WiiLink
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WiiLink is a homebrew WiiConnect24 revival service beginning in 2020. It attempts to revive all WiiConnect24 channels, region exclusive channels and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.
Overview
WiiLink was created originally as a response to a growing demand for western audiences to be able to try Wii no Ma, which was not revived by any services. The original promise of the service was to be able to play Wii no Ma; now entitled Wii Room, and its companion app Wii Room Go for the Nintendo DS. After releasing its beta in December 2020, a revival for the Digicam Print Channel was created, which was the first full release for the service. Eventually they also began work on the Food Channel, though it's development was slow. Despite dropping Wii Room Go due to lack of knowledge in DS development, development slowly progress for years.
On August 28, 2022, a fake ordering version of the Food Channel was released. The channel could not order real food, but allowed you to use all the menus and browse the channel, something that was impossible until then thanks to limitations. Though it was positively received, many people noted that the channel felt incomplete.
On January 8, 2023, the Nintendo Channel was released, adding features such as surveys and searching back to it, which were missing in RiiConnect24's version of the channel. A few days after the release, RiiConnect24 released their 3rd major version of the Nintendo Channel, containing the same code with seemingly no attribution.
On July 6, 2024, WiiLink finally released the full version of Wii Room 1.0. The update brought many new features such as many new translations, an overhaul of rooms, new partnerships, polls and images, and introduced WiiLink Originals. The announcement performed extremely well for the service's standards, with searches for WiiLink, as well as the YouTube trailer and Twitter announcements shooting up compared to its usual performance.
Channels
WiiLink provides functionality to many different channels, with various levels of support.
| Channel | Description | Support | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forecast Channel | View the next week's weather in your country, as well as viewing different country's across the world. | Enhanced | Features many more countries and cities compared to the original channel. |
| News Channel | Check the news across the globe, or read in a slideshow. | Full | |
| Nintendo Channel | View various trailers for games, recommend games to people and download DS demos. | Full | |
| Mii Contest Channel | Send Miis in contests for the best entry. | Full | |
| Everybody Votes Channel | Participate in polls to see how normal your opinions are. | Full | |
| Wii Room | Stream various shows, watch movies, buy merchandise and more. | Partial | Missing functionality for the Theatre and Shop. |
| Photo Prints Channel | Design albums or business cards, and send them off to be printed. | Partial | Although everything in the software is usable, no printing is possible. |
| Food Channel | Order food directly off your Wii. | Partial | Only features a very limited selection of restaurants. |
| Kirby TV Channel | Watch episodes of the Kirby: Right Back at Ya! anime. | Partial | Very limited frequency of episodes compared to the official channel. |
Development
Founding WiiLink
WiiLink was first founded out of a desire to create a revival to Wii no Ma, and was founded under the name Rii no Ma. The name was then later changed to WiiLink24 after the service merged with WiiConnect24 replacement service BetterConnect24 to avoid similarities to RiiConnect24. The service was meant to be a replacement server for WiiConnect24, both for international channels and Japanese channels.
Finding data
In 2019, Luna Caoimhe uploaded various videos showing the still accessible portions of various channels on her Japanese Wii, to preserve what little is known about them online. In September 2020, she was then approached by Dogmander, and promptly recruited to the team as a Japanese data source and translator. By this point, Wii Room was working quite well, being able to load videos and get into most menus, but only on Dolphin. After making progress with Wii Room, WiiLink24 halted working on WiiConnect24 channels to completely focus on reviving Japanese channels.[2]
Wii Room beta launch
On December 5, 2020, WiiLink24 launches the first ever functional version of Wii Room. While it successfully showed videos on Wii Room and messaging friends worked, many features such as the theatre, shop, weather were completely non functional, and translations were very sloppy. Additionally, the channel required you to use an extremely specific save file, and installing a certain Mii onto your Wii, which could sometimes kill the Mii Channel on people's Wiis. Despite it's flaws, the Wii Room launch lead the team to start development of the Digicam Print Channel. This did not halt development of Wii Room however, since very quickly version 2 of the beta released, fixing many bugs and removing the need for the special Mii, and quickly after that version 3, fixing even more crashes.[2]
Digicam Print Channel launch
On May 15, 2021, a short film was released by WiiLink24 entitled The Search for Digicam, produced by Pineapple. The film ended with a trailer for a fully functioning version of Digicam Print Channel, which released on the same day. Though it could not print photos, it would send the output to a registered email address for the user to use however they please.
Dominoes discovery
Soon after the launch of Digicam, Sketch would find a way to link the Demae Channel to the Dominos API, and successfully order a pizza in real life. This discovery kickstarted development of the Demae Channel, with it being the center of updates until it's release.[2]
Gallery
WiiLink logo from October 2020 - May 2021, made by Spectremint
WiiLink icon/favicon from October 2020 - May 2021, made by Spectremint
WiiLink logo from May 2021 - December 2022, made by Spectremint
WiiLink logo from December 2022 - September 2023, made by yunyl
