Wii:Region Information

The Wii, a rather modular system in various other aspects, does not have a single concept of region either, as can be demonstrated (and changed) with AnyRegion Changer or SettingEdit.

More specifically, there are three region settings, all stored in the encrypted file "setting.txt" found in the Wii Menu's save on NAND.

AREA

This is the value that single-handedly comes closer to the traditional concept of region, yet is the most irrelevant for practical purposes, while also being the riskiest to play with - since (along with the selected language) it is used by certain software, chiefly the Wii Menu, for resource loading: if the configured AREA is not supported by the Wii Menu in use, the settings pages will fail to load (semi brick), an easily repairable problem (with homebrew access) but also one that can degenerate in a full brick if the initial setup done bit in SYSCONF gets unset (which forces the Wii Menu to try to load the settings pages).

For the above reason, it is important to be ready to reinstall the correct region Wii Menu if the AREA is to be changed in a way that necessitates this action (and vice versa).

Never outright uninstall the Wii Menu (as doable with WAD managers)! Even if immediately reinstalled, the setting.txt will be removed in the progress - and, while restorable if homebrew access continues to be available, that is not a given!

AREA can be set to any one of: JPN, USA, EUR, AUS, BRA, TWN, ROC, KOR, HKG, ASI, LTN, SAF.

From that not-better-clarified list many oddities can be noticed, such as the segregation between Europe and Australia attempted in the DSi, a dedicated region for South Africa, and the Chinese version being called Republic of China just after the actual Taiwanese version (the iQue Wii being ultimately canceled shortly before release). It isn't proven whether many of those values were actually used.

GAME

This sets the allowed region for application titles. Only the Wii Menu really cares, though (and there are Priiloader patches if that's a problem).

Valid values are JP, US, EU, KR, CN.

Korean titles, however, are encrypted with a Korean Common Key (stored in EEPROM, as opposed to PROM for the international Common Key) and, regardless of GAME region, won't be readable if it is missing. The Korean Key can separately be installed or removed at will, but unless appropriate precautions are taken (such as the use of ModMii-recommended IOS60 replacement for IOS70 and 80), its presence is artificially incompatible with setups involving Wii Menu 4.2+.

VIDEO

This sets the video encoding to be used, as the Wii hardware is the same the world over and the DAC is now fully configurable in software.

However, the GameCube's output format restrictions still apply (NTSC modes support composite, S-video and YPbPr, while PAL ones replace S-video with RGB), making this configurability not rarely a disadvantage when running imports (that collectively react differently both to unexpected VIDEO settings and to video mode patches available in various import and backup loaders).

VIDEO regions are NTSC, PAL, and MPAL.

Simple Address and Region Select

Many Wii modders will probably have noticed the presence of an hidden channel called "Region Select" (TitleID: 00010008-HAL? = 00010008-48414C??); this has nothing to do with the concept of region used in gaming (which is generally of international if not continental scale), but rather refers to a "region" as in the first level division of a country (like an US state, a Canadian province, a Japanese prefecture, or of course an Italian region), which can be selected using this channel after setting the country in the Wii settings.

The combination of country and this region forms the "Simple Address", which can be used by compatible titles such as the Everybody Votes Channel and Mario Kart Wii (which in turn are the only official way to run Region Select). Like all variable settings, contrasted with the above and other contents of setting.txt, it is stored in SYSCONF.