Friday, April 11, 2008

Mario Kart + Freeloader News Update Part II

Just another update on Wii Mario Kart (JPN) and Datel's Freeloader. We updated our USA Wii console to the 3.2U firmware and it still works with the Freeloader and Japanese Mario Kart. So... the rumors of the update breaking Freeloader functionality are unfounded.

Of course, there's always the chance that the next firmware update from Nintendo will bust up the Freeloader but until then, Datel's boot disc is holding up rather well. As an aside, our U.K. partner who supplies us with European goodies like Freshly Picked has confirmed that the European version of Mario Kart Wii also works on a USA Wii (3.1U or 3.2U firmware) + Freeloader. If we had known that earlier, we would have imported the European (English language) version instead of the Japanese version.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Basically, after testing on various Wii's (Between office, home, and friends)

It turns out that having the Wii updated to 3.1U/3.2U and putting in the disc doesn't work, in general.

Specifically, Wiis that have had the US Brawl disc inserted and update ran (regardless of the system version) works -- I'm thinking that there's some common setting with Mario Kart Wii that is installed with Brawl that allows Mario Kart to run.

(On the 3.1U and 3.2U Updates, done via manual upgrade check, Mario Kart Disc will read, and show the title image, but trying to load it locks the console and requires a hard reboot. After running Brawl on the 3.2U system, then using Freeloader/Mario Kart Wii -- it worked fine.)