"No, I can assure you it sucks in many other ways"

October 3, 2018 2:30 AM

A fully functional Wii portable (not an emulator) that fits into an Altoids tin. I repeat: not an emulator.
posted by DoctorFedora (32 comments total)

The Twitter thread about the KillMii has been very entertaining, as well.
posted by DoctorFedora at 2:30 AM on October 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Cool! Is it some kind of emulator?
posted by thelonius at 2:33 AM on October 3, 2018 [19 favorites]

Yeah, what else can it emulate? Can you play gameboy games on it?
posted by mmcg at 2:35 AM on October 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

These mints look terrible. You're definitely going to get sick if you eat that.
posted by Fizz at 3:25 AM on October 3, 2018 [6 favorites]

I knew this would happen sooner or emulator.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:28 AM on October 3, 2018 [8 favorites]

This is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their Wiis wedged into their Altoid tins, or why.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:02 AM on October 3, 2018 [18 favorites]

I have no idea how these people got their Wiis wedged into their Altoid tins, or why.

RTFA, my good MeFite! There are amazing details!
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:12 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

If it is indeed fully functional, how do they manage to fit a Wii disc into an Altoids tin?
posted by fairmettle at 4:37 AM on October 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

PortablizeMii replaces all disc drive functions with USB loading, rendering the disc drive obsolete. USB loading is faster, more convenient, and uses much less power.
posted by sourcejedi at 6:44 AM on October 3, 2018

Is this?
posted by evilDoug at 6:56 AM on October 3, 2018

RTFA, my good MeFite! There are amazing details!

does anyone read the posts down here?
posted by Reverend John at 7:11 AM on October 3, 2018 [7 favorites]

I contend that any project in an Altoids tin must by definition include at least two breath mints.
posted by rlk at 7:26 AM on October 3, 2018

Is it Ghostbusters 2 an emulator?
posted by emelenjr at 7:36 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

He spent so much time wondering if he could that he ignored the voice that whispered "no" when he finally wondered if he should.
posted by straight at 8:04 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

[mint quip redacted]

What we really need is a micro fab chip system. This tech, excepting a couple resistors, be built into a single chip, all the memory, burned in os and base games. Easy to do and per unit under a few bucks, quantity 2 Billion. We have cute small 3D printers, we need cute small chip fab units. Electronics components are finicky and expensive, put it all on a chip.
posted by sammyo at 8:16 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

So this Wii portable...it emulates mints?
posted by nubs at 8:25 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Listen—fun is fun, but we eat Certs in this house, mister!
posted by Atom Eyes at 8:40 AM on October 3, 2018

Also it can track your head movements for the wiimote motion controls if you have a mint on your tongue. (I was able to get it to work with a Cert, but it lost connection sometimes.)
posted by straight at 9:11 AM on October 3, 2018

I still don't get where the main PCB came from. It's an original wii board? It's the wii chips removed and laid out on a new pcb?
posted by GuyZero at 9:19 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

More precisely: A Plan, Some Parts, and Some Sketches for A Fully Functional Wii ...

Also, thank heavens for an internet life where I don't visit sites where the comments are formatted to give a higher priority to the "rank" of poster than the content, and are free from Moderators that have misogynistic and abelist sigs.

Edit: Checked the Twitter thread and see now that it's thing.
posted by achrise at 9:36 AM on October 3, 2018

> More precisely: A Plan, Some Parts, and Some Sketches for A Fully Functional Wii ...

Check page 4.
posted by ardgedee at 9:40 AM on October 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nice job. But woof, that finished package. If only it could speak. FATHER, GIVE ME LEGS
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:13 AM on October 3, 2018

I hope this kicks off a whole trend of 'too' miniature portable consoles.
posted by graventy at 1:25 PM on October 3, 2018

If it's a Wii, it can be turned into an emulator quite easily. This is really impressive, I don't know why it occurred to them to attempt but I am glad they did.
posted by GoblinHoney at 2:08 PM on October 3, 2018

Complete Wii portable in an Altoids tin. Because reasons. This portable is not logical, comfortable, or practical. But it must be done... for the memes.

emphasis mine (it's from the top of TFA)
posted by OHenryPacey at 2:48 PM on October 3, 2018

There's only one Wii emulator, and since it requires a modern PC + GPU for acceptable performance, we're not going to see one in an Altoids tin anytime soon.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 3:24 PM on October 3, 2018

I still don't get where the main PCB came from. It's an original wii board? It's the wii chips removed and laid out on a new pcb?

I see "Some stupid custom board trim with full NAND relocation". But I'm not sure if this means he modified the original board and moved stuff around, or made a custom board and relocated everything to that. I could read it either way.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:25 PM on October 3, 2018

I read it as a completely custom board that the original components were then relocated to. There are a number of board manufacturers out there that will crank out very small quantities or even one-offs, at surprisingly affordable prices. If you're at all into Arduino or the like, it's totally worth doing this at least once, just for the neat-o factor of having your project on your own totally custom-made board. :)
posted by xedrik at 5:29 PM on October 3, 2018

Definitely a cut down original board - there seems to be a whole subculture of doing it.

You can see in the photo on the last page of the forum post that the NAND is on a purple subboard that’s been hand-soldered into the original Nintendo board.

Those Wii chips are orders of magnitude more complex and more fussy about PCB layout than anything Arduino-ish, and I’d assume undocumented. Designing a custom PCB would be a whole project in itself.
posted by grahamparks at 1:47 AM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

Heh, was just about to post this. It's ridiculous and terrible and fantastic.
posted by cortex at 11:14 AM on October 4, 2018

the video in the youtube thread has him show you a bit and cursory explain some stuff, plus SMBM gameplay!
posted by numaner at 12:58 PM on October 4, 2018 [1 favorite]

This ain't RF. If you know what pins have to be connected to what, what amounts of current at what frequencies, and a few other things, a Wii-level board isn't that difficult to make work. Reliability could require a bit of black magic depending on the components, but given how Nintendo has usually done things in the past, I suspect the ICs are relatively robust in the face of suboptimal board layout.

The bigger issue is probably financial, in that the cheap prototype boards tend to only go up to four layers, which wouldn't likely be enough to allow one to cut down the size enough to fit it in an Altoids tin.

Also, Dolphin runs pretty well on an X1, so I bet someone with more time and motivation than I have could cut down a Shield TV enough to make it fit in an Altoids tin and thus have an emulated Wii in a tin.
posted by wierdo at 1:13 AM on October 6, 2018