases that will mean the Homebrew Channel, to your Wii is consider very safe and requires no invasive hardware modifications of any kind. Homebrew is entirely software based and can be just as easily removed from your system as deleting a channel or save file through the Wii’s setup menu. Homebrew is also used to describe the many applications, games, and emulators that are now available.
So whether you call it hacking, unlocking, or homebrewing all that really matters is the end result and staying within your personal comfort levels. So happy hacking everyone (I mean unlocking, or is it homebrewing…)
My Words
- homebrewing for wii (3)
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