First published in 2022: For readers in 2025 you can also play Donkey Kong Country Returns without motion controls by purchasing “Donkey Kong Country Returns HD” for Nintendo Switch. Now back to your originally scheduled programming….

Not my Donkey Kong Country! I recently purchased Donkey Kong Country Returns for the Wii from my local game shop. I had played the 3DS port before and beat it all the way through but I thought that the original version deserved its place on my shelf next to the WiiU version of DKC Tropical Freeze. I knew that the original had motion controls unlike Tropical Freeze which controls brilliantly with the WiiU Gamepad or Pro Controller. I decided to give it a go and found the Wiimote turned to its side and the tacked on motion control just to do something as simple as roll simply would not do. This wasn’t the Donkey Kong I remembered on my Super Nintendo!

Gameshark was the cheat device I was most familiar with in my childhood I turned to Google and found a solution. You can use “Gecko Codes” to modify the games code (similar to a Game Shark back in the day). Unfortunately what wasn’t so simple is needing to mess around with homebrew loaders and what-have-you to get the game to launch with the codes running. I decided that wasn’t going to work. I wanted to just be able to launch the game directly from my system without having to worry about running a USB Loader or some other homebrew to apply the code. I’m happy to say that I was able to find a solution that worked for me.

Prior to this endeavor, I had two very useful tools available to me from past pursuits; a homebrewed Wii, and a WiiU with custom firmware. This guide won’t go into the details of how to homebrew your consoles but if you are coming across this and haven’t homebrewed them yet. I highly recommend it. Game preservation is something that I find very important and I can’t stress enough how every gamer can do their part and make their lives easier by creating backups of their gaming libraries. Perhaps both the how and why will become its own blog post one day. I’ve rambled on for too long now so let’s get on with show.

Prior to Starting you will need…

  1. A homebrewed Wii with a disc ripping app installed. (I use Clean Rip )
  2. A PC with Ultimate WiiU Virtual Console Injector AIO 3.0 and Dolphin emulator (optional)
  3. A CFW WiiU with WUP GX2 Installer

Setting the motion controls to a Wii Classic Controller input

  1. The first thing you will need to do is pop your disc into your Wii and load up your ripping app to get an ISO of your game. I use Clean Rip on a seperate Wii than my WiiU. I don’t see why you couldn’t just use the vWii on your WiiU but when I did this myself; I used a separate Wii so keep that in mind.
  2. After you have a good rip of the game, transfer the ISO file to your PC and use Dolphin to test it (When I did this, my initial rips would not get past the Wii Health Warning Screen until I took the game to get re-cleaned and polished where I purchased it. After a good cleaning the rip worked fine)
  3. With a good rip verified of the game, we will need to download the gecko files and the Easy Wii ISO .gct Cheat Embedder. You can actually generate your own .gct files using this tool to create your own mods and such. I used comments from this thread on pixlbit to generate the .gct file in this guide. The tool was created for Mario Kart Wii but works for any game that can utilize gecko codes as far as I know.
  4. Now that you have downloaded the needed files, copy the Easy Wii ISO .gct Cheat Embedder somewhere on your PC. Inside that directory copy your ISO and copy the .gct file inside the gct directory. Drag and drop the ISO onto the “Drag ISO file here.bat” file and let it work its magic.
  5. It will output an ISO with the codes now embedded. Use dolphin with a virtual classic controller configured to test the controller support. We can use this ISO to create a package we can now run on our Wii or WiiU. I use the Ultimate WiiU Virtual Console Injector to create installable packages to install on my WiiU’s external HDD. This guide won’t go into detail on how to use the injector but a WiiU common key and Rhythm Heaven title key is required. I won’t provide this info but it can be found pretty easily with Google. Pop out your WiiU’s SD card with the custom firmware installed on it and copy the generated package to the install directory.
  6. Pop the SD card back into your WiiU and use WUP GX2 Installer to install the package onto your WiiU’s NAND or USB storage (preferably USB storage as the WiiU doesn’t have a lot a space available on the nand and this takes up about 4 GBs)
  7. Connect your classic controller to your Wiimote (or order a couple off ebay if your like me because you didn’t actually have any need for them until now!) and enjoy a fun DKC experience completely free of annoying motion controls.

The motion control roll attack now available in HD now on Nintendo Switch

There you go. Donkey Kong Country Returns can now be played without the need for motion controls simply by just launching it from the homescreen of your WiiU console. The gecko codes in this guide sets B to jump, Y to run/grab barrel, and R to the motion controls (roll/slap/blow). If you need help homebrewing your Wii or WiiU, refer to the following guides.

Wii Homebrew guide

WiiU Custom Firmware guide