Kotaku: Homebrew

People are Already Playing Genesis Games on the PlayStation Vita

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:00:00 EST

Oh look. It's Genesis game Sonic & Knuckles running on the PlayStation Vita, a handheld that's been out for less than a month. More »

How to Play Your Xenoblade Import on a North American Wii

Mike Fahey — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 10:40:00 EDT

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Xenoblade Chronicles is out in English right now, but Nintendo of America doesn't seem keen to let North American's play it, so they can't. Not unless they import a copy from Europe and follow Joystiq's guide for soft modding Nintendo's Wii to play imports. More »

It's Minecraft, (Sort of) Running On the Nintendo DS

Luke Plunkett — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:30:00 EDT

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A DS homebrew developer by the name of smealum is taking indie smash Minecraft and bringing it to Nintendo's portable system. Unofficially, of course. More »

If the Dreamcast is Dead, Don't Tell These Guys

Brian Ashcraft — Fri, 13 May 2011 08:30:00 EDT

The Dreamcast isn't dead. It's resting. The Sega console keeps getting new games thanks to homebrew developers like Redspotgames and NG:DEV.TEAM who continue to support the Dreamcast, years after Sega gave up. More »

PS3 Hacker Being Sued For "Making Sony Mad"

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 EST

Click to viewGeorge "GeoHot" Hotz, the hacker who helped blow the doors off the PlayStation 3's copy protection system, is being sued by Sony. Why? Because, he says, he made them mad. More »

Here's What Homebrew Looks Like On A PS3

Luke Plunkett — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 02:00:00 EST

Hacker George "GeoHot" Hotz, who along with the fail0verflow team have in the past week cracked the PS3 wide open, has posted up a video showing the exploits in action. More »

See Kingdom Hearts Running On A PSPgo

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 02:30:00 EST

The fact you can't buy Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep on the PSPgo highlights one of the bigger problems with Sony's struggling handheld. It also helps explain why piracy is so rampant on the portable device. More »

Thanks Homebrew, For the Adult Nintendo DS Games

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 27 May 2010 02:00:00 EDT

Your parents die. But your fate changes when a millionaire adopts you, and you move into her mansion with her and her daughters. Then...yeah. More »

At Least The Zune HD Can Play Game Boy Titles

Mike Fahey — Sat, 15 May 2010 12:00:00 EDT

Microsoft's support for the Zune HD as a game playing device has been pretty abysmal. Luckily there are hackers, one of which has the beginnings of a serviceable Game Boy Advance emulator working on the device. More »

Space Invaders: From Game to Cartoon to Game

Owen Good — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:00:00 EST

It's Wednesday night. You have no date, a two-liter bottle of Shasta, your all-Rush mixtape, and, now, this impossibly good Space Invaders clone built on Futurama's epic "Raiders of the Lost Arcade" vignette from the third season of Futurama. More »

Kick Off 2010 With A Brand New NES Game

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:00:00 EST

Champagne, pointy hats and Auld Lang Syne are for suckers. You want to kick off the new year in style, you do it by buying a brand new game for the NES. More »

It's Portal, Running In ASCII

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:30:00 EDT

Just in case you've ever wondered "what would Portal look like if it had been released in the early 80s", now, courtesy of Joe Larson, you can find out. More »

Well, The DSi Didn't Stay Piracy-Free For Long

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:30:00 EDT

I've always suspected that whole point of the Nintendo DSi - and its online firmware updates - was not to introduce new features, but to curtail piracy. Fat lot of good it's done them. More »

Now, Any Nerd Can Propose Marriage Via DS Homebrew

Michael McWhertor — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:40:12 EST

The geekiest of romantic gestures used to be limited to those with a knack for assembly and emulation, but thanks to Multiple-Option's Easy Proposal Maker, you too can ask for another's hand in marriage in-game. More »

Wii Homebrew Channel Hits The Big v1.00

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:40:00 EST

Many of you have been using the Homebrew Channel for the Wii for a while now. Good for you, it’s a useful, useful thing. But did you know it was, technically, in beta? More »

Acekard Announce First Fully Working Dsi Flash Cart

Stuart Houghton — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:20:00 EST

Remember that video we showed you of the work-in-progress DSi flash cart? Yeah, well, work has progressed. More »

Man Builds Wiimote Theremin, Plays Star Trek Theme

Stuart Houghton — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:20:00 EST

The very definition of 'Neat Hack', Ken Moore shows us his DIY Wiimote Theremin with a virtuoso rendition of a piece traditionally associated with the instrument - the theme from Star Trek. More »

Hardware Hackers Make Some DSi Flash Progress

Stuart Houghton — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:20:00 EST

The hardware nerds behind the Acekard flashcart reckon they have made some progress towards getting their card working with the DSi. More »

Latest Wii Update Will, As Usual, Attempt To Block The Homebrew Channel

Luke Plunkett — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:00:00 EST

If you bothered to turn your Wii on tonight, you'll have been prompted to perform a system update. It'll take your Wii to version 3.4. Version 3.4 does little new except, and I quote, "automatically remove" any "unauthorized modifications to save files". That's your edited Twilight Princess save files, users of the Homebrew Channel, so as with most firmware updates, you'd do well to stay away from this one if you want to continue getting any expanded use out of your Wii. More »

DSi To Stop Flash Cards, Kill Homebrew?

Stuart Houghton — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:20:00 EDT

The Nintendo DSi may come with an SD card slot, prompting fears of even easier piracy, but the redesign will close the boot exploit that allows flash devices like the R4 to load arbitrary code. More »

PC & PSP, Livin' In Per-fect Har-mo-nee (RemoteJoy Lite)

Stuart Houghton — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:00:53 EDT

Thanks to the ever-busy PSP homebrew community it is now possible to link a PC and a PSP together via USB Cable and a little plugin by the name of RemoteJoy Lite. Using the app you can hook up your Windows PC with your handheld and play PSP games on the PC screen. More »

Wii Dongle Might (MIGHT) Unbrick Your Bricked Wii

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 03:30:00 EDT

This thing's called the Wii Recovery Dongle. You clip it into your Wii's GameCube memory card slot and, if you're in possession of a bricked Wii, it might (provided you've got the skills) just help you save your console. Might. To be honest the specifics are waaaaay over our heads, so if you've got a dead Wii on your hands and would like a more detailed run-down, the kids at HackMii are the ones to see. More »

Quest For Glory II Is Back, Yo

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:20:00 EDT

Quest for Glory II is the greatest adventure game of all time. That's not opinion, either. It's fact. Science. Only problem is, the game's from 1990, so it's also a little...rough. No more! Thanks to the team at AGD (who have also done fantastic restorations of the first two Kings Quest games), the game's "quaint" old VGA graphics have been updated, the timing of the real-time puzzles have been made easier and dialogue is now taken care of via menus, instead of having to guess via text input. Oh, and it's 100% free. In other words, the greatest adventure game of all time just got greater. More »

Homebrew Wii Channel Enables DVD Playback

Stuart Houghton — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:00:00 EDT

Nintendo has been far too busy printing money and dreaming up strange new controllers to actually finish that DVD-on-Wii thing it has been promising for the last couple of years. More »

What 15,000 Hours Of DS Homebrew Development Looks Like

Michael McWhertor — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:40:13 EDT

If you're a friend of Robert Pelloni and you're wondering why you haven't seen him for half a decade, here's why. Bob's Game, a title we'll assume is tentative for now, is a top down 2D adventure game built over the course of five years by a single person. Yes, one (obviously mad) developer is responsible for the programming, art, music, story and script required to bring Bob's Game to life. More »

Wii Hack Does Region-Free Gaming (Relatively) Easily [Update]

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 05:30:00 EDT

XNA Creators Club Games Priced, Detailed

Mike Fahey — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:00:00 EDT

Back in February Xbox 360 gamers got a chance to try out some of the exciting homebrew games coming out of the XNA Code Creators Club, and this holiday season they'll be able to buy them. Microsoft has dropped details about how pricing and payments will work for folks who have their games published via the new program, now called Xbox LIVE Community Games. Paying members of the Creators Club will be able to submit their games to the community for peer review, and if they deem it worthy they'll be able to set a price and put it up for sale. More »

Twilight Princess Hack Fix (ie Wii 3.3) Now Hacked

Luke Plunkett — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:30:00 EDT

That didn't take long! The team behind the Twilight Princess save-game exploit on the Wii - which Nintendo just "fixed" with their recent update to 3.3 - have already found a way to get past the fix. To be honest there's a ton of technical jibberish behind it that I just do not understand, but the gist seems to be that the update sought out exploited TP save files and nixed them, while these guys have found a way to tell the update to ignore exploited TP saves. That's progress for ya. More »

Wii Update Castrates Twilight Princess Hack

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:20:00 EDT

A few months back, hackers exploited a modified save game file in Twilight Princess to get access to the Wii. Cue an increase in stuff like homebrew for the system, leading to things as awesome as someone running Full Throttle on their Wii. Well, no more! Nintendo have quietly updated the Wii's menu (v3.3, which does little else but this), and in doing so have closed the loop on that particular exploit, making a lot of homebrew kids very, very sad. It almost goes without saying, but those affected may just want to hold off on installing this update. More »

ScummVM, Now For Your Nintendo Wii

Luke Plunkett — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 05:30:00 EDT

If you're not interested in getting homebrew up and running on your Wii, fine. That's your business. You're probably not interested in knowing that ScummVM is now working for the system, either, nor in seeing a man play Full Throttle on his couch using a Wii Remote. Because that's not awesome at all, is it? More »

Wii Now Loading Homebrew From SD Cards (Unofficially)

Mark Wilson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:40:52 EDT

Team Twiizers, the software enthusiasts behind the Twilight Hack (a Wii exploit stemming from Twilight Princess) have announced that their hardware-modless software can now load homebrew apps from the SD card slot in your Wii. Just imagine a world in which the Nintendo Wii could play your old SNES roms...oh how that would Change Things For The Better. More »

Keeping the Dream(cast) Alive

Maggie Greene — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 21:00:49 EDT

With the Dreamcast resurfacing recently in the news, the Escapist's interview with the guys behind Cryptic Allusion — one of the pioneers of the Dreamcast homebrew scene that is waning — is pertinent. Even though Cryptic Allusion has shifted away from Dreamcast homebrew, the interview is taken up with talk about what they did do for the scene, where it's at now, and where it may be in the future. On the question of whether they'd like to see Sega try and re-enter the hardware market: More »

FFVII On NES Is A Triumph Of The Human Spirit

Luke Plunkett — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 04:30:00 EST

A little while ago, the Shenzhen Nanjing Technology Company released Final Fantasy VII. On the NES. Totally unofficially, of course, but also totally, officially awesome. Sure, the game eschews Chocobo racing, limit breaks and even Yuffie and Vincent, but this being a NES cart, casualties are to be expected. What does make it in there are the other six characters and almost the entire main storyline of the multi-disc PlayStation epic, an achievement I have no hesitation in labelling Herculean. Since you'll never own nor play this, you can check out some screens here, with well over 100 more at the link below. More »

Quake II Ported To Nintendo DS

Michael McWhertor — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:00:55 EST

The original Quake running on a Nintendo DS? About as exciting as Daikatana, now that someone's hacked together a working version of Quake II for the dual screened handheld. id Software's classic first person shooter is now (nearly) a fully functional port, with working sound, graphics and on-screen keyboard support for console fun. No wi-fi support yet, but we expect it within the next 20 minutes or so. More »

PS3 Megabox Homebrew Project Is Linux For Commitment-Phobes

Mark Wilson — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:40:33 EST

The PS3 is an amazing piece of machinery, but the PS3 Megabox Homebrew Project isn't waiting for Sony's inevitable firmware updates to make their dreams to come true. Nor are they installing Linux. Instead, the group is taking the bull by the horns and offering an incredible (update: beta) software package—completely runnable from a USB drive or DVD—to add a slew of new functionality. More »

Paint By DS With Colors!

Mike Fahey — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:40:39 EST

Pressure sensitivity isn't one of the most advertised features of the Nintendo DS touch screen, as the last thing you want to tell an 8 year-old is to hit the touch screen harder, but it can come in quite handy for the homebrew scene. Take Colors! for example. Taking advantage of the touch screen's pressure sensitivity, Colors! uses techniques developed for drawing pads to turn the DS into a portable electronic sketchbook. The picture above was created using the program, and there is an entire gallery of amazing art made with the program. Not only that, but using a companion Java program called ColorsDraw you can replay your painting on your PC at a higher resolution. Colors! is what the homebrew scene is all about. Not pirating games, but reaching beyond the hardware manufacturer's vision to create something truly wonderful. More »

Wardive, Wi-Fi Hotspot DS Game

Brian Crecente — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:00:48 EST

Wardive is a neat use for your aftermarket DS flash cartridge that won't make Mario cry. A homebrew game, it uses the DS's Wi-Fi to scope out local hotspots. Then these hotspots become enemies in an ever-evolving battlefield (pending you move around a bit). More »

Against Homebrew

bogost — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:00:00 EST

I am against "Homebrew" game development. More »

DS Developing Better Than... Jaguar Developing

Brian Ashcraft — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:00:50 EST

With Orcs and Elves, Doom creator John Carmack has made a DS game. Good for him. How did he like working on the DS? He loved it so so much. In his own words: More »

Make Your Own Wii Fit Balance Board

Brian Ashcraft — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:00:32 EDT

Can wait for the Wii Fit Balance Board? Neither can Game Labo! The Japanese video game hacker mag's latest issue has an article on how to make your own. There's a dialogue and a Classic Controller is involved. Good news is that this homebrew doesn't have a 300 pound limit like the Wii Balance Board. So take note, husky readers! This could be the answer you've been waiting for!! More »