metafortress will stop the game after all the startup movies/sponsors/whatevers, and instead of the title screen you will see "metafortress RESPONSE!" on an ominous black screen, or in some cases, you don't even make it that far. your wii has crashed, and you are forced to hold down the power button.
After what feels like years (about 2 days) of fighting with google and USB loader GX's settings on the wii, i finally got it and bypassed metafortress! and i'm putting this here because of the total lack of this anywhere else (curse the unpopularity!). if anyone out there is pulling their hair out like i was, i hope you find this and it helps!
if the game isn't even showing up at all in USB loader GX, reading this won't help with that. this post is about the scary black anti piracy screen. it's likely the folder structure in your storage medium of choice is wrong, or it's not FAT32.
steps:
make sure you've installed the most recent Cios (custom internal operating systems) via d2x cios installer. it's a bit of a process, but it's worth it. for the smurfs.
after that, go into USB loader GX, and open settings > loader settings. find game IOS, set it to custom, and set it to 249. (leave loader IOS alone. that's what USB loader GX itself uses to my understanding.) (in my experience, setting it to 250 causes a pure black screen crash even sooner than when the anti piracy screen came up. it supposedly works sometimes..? but i don't know.)
after that, disable all patches in that same settings menu. these are the ones i have off (not sure what patch exactly triggers metafortress):
- Sneek Video Patch
- Dol Video Patch
- 480p Video Patch
- Deflicker Filter (Off, safe)
The game should boot fine. wish i knew all that time it was the patches, and not something i did wrong..
now LA LA LA LALALA your heart out!