Wii Modchip Comparision (Wiinja, Cyclowiz, Wiikey)

It is currently possible to buy two modchips for the Nintendo Wii gaming system with another one becoming available every day now. The available modchips are called Wiinja and cyclowiz, the one that comes out soon Wiikey. All three are connected to the Wii drive and prevent that the drive reports whether a original or copied disk has been entered. This however has the disadvantage that those chips will not be able to defeat the region code of the games.

Wiinja, Cyclowiz and Wiikey are able to play Wii and Gamecube backups from the same region and the Wiikey seems to have a good success rate to play games from other NTSC regions. This means that it could be possible to play Japanese games on a US Wii system. It is however not likely that you can play NTSC games on a PAL system with those modchips.

While the wiinja modchip is not upgradeable the other two modchips Cyclowiz and Wiikey are. This is a big advantage for them and with the availability of the Cyclowiz chip I can’t see why someone would still buy a Wiinja. Sure, the Wiinja is not that expensive but it should be noted that you would have to replace the Wiinja chip if Nintendo would decided to upgrade the firmware of the Nintendo Wii to defeat current modchips.

The Wiikey chip seems to be the best solution for those gamers who like to play original games from other regions. No one has seen the chip in action yet and everything announced at the official Wiikey site should be taken with caution until some reviews are out.

Other more advanced modchips have been announced that have the features the gamers are waiting for. The modchip Wizard for Nintendo Wii for instance is able to defeat regional encoding and is supposed to be able to play games from any region. This would be a major factor for gamers who like to import games due to several reasons.

All chips are running in stealth mode which should make it impossible to detect them and use countermeasures.