This interview was recorded on June 14th, 2025 over voice chat using Discord.

Becca: Welcome to another edition of Forming Links. Today we're joined by Sketch, or Noah Pistilli who does the development for Wii Room and WiiLink in general, and we have GamerKGR, or Kolton Ramos who is the content manager for WiiLink in general and Wii Room specifically. How are you guys doing today?

Noah: Pretty good.

Kolton: Doing pretty okay.

Becca: So you might remember this was originally planned for the 16th anniversary of Wii Room. We wanted to do this in May, but plans didn’t line up so we’re doing this in June. To start off, what do you guys do? I’m sure many people know vaguely but they might not know what specifically.

Noah: So basically what I do is I just manage all development for WiiLink. So Wii Room, Forecast Channel, Demae Channel, all that. So I develop the backend* servers, I work close with Alex (SomeRandomHumanoid), the french man kouacc, and gustino. Each of them have their own strengths. kouacc and Alex are both web devs, but kouacc also has specialties a lot because his internship, and gustino is our Demae* man. He reverse engineered Just Eat* which is coming soon, and Dominos.

*Backend - A system not available to the public which allows developers to add content to a server. In the case of Wii Room, refers to the Underground.

*Just Eat - Food delivery service available in 6 countries in Europe. Is planned to be supported by Food Channel soon.

*Demae - The original and internal name for the Food Channel.

Becca: And Kolton?

Kolton: I'm Kolton, I'm the content manager and I help make content for stuff like Wii Room, Check Mii Out Channel, and Nintendo Channel. I also created Homebrew Tea which is one of our WiiLink Originals, and I also make music for our videos.

Entering the room

Becca: So it's a little bit late but just recently, Wii Room turned 16. It feels like it's been longer, it feels like it's very old but it's been 16 years. I wanted to start off this talk with how you guys learned about WiiLink and Wii Room. I know both of you were there from early on, but not exactly from the beginning. How did you guys hear about it and how did you hear about Wii Room specifically?

Noah: Kolton you can go first, you were there before me.

Kolton: I had joined the Wii homebrew community around late 2019, early 2020. I was never properly active until mid 2020, and I remember there was this project called The Wii no Ma Revival Project. It was run by a few different people, and over time that project would evolve into Rii no Ma, and that was later merged into BetterConnect24, and they had a whole different server for that. I joined it out of interest because at the time I was not happy with RiiConnect24* and a lot of their decisions. I joined that server in interest of an alternative, and that server eventually became WiiLink, and that's what WiiLink is today.

*RiiConnect24 - WiiConnect24 revival service that ran from 2015 to 2023. Was considered the primary revival service before being merged with WiiLink.

Becca: I actually didn't know that you joined earlier than Sketch. I always assumed Sketch was first. But Sketch what about you?

Noah: I believe I was underage for Discord when it started. But yeah I first joined the RiiConnect24 server in 2019 when I first got a phone number. I just sat there, didn't really do anything until COVID hit in 2020. So I was going onto grade 9 and it was online so I was super bored, and I was very active in the Discord server and they just pinged in server announcements "look this new project WiiLink24, they just released the public beta for Wii no Ma", so I checked it out. It was pretty buggy and there was some internal stuff, I remember they rushed it a lot. The owner at the time wanted it out. At that point I had no coding experience at all, I was just a 13 year old kid. I got my start writing VFF Downloader* for MacOS and Linux, but it was a really terrible backscript. It has like 14,000 lines.

*VFF Downloader - PC program that downloaded missing WiiConnect24 modules for Dolphin users. Now considered obsolete.

Becca: (laughs)

Noah: It was really bad. And then the WiiLink Discord server had mod applications, and I thought "this could be fun, why not, I have nothing better to do". So I got the role, and that actually gave me access to development channels. So I decided I want to evolve from shitty scripts and I want to write meaningful code. So through that, through Snoot* (or Spotlight) I learnt how to code, I learnt all the internals of WiiLink and how it works, and by the time they stepped down in October 2021 I became the owner, and it's been that way since.

*Snoot - Former owner of WiiLink. Currently retired from the team, but still can be seen on the Discord server.

Becca: It's interesting to hear how it's a common thing throughout the years, where most of the main contributors are onboarded as a small role, and they almost infiltrate the team.

Kolton: Yeah, I originally joined as a beta tester for BetterConnect24, and then I became a mod, and I started doing other stuff and it just kept going from there.

A hectic launch

Becca: So you guys were active around 2019 to 2020.

Kolton: Moreso 2020 yeah.

Becca: Did you guys see any of the leadup to the initial Wii Room beta launch? I believe it was December 3rd, 2020.

Noah: I think Kolton was inside WiiLink at the time. I wasn’t until after the launch but from what I remember after being told, the owner at the time really wanted to rush it out.

Becca: (laughs)

Noah: That caused it to be very buggy. I remember you had to install a Mickey Mouse Mii in order to get it to load because it used a different savefile, and you also had to install that savefile. Those were crazy.

Kolton: Oh yeah. I still have that Mii on my Wii.

Noah: I wiped my Wii like 5 times since I’ve had that, it’s long gone. Thank got though.

Becca: I do wanna see if we can find that Mickey Mouse Mii to show in the article.

Kolton: Oh yeah no, I can find it, I know Ryal* has it too.

Ryal - Content creator on the team. Manages the ryaltheamazing YouTube channel and makes the unhinged intros for Homebrew Tea.

Kolton: So for me though being in the team at the time, a lot of it was very disorganized. Like Sketch said, it was true, we had to rush everything. That public beta, I personally believe was just not ready for release, even as a beta. It was a very hectic launch, at the time things was very stressful. Especially being a moderator, on the day of the public launch the Discord got raided.

Becca: Oh my god.

Kolton: I don’t wanna tell you what things I saw that day. It was really bad.

Becca: How old were you?

Kolton: I was thirteen.

Becca: Jesus.

Kolton: No, I was fourteen. Sorry.

Becca: Well that’s alright then!

Noah: WiiLink has had some crazy, insane raids.

Becca: I heard the localization was not great, I knew features were not finished, but I wasn’t aware just how buggy it was. I wonder how much of our audience knows that, a lot of them came after launch but I’m not sure if that many people were around on day one.

Kolton: I will say, the launch of it was still exciting because we were releasing something completely new, that noone else has seen before. Wii no Ma at the time was, and still is mysterious, so getting that out there was really cool.

The science of 1.0

Becca: So we move forward about 4 years later. It’s July 4th (I think), 2024. Just last year actually, we released Wii Room 1.0*, which was I think was the only other major Wii Room release, the other ones were quiet updates. I know I was there, but I do want to talk about what was it that gave you guys the confidence to make this a full release, and how development of that progressed and if any issues came up or not.

*Wii Room 1.0 - The full release version of Wii Room currently used.

Noah: Can you repeat the question, I was not focused I was coding.

Becca: (laughs)

Noah: I’m coding the account linker right now.

Becca: Sketch literally has to leave in 30 minutes.

Becca repeats the question.

Noah: Okay so I guess I’ll start with the 1.0 part. At that point it’s been what, 4 years since we originally released Wii Room. It was about time we reinvigorated life into it. At that point it’s was pretty much dead, we didn’t do much with it. The translation specifically weren’t as bad as when we first launched, but it was still pretty bad. The localization team did an amazing job with 1.0. We had what, I think 5 languages at launch?

Becca: I believe.

Noah: Yeah it was very good. So I believe that was why we shipped 1.0. Also most of the things at that point had been figured out. Every single room type was figured out, we had beta rooms for a while and we had ideas on what to use them for. But development honestly was a pain. Originally the patches that we used were written in pure assembly*, they weren’t documented.

*Assembly - Type of extremely barebones coding language, known to be difficult to use. Does not refer to any single language.

Becca: I am shocked to hear that.

Noah: It was pure assembly because we had to insert our own code in to make it work, and it wasn’t documented either. So the first thing was I had to go in to the old WAD* and compare it with the stock WAD in order to document every single patch we had up to that point. And when that was done, thanks to Palapeli who developed a patch system, I could write C* code and I could call onto internal functions within the WAD, and the system would hook them together. So instead of writing just pure assembly code that nobody could read and is very hard to maintain, I was able to write essentially an entire C library that you can find from the WiiLink Github. Because of that system, I was able to do more than I was originally able to. So for one, the SSL was extremely easy to patch. Also the video patches, they’re broken right now but they were also easy to get going.

*WAD - File format used for Wii channels and WiiWare.

*C - Basic programming language. Widely used for video games and software.

Becca: I’m not aware of what SSL is, can you explain it simply?

Noah: Secure Socket… something? (looks it up) Layer. Basically it’s what makes HTTP requests secure. It’s what makes HTTP into HTTPS, and we use that for Wii Room giveaways and Demae Channel food ordering, so no sensitive information is sent over pure HTTP.

Becca: So basically it makes any private information safer to use.

Noah: Yes, because someone can just sniff the request* and immediately take the data from the request, with HTTPS they would need a certificate to decode everything.

*Sniff a request - Intercepting a HTTP request to obtain data.

Noah: But going back to the code, the patch system that was developed made it very easy to write patches. And now it’s what we use for every single other channel. The Demae Channel, that made my life extremely easier because we had to do a lot of patches. I don’t think I would’ve been able to write the custom error patch without it. Also the custom Wii Message Board letter too.

Becca: So that system was what led to the confidence in making a full release.

Noah: Mhm.

Becca: And about the development of it, I do remember some specific issues. Do you guys remember any problems that came up during the buildup to 1.0?

Noah: Honestly I don’t remember.

Kolton: I remember why it was delayed.

Noah: Oh yes I do remember why it was delayed.

Becca: We can talk about that but please don’t blame anyone in specific! (laughs)

Noah: My high school teacher passed away, that’s why it was delayed.

Becca: No there was a second delay.

Noah: There were two delays?

Kolton: Yeah there was.

Noah: Alright I gotta go into the archive server I guess.

Becca: That was the first reason it was delayed, but at that point I think it was only a 3 day delay. And then I think the reason it got delayed again was because of localization?

Kolton: If I recall, all these other languages were done except Spanish.

Noah: Oh my god I remember I was so pissed off at the time(!)

Kolton: Like how are you going to have Brazilian Portuguese, a language not supported by Nintendo at the time, and not have Spanish.

Noah: The first delay was May 11, and the second was May 24. It was delayed to May 15 but we didn’t even announce anything! It was actually crazy. I think the big problem was that we slated release dates and we weren’t able to deliver because everyone works on things at the last minute.

Becca: Mhm. I think it was less about localization specifically and more that we probably should’ve used internal deadlines at this point. I do remind people reading that localization is very important and you should do it(!)

Kolton: The delay was ultimately for a good cause and I’m glad that it came out more finished. Also, Sketch was able to implement SSL stuff into the channel.

Noah: Yes. That wouldn’t have happened. Also I figured out Dokodemo during that time.

Becca: So we didn’t just spend that time doing nothing, that time was still spent developing stuff, it was just in other areas.

An (un?)original concept

Becca: With the 1.0 launch, we strongly pushed WiiLink Originals. As far as I know, because other revival services don’t have an equivalent to Wii Room, there isn’t really much else like WiiLink Originals. I wanna talk about how we got to that, because for as much as I credit myself as “the creator of WiiLink Originals”, I believe the idea has been around for a while.

Kolton: It was around from the beginning. Since before we even took 24 out of our name, WiiLink Originals was something we always wanted to do. We never knew how to do it, or what kind of show to do. A cooking show was brought up, probably due to Pokémon Cooking, but we didn’t really know how to do it, and we didn’t have the right people to do it. So when I heard that this was something that was going on, when I heard that yall were actually planning original shows before launch, I wanted to do my own spin on it. Which is where Homebrew Tea came from, but that’s a different topic.

Becca: Without getting too specific about one show, Homebrew Tea wasn’t really one of our first primary ideas. We made a spreadsheet, but there were quite a few shows that we just randomly came up with the idea. The cooking show was one of them I think. I’m pretty sure Homebrew Tea was actually one of the later ideas we had but it was the first to come out. Definitely the most successful.

(Editor's note: This was created in April 2024. Shows shown in the sheet are not confirmed to be in development.)

Kolton: Funnily enough the show wasn’t meant to be homebrew news, it was meant to be homebrew developer interviews.

Becca: Yeah, I remember that!

Kolton: And then later it would turn into a homebrew news show with developer interviews, and then it just became a homebrew news show. That’s where the May pilot came from. That also kind of tells you how we were really supposed to get Wii Room 1.0 out. (laughs)

Becca: The first episode I believe is written as May 30th.

Kolton: It was last second.

Becca: And then it was stored for an extra month and we just didn’t use it.

Future is now

Becca: It’s been 16 years of Wii Room, and by this point we’ve officially been around longer than the original service, which is wild to think about. 1.0 is almost a year old, WiiLink itself is going to be 5 years old this year, which we’ll celebrate some other time. What do you guys want to do or see from Wii Room in the future? We’ll probably keep working on this forever (laughs)

Noah: The shop.

Becca: True. We teased it on YouTube I believe?

Kolton: Yeah. What I want to see is proper implementation of the rooms. Right now it’s just used for partnerships and donators. Which isn’t that far off from how the original rooms worked. But the original service did have some fun rooms or seasonal rooms that changed every few months, like the Minna no Ma Room. I think that’s how you say it.

Becca: Yeah.

Kolton: Stuff like that, stuff that’s more interactive I do want to see implemented, and really restore the channel’s functionality. Same goes for the theatre.

Becca: We did do a whole information uncovering recently on how these rooms worked. Specifically the Minna no Ma Room, or the Everybody Room? Community Room?

Kolton: There’s still a whole lot to do with Wii Room, despite the 1.0 release. It keeps things exciting for the development. There’s always something going on with Wii Room, even if it’s slow.

Becca: Thank you guys so much. This was a lot more informative than I was expecting. Where can people find you?

Noah: Please email me because I do not answer my Discord messages. [email protected], yes I have a WiiLink email.

Becca: And I don’t?

Noah: So funny story, all our accounts got wiped. (laughs)

Kolton: Wait what?

Noah: Account Linker V2 is coming very soon. You’ll no longer need a QR code, and it also links with WiiLink WFC. You can also link multiple Wiis.

Kolton: You can find me on Wii Room. I don’t really use social media, but you can find me on Discord. My DMs are open.

Becca: Feel free to slide into his DMs.

Kolton: I will actually slit your throat.

Wii Room 1.0 can be downloaded from the WiiLink Patcher now. Available in 7 different languages.

Featuring:

Noah Pistilli (Sketch) - [email protected]

Kolton Ramos (GamerKGR) - GamerKGR on Discord