It's not often (in fact it's never) that you see a game tagline line this: "Make music with a disc of 510 067 420 km² = the Earth." But that's what Oterp, a hombrew PSP app by Antonin Fourneau does.
Oterp uses the PSP GPS add-on to track your relative position on the planet and alters music in real time based on your movements. Its developer has also hard-coded numerous "collection" spots around the globe into the software. Travelling to these locations will unlock new music and effects, similar to unlocking characters via GPS in the Japanese release of Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. Sounds pretty cool, huh? More videos of it in action can be found at the Oterp site.
Our first thought upon seeing this very cool hack was "that's awesome." Our second thought was "do you have to blow on it to make it work?"
BenHeck.com forum member "darkeru" created this inventive new take on a home made NES portable, which manages to squeeze all of the 8-bit dynamo's guts into a 4.1" by 5.5" space ... with a backlit LCD display. We just had a third thought: what happens when you connect it to this portable NES?
Back in April, a website used by Valve to manage its Steam-related Cyber Cafe business was hacked. As we reported then, the hacker, known as "MaddoxX," claimed to have gained access to a variety of sensitive data, including credit card numbers. Well, the jig is finally up.
A special Dutch police unit, "Team High Tech Crime" (certainly somehow related to G.I. Joe), nabbed the culprit in the town of Maastricht on June 24. Dutch authorities report that he hacked an Activision server prior to the Valve job, obtaining a pre-release version of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. He is also charged with stealing nearly 50,000 credit card numbers from a UK-based ticket sales service, using some of them to buy electronics and play online poker.
In lieu of a prison sentence, we suggest that "MaddoxX" be assigned to a work release program at Aperture Science.
All right, we'll admit that headline is a little inaccurate. The heavily modified Super Mario Bros. cart shown above actually plays Japanese Famicom carts (like the not-at-all-bootleg Super Bros. 5), not the slightly larger American NES carts. Semantics aside, we're sure you'll share our sense of awe at the accomplishment of fitting an entire video game system into what, at one point, was used to hold the data for a single game.
All the pieces are there, believe it or not, including A/V outputs, a svelte power switch, and two controller ports sticking out at the bottom of the cartridge. The machine seems like a one-of-a-kind hack, and doesn't look like it's going to be sold any time soon. It's a shame, too ... we' d love to get our hands on one of these, if only so we could plug in our Flash Memory PowerPak via an adapter to create the ultimate NES-cartridge-shaped hacking monstrosity.
At the Nintendo Media Summit, Boom Blox senior producer Amir Rahimi confirmed that the final version of the game will lack the head-tracking mode. We understand that it was always an Easter egg, requiring gamers to set up Wii Remotes as cameras, and hacking together their own IR LED glasses. But you didn't have to go to TED to see the promise, and we're disappointed to see it removed.
EA wouldn't go on-record to say exactly why the mode was cut, only just confirming it again through public-relations channels. An email statement noted, "Head-tracking was something we considered including as an Easter egg in BOOM BLOX however, we did not end up including it in the final version of the game. ..."
Perhaps EA feared that we'd hack together a candelabra helmet as an IR emitter. They should have; we totally would.
Want to quiet down the extremely loud clackety-clack of the Rock Band drum kit? You could simply use a few circles of foam rubber, or, if you're like hacker David Yoon, you can create your own extremely cute miniaturized drum kit for quiet, pencil-stick, desktop drumming.
The hack, which includes a foot pedal made from two sandwiched CDs, has the added bonus of being playable in an extremely enclosed space and/or by an extremely agile mouse. So if you have either of those things (and a bit of technical know-how), give it a go. If you have neither, well ... just enjoy the picture.
Practically anyone who's played Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band has probably come across that one jerk who just can't help denigrating the simple fun of the rhythm game experience. "That's not even close to playing a real guitar," he'll say in a snide, nasally voice. "The guitar doesn't even have strings!" Well, if you want to show up that pompous prick, may we suggest you queue up the below video of a modded, stringed Rock Band guitar on a laptop and then RUB IT IN HIS FACE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Ahem. Anyway, while this single-stringed beast still has a ways to go to match a real six-string guitar, it looks like it captures the axe-grinding experience a little more authentically. Here's hoping that some sort of officially licensed, purchasable version of this type of guitar will be available soon.
While there aren't many exciting new features for this quick and dirty custom firmware upgrade, we should note that the M33 line of hacks now has the ability to download updates directly from the internet via Wi-Fi using the PSP's built-in Network Update tool. When PSP users don't even have to be tethered to a computer to break Sony's copy-protection, what chance does Sony really have of stopping them?
In what looks like a mash-up tech demo, Super Mario Bros. gets a helping hand from a player, with the plumber being guided and lifted by simple gestures. The video makes us hopeful for fun camera-based games to finally take hold. Bring on the crazy, creative games.
You might think that the real drum would be even worse than that clacky drum controller at drowning out the in-game drum line. Not to worry... just fill your drums with foam to quiet that natural drumming sound. So, to summarize, these instructions let you replace your fake drums with real drums that are working very hard to be fake drums. Just so we're clear.
Skyllus vBi, member of the professional gaming group Team vBi, just can't seem to catch a break. After being recognized by Bungie for making a very popular Halo 3 video, Skyllus was rewarded with the incredibly rare in-game "Recon Armor", which only Bungie employees and a select few Halo community members have. Of course, it didn't take long for some of the shadier members of Halo 3's player base to grow green with envy -- Skyllus has reportedly had his Xbox Live account hacked three times since late October.
The latest hack that Skyllus has suffered has been particularly difficult on him, due to Live's uncooperative customer service. After being told that there was nothing he could do to regain control of the account, and being given the runaround for a few hours, Skyllus had to settle for the promise of an investigation into the account in question.
Keep in mind that any kind of identity theft is illegal, especially if the hacker touches the victim's credit cards (which are easily accessible through information on an XBL account). We hope that the digital notoriety that comes from wearing rare armor in a game is worth the risk of going to real-world jail.
The constant back and forth between PSP hackers and Sony's firmware upgraders may finally be over, with victory going to the hackers. The folks over at N00bz have released Pandora's battery, a downloadable exploit that creates a memory stick and battery combo that can downgrade any PSP back to the extremely hackable version 1.5 firmware. Even better, the hack will fix PSPs that have been "bricked" by previous failed hacks and "will continue to work for all future firmwares," according to the developers.
The exploit is the result of months of behind the scenes work by a team of hackers that figured out how to reset a PSP to Sony's service mode. With hackers no longer needing to concern themselves with how to break new firmware, we can't wait to see what kind of homebrew software the community comes up with for the most powerful portable hardware widely available.
Sometimes it feels like hackers do things just to prove that they can rather than for any actual useful purpose. Case in point, Japanese homebrew developer SofiyaCat has set up a minimally-functional DS emulator on a hacked PSP. The compatibility is reportedly spotty and the emulation runs extremely slowly, but you can count on the community to improve these problems in due time.
It might seem pointless to emulate the DS on a system that only has a single, non-touch screen but ... well actually it is pretty pointless. But it is possible, and that's all that matters sometimes.
Don't want to wait until later this year try the latest spastic exergaming craze, Wii Fit? Are the Wii graphics just too high-res for you? Wish Wii Fit looked a touch more dangerous?
Gametrailers user, "neadha," answers the call to all three challenges, showing a homebrew balance game grafted to an old version of Pong. Standing on a skateboard deck on a cylinder, the Pong paddle slides up or down with every tilt. Or at least that's the idea. The game is so hardcore that the ball wings across the screen too quickly to react.
With a little tuning, the game might be cool. But clearly, a helmet is advised, lest this turn into Jackass. See the video after the break.
A new patch by Efraim Siounis for the freeware platform adventure Cave Story lets you play as one of nine different characters from the game. Simply grab the pbm file from Efraim's site, rename it to "MyChar.pbm", and drop it in the /data directory under the Cave Story folder. When you start the game all main character sprites will be magically switched. Currently you can play as Curly, Toroko, Jenka, Sue, King, Crown, Booster, or a dog. It doesn't change the game much, but you'll have something new to stare at as you discover another excuse to play through the game ... again.
Posts with tag hack
At the Nintendo Media Summit, Boom Blox senior producer Amir Rahimi confirmed that the final version of the game will lack the head-tracking mode. We understand that it was always an Easter egg, requiring gamers to set up Wii Remotes as cameras, and hacking together their own IR LED glasses. But you didn't have to go to TED to see the promise, and we're disappointed to see it removed.
Well that was fast. Here we are, not more than two days after the Skype-granting PSP 3.90 firmware was released, and a new custom firmware comes along to let PSP owners run homebrew and/or pirated programs yet again.
In what looks like a mash-up tech demo, Super Mario Bros. gets a helping hand from a player, with the plumber being guided and lifted by simple gestures. The video makes us hopeful for fun camera-based games to finally take hold. Bring on the crazy, creative games.
The constant back and forth between PSP hackers and Sony's firmware upgraders may finally be over, with victory going to the hackers. The folks over at N00bz have released Pandora's battery, a downloadable exploit that creates a memory stick and battery combo that can downgrade any PSP back to the extremely hackable version 1.5 firmware. Even better, the hack will fix PSPs that have been "bricked" by previous failed hacks and "will continue to work for all future firmwares," according to the developers.
Don't want to wait until later this year try the latest spastic exergaming craze, Wii Fit? Are the Wii graphics just too high-res for you? Wish Wii Fit looked a touch more dangerous?
