After my previous rant about NTSC games being much cheaper than PAL ones, I hunted around for somebody that can sell me a pre-soldered Wasabi Wii modchip soldered onto a Wii-Clip V5. I decided that the Wasabi chip is the way to go as it has less wires to solder (OK, this wasn’t a big concern for me, but still), and it also contained an easy-to-upgrade firmware process, when necessary. I didn’t want to end up with a chip that I couldn’t flash after getting that NTSC Mario Kart, and it doesn’t work on the chip.
I also decided that using the Wii-Clip V5 was the better option, even at the slightly higher price tag, as it allowed me to add the modchip to my Wii without doing any actual soldering inside the Wii.
Finally I managed to find a guy in the UK that would solder the Wasabi modchip into the Wii-Clip V5 for me, and ship it all to me at a reasonable rate. Jay over at Console-Chips was quick to respond on emails, and I pre-ordered his Wasabi Modchip Wii-Clip V5 pre-order bundle. I’ll update again once I get the chip. Should be in the next 2 weeks or so.
UPDATE:
Argh, OK, looking at the Wii-Clip V5 install diagrams (recently updated it seems), it turns out there’s a single wire that needs to be soldered inside the Wii. I really wanted to avoid having to solder anything inside the actual Wii console, but I suppose one wire is better than 9.
UPDATE 2:
Turns out the Wasabi chip is (a) not as upgradeable as advertised, and (b) in a bit of a short supply. See my follow-up on why I ended up getting the D2CKey intstead.