Since its launch in 2006, the Nintendo Wii has managed to attract a broad audience, from casual gamers fascinated by the novelty controllers to the hardcore fraternity who've grown up with Nintendo's previous consoles. The latter bunch have been particularly impressed with the Virtual Console online service which offers dozens of classic games for download. The choice of titles is surprisingly wide and the emulation is generally faithful, but it can be a bit galling having to pay for a game you already own on cartridge.

The solution to this pain in the back pocket is the Homebrew Channel, a cheeky little app that you can use to run emulators, and other non-Nintendo software, on your Wii. To actually install the Homebrew Channel you'll need to run the infamous "Twilight Hack", a software exploit that uses a custom Zelda Twilight Princess save to sneak through the Wii's backdoor, so to speak. As with running any unlicensed code, there's risk that you'll void your Nintendo warranty and might even bust your Wii, so please don't send angry e-mails to us or use this hack for any other purposes. It's all at your own risk.

But, if you're the tinkering type, you can find out everything you need to know at Wii Brew (www.wiibrew.org). The site also features download links to all of the current emulators available for the Wii.

There are homebrew emulators available for all of the consoles you can efficiently run on the Wii, such as the NES, SNES, N64 and Mega Drive. In addition, you can emulate other consoles including the Game Boy (all flavours), Master System and Neo Geo Pocket. There are even emulators for the good ol' Sinclair Spectrum and Atari ST. Setting up the emulators and getting games running is obviously more troublesome that downloading titles from the Wii Shop, but then anyone who's configured emulators to run on a PC o Mac will find that the process is essentially the same. It's definitely worth doing too, if only to witness the wonder that is ScummVM on the Wii.

ScummVR is a popular emulator that runs adventure games (mostly LucasArts Monkey Island, by waving the Wiimote at the screen. It works well and the method of control feels so right that this could be the most impressive use of ScummVM yet.

If you want to give it a go, you'll need to install the Homebrew Channel first then download ScummVM from the Wii Brew site. Obviously you'll also need some games - a very good place to start looking is the official ScummVM site (www.scummvm.org).

ScummVR is so good that you'll struggle to drag yourself away from your Wii, so it's just as well that there's also a version for the Nintendo DS, with full touch-screen support!