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The Missing Link: The Zelda Sequel That Never Was

The Missing Link: The Zelda Sequel That Never Was

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Video game hacker Kaze Emanuar has been a thorn in Nintendo’s side for several years now. He’s an expert at cracking apart the code to Super Mario 64, and has created mods for the game that introduce new characters, alternate power-ups, and sometimes entirely new unofficial sequels. Kaze has made more than one Mario 64 styled game entirely on his own…some are quite good, and even function on original N64 hardware. Kaze announced in early 2019 he was expanding his repertoire and taking a whack at Ocarina of Time. Not to hack in anime characters or a dab emote for Link, but to make an entirely new game. It was a formidable challenge, and not just in programming terms. As Kaze put it, with Mario you can place any element anywhere and have a good time, but Zelda is a more strategic series and a lot more thought has to go into the game layout. He was originally going to make a Zelda sequel on his own. But then a

They’ve Finally Hacked The Playstation 2, But What Can You Do With It?

They’ve Finally Hacked The Playstation 2, But What Can You Do With It?

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When the Playstation 2 first hit the market, game hardware companies were finally starting to take serious preventative measures toward piracy of software. After seeing what happened with Sega and its accidental feature of taking any burned CD, Sony made sure the PS2’s architecture was locked tight…at least, so they thought. No one really figured out how to jailbreak the PS2’s security measures during the console’s lifespan without serious effort. If you were that dedicated a pirate, you had to solder a special chip into the architecture itself — and that task was so tricky that modded PS2s never really posed a threat to Sony’s bottom line. A newly discovered loophole, however, might’ve…if anyone had known about it back then. Software engineer CTurt discovered the glitch and documented it on this page. His explanation gets long and technical, but in a nutshell, his exploit uses a quirk in the machine’s DVD playback feature to bypass the native copy protection. Once you take advantage of the bypass, the PS2 will take

Everything You Need To Hack The Playstation Classic Is Now Online

Everything You Need To Hack The Playstation Classic Is Now Online

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The Playstation Classic was released December 3, to mostly negative reviews — partly due to the lackluster lineup preinstalled on it. Last week it was discovered that the Classic ran off the open-source emulator PCSX ReARMed, and that the menu for this emulator could be accessed by simply plugging in a keyboard. Once that fact was out there, we figured it wouldn’t be long before the end goal — loading other games onto the Playstation Classic — would become a reality. Such a feature is now possible, but not perfected. Turns out the device has incredibly weak security — the encryption key Sony used to secure the most sensitive parts was included in the code for some reason. The whole thing is an open book, and according to Ars Technica, within a day or two it became possible to simply plug a flash drive into the Playstation Classic and play new games. However, it works differently than on the NES or SNES Classic. Currently, the biggest hurdle to putting new

Hacking The Playstation Classic Is As Simple As Plugging In A Keyboard

Hacking The Playstation Classic Is As Simple As Plugging In A Keyboard

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By now it’s no secret that the Playstation Classic isn’t what anyone was hoping for. I have yet to see a good review, either from respected websites, disrespected websites, or fans on YouTube. No one is satisfied with the tone-deaf game selection, the lack of options, or the poor emulation. All that’s left is to break the thing open. Unbelievably, it turns out this can be done by simply plugging a USB keyboard into the appropriate plug. Not every type of keyboard works, but the ones that do will allow anyone to access a secret menu by just pressing the Escape key. No fooling — this was really left in there. Once you bring up the menu, you can access features that weren’t made available in the closed version of the software. Did you want a scanline filter? It’s in there. For inexplicable reasons, Sony could have just made it available on their own menu screen, but walled it off. There are all sorts of other options as well, like

The Nintendo Switch Online NES Library Has Been Hacked

The Nintendo Switch Online NES Library Has Been Hacked

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How long did you figure it would take before somebody figured out how to hack into the Nintendo Switch Online program to install more games into its NES emulator? This time, it took less than 24 hours. The evening after NSO launched, denizens of the hacking community revealed their screenshots and videos. Why was it cracked so quickly? Because, as it turns out, Nintendo Switch Online uses the same emulator as the NES Classic, which has been thoroughly hacked. Everything about the software in NSO is the same as it is in NES Classic, minus the online component. All they had to do was install Hakchi into the Switch, and presto, they were playing Battletoads: If there’s anything we know about Nintendo by now, it’s that they’ve always been aggressively anti-piracy. Back in the 80s they installed a lockout chip in the NES….they sacrificed third-party support on the N64 out of the theory cartridges were harder to copy….historically they take every step imaginable to prevent illegal tampering, so how in

NES Emulator Found In Animal Crossing

NES Emulator Found In Animal Crossing

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A hacker who goes by “jamchamb” has discovered a built-in NES emulator hiding in the code of the original Animal Crossing for Gamecube. That may not sound surprising at first, but we’re not talking about the specific NES games you can collect in Animal Crossing. We’re talking about a specific item in the game that, it turns out, was once capable of playing ANY NES game — reading directly from the memory card. Originally, some of the items you could find in Animal Crossing were NES games — they would turn up randomly in the form of NES units with a game box stacked on top of them. When you put them in your house, you could play the game as noted by walking up to one. It was a feature Nintendo eliminated from all future Animal Crossing games once they found out people would pay for those games individually. Over the years people have hacked the Gamecube Animal Crossing to find more games in the code than were officially

This Is A Super NES Game, Running On An NES

This Is A Super NES Game, Running On An NES

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Hacker Tom Murphy has pulled off the unthinkable: he’s gotten Super Mario World, a Super NES game, to run on an NES console — a real one. How’d he pull it off? Did he cheat? …..Yeah, kinda — but it still took significant effort to get to the point where he could cheat. The NES is very limited graphically: it can render 64 colors, but it can only put 13 of them on one screen at a time, and only three colors are allowed in every 16×16 block of graphics. Murphy figured out a way to feed data into the NES so that a different color palette is allowed every eight pixels — but that still wasn’t enough. All the graphical data for an NES game is stored in a cartridge chip called the Picture Processing Unit, or PPU. Murphy created a custom circuit board and replaced the PPU with a soldered-on Raspberry Pi. The Pi computes the data — in this case an emulated Super Mario World — and

Fan Project Takes Super Mario 64 Online

Fan Project Takes Super Mario 64 Online

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Mario 64 modder Kaze Emanuar is back at it again! Previously he brought the Super Mario Odyssey hat trick into Mario 64. Then he introduced a robust level editor to the game. Now he’s created an online mode! Once you connect to a remote server, up to 24 players can simultaneously play a Mario 64 game at once. You can control any of the characters found in Super Mario 64 DS (Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and Wario) as well as some new ones: Peach (who has a similar floating ability to her appearance in Super Mario 3D World), Toad, and even Waluigi and Rosalina, who didn’t have character models in Mario 64 up to this point (Kaze took care of that). As with all unofficial projects, there’s no way to tell how long Super Mario 64 Online will stay active before Nintendo C&Ds it. Kaze has had one such project brought down before: Last Impact, a full sequel to Mario 64 with new environments and enemies. However, other projects like Mario

Abandoned Extra Mode Found In Mario Kart Wii

Abandoned Extra Mode Found In Mario Kart Wii

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It took ten years, but someone found a dummied-out extra play mode in Mario Kart Wii — the game released BEFORE Mario Kart 8, with a “Wii Wheel” accessory because extra peripherals were in at the time. It was one of the Wii’s biggest sellers, but somehow an extra section remained hidden all this time. The mode isn’t normally accessible; it’s half-deleted and could only be rendered functional through a hack. That hack came courtesy of MrBean35000vr, someone who’s been in the news several times for his code raiding — he was responsible for a viral Breath of the Wild hack video earlier this year and he’s also hacked Mario Kart 8 inside and out. This time he went backwards. The abandoned Mario Kart Wii feature is called Mission Mode and it resembles a similar mode in Mario Kart DS, released prior. It’s a hybrid of a traditional race and a minigame, where you win not by crossing the finish first but by achieving a specific goal or stunt. MrBean

If You Play One Mario Fan Game Destined To Be Taken Down, Make It This One

If You Play One Mario Fan Game Destined To Be Taken Down, Make It This One

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When Nintendo released Super Mario Maker for the Wii U in 2015, everyone started asking what could be next. Was a Mario 64 Maker in the future? There’s been the usual silence from Nintendo on that end, but one fan decided not to wait. As of today, and probably for a limited time, a Super Mario 64 Maker program exists. It’s a hacked version of Mario 64 that uses the original controls, and it allows anyone to drag and drop any element from Super Mario 64 onto a 3D map in any way they see fit. Platforms, enemies and power-up blocks can all be positioned with the push of a button. The player then chooses the music, plays the level, and upon collection of the star, is given the option of saving his or her creation. Super Mario 64 Maker has no online mode to share these levels, but that’s just as well — the connection won’t stay up once Nintendo inevitably pulls the plug. Instead you can share levels

The NES Classic Hack Now Allows For All 700+ Games

The NES Classic Hack Now Allows For All 700+ Games

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Shortly after the release of the NES Classic, hackers found a way to alter the code of the device to accept more than just the 30 games that came with it. The hack was primitive at first, but eventually a way was found to store as many as 80 games on the Classic. The ultimate goal was to find a way to store every game, but the problem was, there was a wall that prevented this from happening: the fact that the Classic’s internal storage had a limit of 300 MB. But after months of experimentation, it looks like the hack has now achieved the 700-plus games goal. What made it possible was the newly-added ability to use zipped files, and the much-needed use of a folder system. Cluster, the author of the patch known as Hakchi, says this newest update is the most intuitive one to use yet. He’s even added a Turbo Button feature that works via the X and Y buttons on the Wii Classic Controller (there’s

Hackers Get Windows 95 To Run On A New 3DS

Hackers Get Windows 95 To Run On A New 3DS

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The announcement came from GBATemp.net: someone by the screenname shutterbug2000 got Windows 95 running on his New Nintendo 3DS, and he provided photos and video evidence to prove it. Others were soon able to accomplish the feat per his instructions. Folks have gotten emulated games to play on Nintendo consoles before — at least for a week or so before Nintendo patched the exploits they found — but this is the first time en entire operating system has been made to run on one. Emulation is difficult, and often requires significantly more power than the device being emulated (eight times is a number I’ve heard thrown around). This is likely why the newest model of the 3DS is being made to run an operating system that’s twenty years old as opposed to anything close to current. Right now loading Windows is the extent of how far they’ve gotten: they won’t be able to load ancient PC programs or use any of the built-in features until they tinker with it further.

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