Some lovely hackers have found a way to run homebrew code on the Nintendo Wii, in a new style that requires no physical modding or flashing. The team found an exploit in the hit game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, that allows players to load special code from an SD card by loading a specially hacked save file. Once the load the file and play for a few seconds, the code takes over and boots any code from the SD card. Right now the only thing that runs is an unplayable version of PONG, which serves as the proof of concept.

Many players are reporting that the exploit however doesn’t work on all Wii’s and it’s currently unclear if this can be fixed, or not. The possibilities of this exploit are also currently unknown, although the community is very confident that this exploit can be taken very far. Video of the exploit follows…

If you have a video game console and are somewhat an avid gamer, then you probably are familiar with the homebrew community. Most video game consoles are locked out, allowed on encrypted or digitally signed code to be run. Homebrew is used to describe a program or code that isn’t signed, and isn’t officially approved to be run on the console. By using a modchip or an exploit by the one above, people are able to trick their consoles into running unsigned code. Most homebrew is designed with the intent of allowing people to develop their own programs and games. However, some programs will allow you to run pirated games instead, which makes Homebrew a very big problem for developers. What will come with the Wii exploit? We have to wait to find out what people cook up!