Playing PAL (EUR/AUS) GameCube games on an American Wii

I moved from the UK to the US in 2007, bringing with me a large collection of GameCube games that I currently can't play on my Wii. Whatever GameCube boot program I try, the games simply refuse to load at all. Thankfully I picked up a US GameCube on the cheap and I can use the Freeloader disc, but that's one more device hooked up to my TV than is strictly speaking necessary.

Out of sheer boredom one afternoon I tried using every game I own with GeckOS on the Wii in the hopes that maybe one game might work. I found a game that works - Serious Sam: Next Encounter.

I can't understand why this game in particular would work when all of my other games don't. You'll have to bear with me as I'm not really up-to-speed with how the GameCube or Wii does these things, but the only thing I can think of is that every PAL GameCube game may be sending a command that says, "Hello, I'm a PAL GameCube game, so you're probably going to want to output at PAL50 for now." American models of the Wii, for whatever reason (probably for this very reason, thinking about it), isn't set up to either parse that command or output PAL50/PAL60 signals, and so doesn't. The game freezes. Serious Sam: Next Encounter, however, doesn't send that command. The game runs in the native screen resolution of the console it's being playing on.

This is fascinating to me. I doubt I'm right - probably people who know what they're doing have explored similar avenues and turned up a No Go - but if I am right the trick is to catch that command, the one every other PAL GameCube is sending but that Serious Sam isn't, and nullify it.

Has there been any exploration of this cross-region difficulty? Has anyone so far come to any specific conclusions? Will I ever be able to play my PAL EUR copies of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures and Mario Kart: DoubleDash!! on my US Wii?

You say some games don't work. That's very vague. Exactly what happens when some games dont work?

You've misread - I've said that every PAL EUR GameCube I have doesn't work except for Serious Sam: Next Encounter. That's the only game I have that works, and the only PAL EUR game I have successfully booted on our US Wii.

Edit: And in a twist of irony, I misread your post. D'oh!

When I put in a PAL EUR GameCube game and use any kind of bootloader - GeckoOS is my flavour of choice - I run the app, select "Boot" (or whatever the command is), and the screen goes blank. Nothing happens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2009 01:25AM by Squirminator2k.

Isn't there an option called "Force NTSC" you can choose when you launch a game? Select that.

Look i know that this is an old topic and I apologize. But, I really need to know If "BootGC" or "Gecko os" (Both are the latest versions) will run pal gamecube games on my american wii. The reason I ask this is because I saw these games on ebay that are way cheaper to buy from England than from here in the U.S. and i want to know if they will run before I buy them. Thank You.