Frenchman develops first backup loader for Wii U

French user Golden45 from the GBAtemp.net forum has developed a backup loader for the Wii U. In a video he demonstrates how his backup loader, called Loadiine, loads a game from the local network instead of a disc or an eShop download on the hard drive.

Loadiine is not yet publicly available. In a demo video, Golden45 shows how he remotely accesses his backup loader via the browser. After that, the browser closes itself and when it opens again, a game loads on the Wii U coming from a local network location. According to Golden45, it is not yet possible to load a backup from a burned disc or USB storage media.

The Frenchman says he still has trouble loading larger backups; even the small game whose loading he demonstrates has been stripped away. It is not yet clear what this is due to. This seems to be the biggest stumbling block when it comes to running Wii U game backups at the moment. “Let’s hope we find a way to use USB storage,” he told the forum. So at the moment it is practically not yet possible to run Wii U backups with Loadiine.

At the same time, Golden45 is working on a program that can dump the rpx files that Wii U games are made of for a user to browse through. Also, the development of Loadiine can lead to the running of custom game code, or so-called homebrew applications, which are written by users themselves.

Golden45 says he wants to clean up his code and make Loadiine understandable to developers before releasing it. Loadiine currently runs on version 5.3.2 of the Wii U system software, but the Frenchman says it shouldn’t be difficult to port Loadiine to other versions. It is unclear whether he also means the very latest version of the Wii U operating system.