Homebrew/Hacked Consoles - This is MY console. I decide whether or not I can run unsigned code!

[Dread First]

This is just a catch-all thread for homebrew on all sorts of vidya consoles. Any history you guys have with homebrew and/or hacking consoles to run unsigned code? Any homebrew games you have fond memories of? News updates on homebrew on X/Y/Z console?

I got my start back in middle school with a modded PSP. Best $20 on a Dattel tool battery I ever spent. I currently own a modded N3DS XL and a modded Wii, but that's basically it.

 

[winterfag]

Yeah at this point I feel like there's more hacked PSPs than unmodified ones, finally homebrewed mine after it was gathering dust in a drawer for years and years. Getting more use out of it now than I did when it was still new, it's helps that it's natively compatible with PS1 games which I didn't even know about till years later. It'd definitely the comfiest way to play roms up til the gba era, I just hate that its battery life is so pathetic. If I play it in bed I always have to remember to charge it the next morning. It's honestly its only real downside, wishing I hacked mine years and years ago

 

[Dread First]

Yeah at this point I feel like there's more hacked PSPs than unmodified ones, finally homebrewed mine after it was gathering dust in a drawer for years and years. Getting more use out of it now than I did when it was still new, it's helps that it's natively compatible with PS1 games which I didn't even know about till years later. It'd definitely the comfiest way to play roms up til the gba era, I just hate that its battery life is so pathetic. If I play it in bed I always have to remember to charge it the next morning. It's honestly its only real downside, wishing I hacked mine years and years ago

I lost my PSP around the 5.50 Prometheus CFW release (sometime in mid 2012), but lemme tell you this: that hacked PSP 2000 was the best birthday gift I ever got as a broke preteen whose parents hated vidya gaemz. Here's some of my personal recommendations if you're looking to relive (or indeed experience) some amazing games/emulators.

Spoiler: sperging about emualtors

- UO gpSP Kai (GBA)
- Snes9x (SNES/SFC)

Spoiler: dead console sperging

- LocoRoco + LocoRoco2 (adorable puzzle platformer from Japan; LocoRoco 1 was properly localised in English but LocoRoco 2 is Japanese-only iirc)

- Dragon Ball Z: Shin Budokai + Shin Budokai 2: Another Road (pared-back DBZ fighting game with the Budokai 3 engine; I spent a LOT of hours in training mode trying to master combo strings I read about in GameFAQs articles)

- Dissidia + Dissidia 012 (Super Smash Bros but with Final Fantasy characters, also there's like 4 different story modes (3 in the original) with multiple routes and varying encounters depending on the character that you pick; I had like over 1000+ hours on Dissidia 1 and like 400 on Dissidia 012)

- Persona 1-3 (P1/P2IS/P2EP/P3P were all released on the PSP around 2008-2010; if you wanna experience Persona's earlier games for free with some form of QOL, this is your best bet. The 25th anniversary is today, might as well celebrate)

- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX/5D's Tag Force 1-6 + ARC-V Special (Yugioh simulators that loosely follow the GX and 5Ds anime, but with a heavy emphasis on tag duels)

- Final Fantasy 1-4 (1+2 are available as part of the 20th anniversary release, 3 is an official PSP port of the DS version with Mognet being replaced altogether, and 4 is a 2D HD remake of FF4)

Also, don't forget that they make SD card adapters for the Memory Stick!

 

[Medulseur]

Several years ago I had a hacked psp that I played with all the time but when I got my first decent PC I did most of my emulating on that. I still use my soft modded PS2 now and then when I want to play a game that PS2 emulation isn't compatible with.

 

[Lord Xenu]

I had a v1.x PSP with no signature checks, so I followed that scene almost from the first day. Later when the 0xFFFFFF Battery serial (datel/service mode) hack was figured out, I built one, and I loaded a quite a few PSP's with free games for people I worked with, or for their kids at Xmas.

Eventually it got so that too many people were asking, and I had to start charging a few bucks, it turned into almost a side business. Back then people were very anti-profiting from homebrew, but it takes a lot of time and later (as Sony went to war with the scene) there was a significant risk for bricked consoles. So it didn't make sense any longer to do it for free...

It's honestly its only real downside, wishing I hacked mine years and years ago

If you can afford to spend $100 or so, Vita is by far the best way to go for PSP homebrew now. Vita has PSP hardware onboard and hackers have exposed that interface so you can run PSP CFW on Vita at 4x resolution. Vita has like 6-8 hour battery life (and literally months on standby). They've also built an SD to Gamecard adapter, so no more Proprietary flash memory.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

i Homebrew my wii-u so i could play gamecube games. now i got three consoles in one system. sadly homebrew wii-u cant still play 64 games without it running like ass. playing with the wii-u tablet while laying in bed is pretty comfy.

 

[Pissmaster]

The PSVita:

• can't play SNES games as well as the PSP
• but they work just as well via the built-in PSP emulator (via Adrenaline)
• but SNES games still run better on a hacked New 3DS
• but the New 3DS is significantly inferior in terms of hardware specs
• and the 2001 Xbox runs SNES games better than any of them on its emulator from 2004
• every single one of these are running Snes9X in one way or another

I don't fuckin' know, man

 

[Lord Xenu]

sadly homebrew wii-u cant still play 64 games without it running like ass

I'm starting to feel like there's never going to be a great way to play N64 without an N64. I've fucked around with emulation, ut its just not the same as Virtual Console hacks or just N64 hardware. I don't want to fiddle with settings every time I want to play a game. I have a hacked Wii-U as well, same complaint.

It's pretty sweet to use like a 1TB drive on Wii-U painfully small flash memory. Hard to believe they didn't learn a lesson between there and the Switch. But then again, when soyjak faced consoomers will buy anything with your branding, guess lessons don't stick.

 

[Sprate Header]

Modded MKWii is the shit

 

[Dojima's Dragon]

The PSVita:

• can't play SNES games as well as the PSP
• but they work just as well via the built-in PSP emulator (via Adrenaline)
• but SNES games still run better on a hacked New 3DS
• but the New 3DS is significantly inferior in terms of hardware specs
• and the 2001 Xbox runs SNES games better than any of them on its emulator from 2004
• every single one of these are running Snes9X in one way or another

I don't fuckin' know, man

The og Xbox still blows my mind in how good the homebrew scene for it is

 

[Kuchipatchi]

I put homebrew on my 2DS a while ago and it has a Mega Drive and SNES emulator on it. My fave game runs fine but Top Gear runs like crap. I should post pictures because it has graphical glitches a plenty.

I might mod my Wii U one day but that's just chilling in a box somewhere.

 

[Dread First]

The PSVita:

• can't play SNES games as well as the PSP
• but they work just as well via the built-in PSP emulator (via Adrenaline)
• but SNES games still run better on a hacked New 3DS
• but the New 3DS is significantly inferior in terms of hardware specs
• and the 2001 Xbox runs SNES games better than any of them on its emulator from 2004
• every single one of these are running Snes9X in one way or another

I don't fuckin' know, man

The OG Xbox has specs similar to a top-end computer from 2001 if I'm not mistaken. I've always imagined the reason why the homebrew scene on the fat Xbox is so good is because you're literally running emulators meant for Windows on a Windows PC.

As far as the (n)3DS is concerned, I feel like it's the "spiritual successor" to the PSP in terms of sheer versatility with homebrew combined with sheer ease of piracy. I hate the inferior hardware and the lack of Sony games, but honestly? It more than makes up for it with the sheer library of DS games that you can easily play without issue.

Seriously, TwilightMenu++ is the best piece of homebrew I ever installed. It's like the PSP mode in a Vita, but more robust.

 

[CreamyHerman’s]

The PSVita:

• can't play SNES games as well as the PSP
• but they work just as well via the built-in PSP emulator (via Adrenaline)
• but SNES games still run better on a hacked New 3DS
• but the New 3DS is significantly inferior in terms of hardware specs
• and the 2001 Xbox runs SNES games better than any of them on its emulator from 2004
• every single one of these are running Snes9X in one way or another

I don't fuckin' know, man

Trannies took over. A my favorite consoles to mod are the PSP/PS3, due to how easy it is now

 

[The Cunting Death]

I have so many goddamn homebrew games on my Raspberry Pi and actual consoles
I'll post a link to my favorite ones later

 

[el bandito loco]

I have a modded og Xbox with a 3tb hard drive (I bought it like that), a Wii u I modded with a 4tb hard drive for the vwii and a 2 for the Wii u side, and I modded both my girl and i's 2ds like a month or two ago with 500gb sd cards. and it's all pretty sick. I've been planning on getting a Dreamcast and doing the GDEMU and some other mods for awhile but haven't gotten to it. Although before I do that I'm probably going to buy one of those playstation TVs that's basically a consolized vita and hooking that up with every PSP and Vita game and whatever homebrew shit is available for it.

 

[Rotollo 2]

I hacked nearly all my consoles personally, 3ds has custom themes and shit and I love it to death as a GBA/DS/3ds game machine, my wii u is in hibernation but I could probably hook it up again if I really wanted to, I would for switch if I had a second one and it's honestly a very tempting reason for me to get an oled version since I have a launch variation and custom themes for the switch sound dank as hell. Only thing I don't think I have modified is my PS2 because that shit was too hard for my little monkey brain to understand but with disc boot I might try it again.

 

[MooseGump]

I remember staying up late modding my Wii and then getting errors out the ass because I still didn't quite understand setting up emulators and stuff, so I'd have files missing or random normal errors/crashes were making me think I couldn't do much more

That was so fun and frustrating at the same time since I followed guides that were either outdated or plainly wrong, but I'd totally take the no-retard guides out there today over those

 

[Sage In All Fields]

I love writing stuff for my PS2 and FreeDVDBoot's really changed the game. Even have Linux running on it. It's a shame almost all the demos don't work anymore (due to changes in the way homebrew loads in the PS2dev SDK), or on the slim, especially wanted to run 4 Edges:

I still need to get around to mechapwning it so it's permenently region unlocked.

Also it's not really a console, but I've also hacked my scientific calculator, not many good hackstrings out for my model though since there's no ROM out for people to pick apart.

 

[Schmeckel]

I have an old DS (later a DSi) that I had gotten a couple of flashcarts for and that was enough to keep me busy for a while. I farted around with homebrew stuff, but mostly wanted games. The fat DS was gifted to a friend, complete with the R4, and now I have passed down the DSi to my spawn and an R4i that's stacked with enough Mario and Pokeymans for a long time.

Later got into the PSP. The TOOL battery was such a great, well...tool to use. And since I got in kinda early on the scene in general, I used said battery and magic stick to make bank by adding cfw to other PSPs. Sadly, both the TOOL battery blew up, and the other two batteries I still have for the PSP hold next to no charge. The emulation was fantastic.

When Geohot cracked the ps3, I had a lot of fun playing around with more brew stuff on it. I didn't play much online, really, so I was ok without PSN. I ran a demon's souls trainer to just max out every stat and had loads of fun plowing through stuff. Buuuuut, then the ylod happened.

Nowadays, It's just messing with some homebrew and trying out the occasional game on a n3DSxl (and putting whatever games on my cretin's 2ds).

 

[mister meaner]

I had a wii and wii u with homebrew, I got so much fun and value out of playing Mario Kart wii w/ Wiimmfi and CTGP Revolution. Also used it to pirate many games.

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Modded MKWii is the shit

Couldn't agree with you more. At least 100 hours of entertainment value from playing singleplayer alone.