Interview with a Wii hacker

Atomic: What's stopping people from writing software that can be executed from the DVD drive, and for that matter, what's your major stumbling block with the SD card exploit?
Bushing: The biggest stumbling point for the Zelda hack is that we were trying to make the game crash in a very specific and predictable way. We got the crash working, but it was hard to get the specific part working without having normal software development tools like a debugger.

Atomic: Would you say it’s just a matter of time and persistence before the SD card hack works, or are you expecting another brick wall?
Bushing: There are always potential brick walls -- either ones we haven't seen, or ones that Nintendo will try to place in reaction to our efforts. However, at this point I do think it's a matter of time and persistence. We can provably run a small bit of code on an unmodified system, and we know that we can run more, so it's just a question of writing it and debugging it. Neither of those is easy, but we think we know how to do them.

Atomic: Does this mean (legalities aside and assuming everything goes to plan), we will start to see modchip-less game duplication as well?
Bushing: Hard to say. People are clever, but right now any code you run will run "as" Zelda, so you couldn't write savefiles for another game, and I'm not sure any retail game would actually run unmodified. It's not something that's particularly interesting to me.

Atomic: So at this stage, homebrew is confined to running within the game environment, rather than custom Wii Channels and booting straight from the SD?
Bushing: Right.

Atomic: Is there anything stopping the current hack from working on an unmodded Wii?
Bushing: No, it should work on unmodded wiis when it's released.

Atomic: So it's still a 'should work', not a 'will work'?
Bushing: I don't have an unmodded wii to test it on, but I know of no possible reason it wouldn't work.

Atomic: I wondered if that were the case. Am I right in thinking that the Wii as a gaming platform doesn't really interest you, rather you like it as a development platform? And once you get homebrew running, what would be your first project?
Bushing: Actually, that'll probably be my big contribution. It's been a lot of work, and there's still a lot left to be done, and I'll leave it to more-qualified people. Porting Linux will probably be one of the first things done; it's almost a tradition. I do like gaming, too, but I almost like reverse-engineering more.

Atomic: With that in mind, are you concerned about any legal response from Nintendo?
Bushing: No. I haven't broken any laws, and I think that they have a much more costly problem with modchips.

Atomic: Similarly, do you predict difficulty in keeping on top of Nintendo's software response?
Bushing: That will certainly be a challenge. It remains to be seen how much they really care, as long as it doesn't lead to more piracy. If it does, things will get more complicated.

Atomic: Are you concerned about what the modding community can potentially do with this?
Bushing: Well, I think that people need to exercise good judgement, but I also know that piracy is inevitable, so all I can do I try not to actively contribute to it. It's an indication we're on the right path.

Atomic: Wow, I just read: Hello World! (This interview was conducted as geek history was being made. –Ed.) Is this the breakthrough we've been waiting for, or is this another brick in the wall?
Bushing: :) We're still working pretty hard on this.

Atomic: We've got hello world running, are we a small step or a major leap from running our own code?
Bushing: Hmm... we’re closer to a small step from running trivial programs. It'll take hard work by many people to use that to do something interesting.

Atomic: Is there anything else you would like to tell the world?
Bushing: Right now this information is only useful to a very small number of people, but it will turn into something more interesting to the rest of the world in good time.

And they'll hear about it, don't worry. :)

Until then ... it'll be done when it's done.

Atomic: We know there are people out there who are already thanking you. Thanks for the interview!
Bushing: No problem.