The bootleg Nintendo Community alternative now not requires jailbreaking

The Pretendo Community, an open-source Nintendo Community different, now not requires a hacked Wii U console. With Nintendo’s servers for the obsolete console shutting down on Monday, the Pretendo Community shared a brand new workaround that gives (restricted) entry to its homebrew servers with out jailbreaking your dusty outdated console.

An SSL (safe sockets layer) is a protocol that encrypts the connection between a tool and its servers. The Wii U’s SSL exploit (branded as “SSSL”), found by the Pretendo Community’s shutterbug, allows you to hook up with the community with solely a easy DNS change, which you are able to do on the inventory firmware. “We’ve been holding on to this exploit for at the present time for fairly a while, in case Nintendo determined to difficulty patches for it,” the community’s creators wrote in a blog post asserting the brand new workaround.

Not all the things will work, although. The Pretendo Community workforce says third-party titles that use their very own SSL libraries aren’t suitable. That features Watch Dogs, the YouTube app and something working an embedded browser (like TVii, the eShop and the Miiverse applet). Nonetheless, the community creators stress that in-game Miiverse performance nonetheless works.

The workaround requires a Wii U working at the least firmware model 5.5.5. If yours has software program decrease than that, you must nonetheless be capable of go surfing and set up the most recent replace. Nintendo final pushed a Wii U firmware replace in August 2022, when the present model (5.5.6) arrived.

Shutting down the Wii U and 3DS on-line servers doesn’t forestall Nintendo from offering new firmware updates to the consoles. Given Nintendo’s aversion to hacking its gadgets, the Mario maker might, at the least in idea, replace the 12-year-old Wii U to patch the DNS workaround.

To take SSSL for a spin within the meantime, you’ll be able to comply with the Pretendo Network’s instructions.