I decided to mess with Wii Street U and after a user helped me with an Google Maps API Key (Elijiah1967) and some code changes i did to replace the expired Nintendo client, i finally got some progress on making Wii Street U work again
(For people that dont know what Wii Street U and based on my screenshots think its just a map app, no, it actually rendered a 3D spherical view on the Wii U of Street View, and moving the GamePad around you could see the place, save bookmarks, and even share places to Miiverse)
(The endpoint that serves the images that make the spherical view on Wii Street U still exists, its just one of them, specifically the JSON one, that has been taken down, but can possibly be restored)
I do need to make some work like reimplement an endpoint from Street View that no longer exists (Which funny, actually i found dumps for) with some effort.
I also had a issue with trying to run the game on a Wii U, getting SSL errors, even after patching its rootca with GTS certs, so thats something i have to investigate…
Just sharing this to know what people liked about Wii Street U, and if they would really want it revived, i personally think its an amazing app and its a way better experience of Street View than on mobile/PC, while having music and Miiverse support that makes it an more interesting experience…
That looks sooo cool, I already asked about a rival about this app a year ago on reddit. Do you maybe know if it will be released to public this year? I really want to try this!!
Here is the “Recommended Tour Spots” tab, still requesting the street view images of the places and them loading perfectly fine, the World Map might seem incomplete but thats related to the fact i have a free API key and to get bigger images they expect a premium license (Nintendo prob used this license)
Map fully working (dragging the gamepad screen moves the gamepad around, some of the UI isnt shown because of that missing endpoint, sorry about that, but everything else works to perfection)
This shows once again my research that Wii Street U could perfectly, still work in 2025, once i figure out the issue im getting on the real app (OPEN_SSL_UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY, error 1173021) that i get when the Google Maps API is requested on the app, an SSL error, even when i already replaced the outdated rootca with GTS one, same ones that the Maps API uses, so i will keep researching this, this is just an network related error and once i skip it, partial features from the app should start to work again, obviously after reimplementing the missing JSON endpoint i talked about before, everything on the app should work as it should.
(More update: Map incomplete, seems to work perfectly except obv of the missing endpoint, but zoom levels still work and scrolling is smooth, tho it could be slower on the real app)
Yeah, unfortunaly i have no experience in memory patching so i cant create my own patches for Hexagon.
Both v96 and the latest, (porting the v96 files to the latest), they all end up in this error, which is weird, since usually an proxy error or a network error should happen (in case the rootcas are outdated) which i originally thought was the issue, and proceeded to replace with both the CAs Inkay uses and GTS 1 and 2 RSA, none of these attempts made it work. So im still stuck, being unable to make googleapis.com requests go through Wii Street U, sadly…
I will keep doing more experiements and testing, messing with the config file to see if i can make it work…
I’ve always heard people talk about Wii U Street but had no clue what it was. Never knew it was basically Google Maps on the Wii U! Very interesting.
Totally not going to try to search everywhere for a Wii U with it now.
Yeah, but It feels much more interesting, not only fully travelling with the GamePad’s gyro, but also being able to use the Balance Board , even sharing your favorite places to Miiverse, really cool stuff, also has an amazing soundtrack and everything about it feels frutiger aero.
Really an underrated app, thats why i put effort into making it work again
I think the issue here is the the Google Maps API doesn’t support TLS v1.1, which the Wii U and the 3DS use. You’d have to do what Nintendo did for games that used S3 and make a proxy in front of the API.
Final Update
After faking the endpoint for the Street View metadata that Wii Street U requests for every Street View location, i finally made it work by itself, without having to mess with the CSS divs to show buttons.
I can finally say that with some messing i managed to make Wii Street U work again, by itself, without any type of major rewrite to the source code.
Now, i hope someone puts effort into actually patching whatever NSSL functions the actual app calls (that cause the SSL error), and finally bring this app back from its demise back in 2016.
Yeah, that’s what I meant. I’m not sure how to patch the app to replace Nintendo’s client. I could try patching NSSL too, I have a few friends who could help.
