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Homebrew on Consoles Detailed

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sun Jun 11, 2006 08:35 AM
from the keep-em-emulated dept.
Classic Games (Games) Emulation (Games)
Yoshi writes "DCEmu have released an article detailing the current State of the Homebrew Scene on all consoles from the PSP to GBA and even to the Next Gen Nintendo Wii, the article explains whats needed to run emulators and games and if its worth bothering for each console."
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  • DS Lite? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by remembertomorrow (959064) on Sunday June 11 2006, @08:43AM (#15512633)
    Will there be anything (expected to be) fundamentally different about the Nintendo DS Lite? I have heard so much good stuff about the DS, I may buy one of the Lite's when they're available.

    It's always nice to be able to expand the uses of hardware in ways the developers never intended. :)
    • The DS Lite and the DS are the same consoles with certain improvements. Similar to the advancement between the GBA and the GBA-SP, the DS-Lite's screen is much improved and the case is smaller. And I'm sure, sooner or later, we will start seeing a lot more customized case colours (lots have been released in Japan, but only a few select in NA and Eu.

      • Re:DS Lite? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Kredal (566494) on Sunday June 11 2006, @10:06AM (#15512805) Homepage Journal
        I picked up my DS Lite at 12:04 last night at WalMart. It replaces my original DS, which the wife is getting. The screen is way brighter, the case is a bit smaller, the stylus is larger (1cm longer, and slightly thicker) which makes it easier to hold... the microphone moved to the center of the console, and the status lights are now EASILY visible when the case is closed.

        The only minor drawbacks are the new start and select buttons are itty bitty, and require a bit more effort to push accurately.

        It was definitely worth the upgrade.

    • Yes I think so (Score:4, Informative)

      by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on Sunday June 11 2006, @10:48AM (#15512916) Journal
      The DS Lite if I recall correctly requires a newer passkey because they changed something that stopped the old keys from working.

      So it is not entirely true as in the article that Nintendo doesn't care about the homebrew scene. Not suprisingly, PSP commercial games often don't fit on its memory stick but most Nintendo handheld games can fit a dozen to a flash card.

      This makes it a lot easier to pirate GBA/DS games then PSP games.

      The DS had a revision that forced a new key but I am just not sure wether that revision happened to be the DS Lite. For sure the DS Lite is of the new version however so the answer is still yes. If you check the sites you will find some advice on checking wich firmware you got with your DS. Color background in pictochat if I remember correctly.

    • Re:DS Lite? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Mr. Picklesworth (931427) on Sunday June 11 2006, @12:03PM (#15513088) Homepage
      In order to run homebrew, a passthrough device is used (called PassMe - PassKey is a more professionally manufactured device) to boot code from a cart in the GBA slot. This may sound a bit odd, but it has actually become a useful thing, since it means that devices like the GBA Move Player or Supercard CF can be used to run code off of CF or SD cards, which gives us a very big removeable storage medium, making DS homebrew useful for handy things that official software simply would not do.

      The DS Lite just requires PassMe2, which is the more effective passthrough device developed a while ago in response to Nintendo's newer firmwares which they were putting in DSs to try to stop piracy. DSLite was released without further enhancements to the firmware's piracy protection stuff, so it is effectively the same thing as a newer regular DS. If you don't like PassMe, the DS card encryption has recently been figured out, allowing for code to be run more comfortably out of Slot-1. As far as I know, there are no available devices to run code straight out of Slot-1, since Slot-2 is just so much nicer... but this means that we can now use a single passthrough device across all DSs. One of these NoPass devices that I know by name is the Max Media Launcher.
      Since even a NoPass device is annoying to use (who wants to insert two carts to run homebrew?), Flashme was developed, which is a hacked DS firmware that will boot any code sent to it and has safety measures in place to avoid the DS being bricked. This means that your DS will then gladly run unnoficial DS code from the GBA slot without any extra persuasion. There have been reports of a breaking fuse causing the DS Lite to shut down and brick itself upon attempts to flash its firmware. I am unsure as to whether or not this has been gotten to the bottom of.

      Lots of information on DS homebrew is in the Wikipedia article. [wikipedia.org] It's a bit old though, so another good place to look is the DSLinux wiki or the forums at DSDev.org.

    • Other than the drastically improved screen quality, better battery life and smaller form factor, they're identical machines. From the perspective of the software, the *only* difference is the ability to control the backlight brightness. In fact, it takes significant effort just to tell them apart without screwing with the brightness register.

  • Oy! (Score:5, Funny)

    by cheebie (459397) on Sunday June 11 2006, @08:44AM (#15512638)
    I mis-read the headline as "The state of Hebrew on Consoles", which would have been just as interesting. The right-to-left reading would be a challenge.

    Of course, it's possible this challenge has been met already. Not being a Hebrew-speaker, I never looked into it.

  • Horrible Article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2006, @08:45AM (#15512640)
    This article should not have made it to the front page. It's horribly lacking in information and reads like someone wrote it off the top of their head without any research.

    For example, under Nintendo Gamecube it says that you can't run homebrew software without a mod chip. Which is weird, because I've got a port of SNES 9x running on my GC to play old SNES games. No mod chip required. All I have is the Nintendo SD Adapter Card and an Action Replay to boot the contents of the SD card. Not to mention you can alternatively use the broadband adapter with Phantasy Star Online to boot from across the network. This has been commonly known about for some time.

    I can't speak for the other consoles but if they're coverage is anything like his GameCube coverage, this article is worthless. Judging by the lack of options for the other consoles I think it's fair to assume that this is the case.
    • Well I hadn't been paying attention to the homebrew community lately, so i found all the information about the GPx2 to be quite interesting. :) It would be really nice if could find a way to fit one in my budget, afterall I've loved emulation for a long time. I'm glad that some companies have even found ways to make legitimate money off emulation instead of it staying as an 'illegal' undergound kinda thing.

      My keyboard is all screwy, and it took me a long time to type this. sigh. All i wanted to do today wa
    • But is there any way to access the Disc-drive on the GC yet? Until I can put the NES emulator + every rom ever released onto a single Disc labeled 'NES'.. I'll stick to my Dreamcast for console based emu.
      • I have GC Linux booting, and running off of an NFS share from my file server. I also hear that the optical drive is accessible from Linux. I'm not sure about regular homebrew, but I would imagine it's not much different. My intention though is to leverage the NFS share for all it's worth, and make my GameCube into a media terminal. I have mostly just been playing around with it though, and haven't gotten it doing anything constructive yet (I'm too lazy to recompile the kernel with the patch for my keybo
      • Dude, Xbox.

        I've got a couple dozen emus on my Xbox, with rom sets thanks to a hard drive upgrade. The hardest part is figuring out a button layout that's comfortable on the Xbox controller, once that's set up it's smooth sailing.

    • Horrible indeed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mascot (120795) on Sunday June 11 2006, @09:47AM (#15512768)
      A well researched and comprehensive article can stand the author being lazy on his grammar and spelling. This thing is painfully inarticulate, cursory *and* inaccurate.

      If accepted submissions had to pass an editor karma check, this article would have been posted anonymously.

    • Re:Horrible Article (Score:4, Informative)

      by jeremy_dot (734236) on Sunday June 11 2006, @11:28AM (#15513009)
      Mod parent up.

      As an amateur Nintend DS developer:
      In the "good old days" one could buy a device called a PassMe (a glorified device that performs a JMP into the GBA cartridge's ROM thus executing unencrypted code. They come in several variations such as the PassMe and the SuperPass). Nintendo was not happy with the PassMe and made all the recent DS systems (after and including firmware 4.0) and made the handshaking between the DS and the DS cartridge a bit more complicated and on a game-by-game basis. Now, one needs a device called a PassMe2 which essentially pretends to be a game. Beyond this, there are "NoPass" devices which don't have to do the handshaking with the DS.

      As it stands you can't use the rumble addon like the article implies, largely because both slots on the DS are taken up with the current state of homebrew (a GBA cart containing the code you want to run and a PassMe-like device in the DS slot). The DS section of this article is misleading. For more information, I suggest DualScene.net [dualscene.net] and MaxConsole.net [maxconsole.net] for information on homebrew games and programs. One can check DSLinux.org [dslinux.org] for information on, appropriately, DS Linux, and one can check GBADev.org [gbadev.org] for information on DS and GBA development.

    • I can't speak for the other consoles but if they're coverage is anything like his GameCube coverage

      What you lack is a frame of reference.

      For example, under Nintendo Gamecube it says that you can't run homebrew software without a mod chip. [...] All I have is the Nintendo SD Adapter Card and an Action Replay to boot the contents of the SD card. Not to mention you can alternatively use the broadband adapter with Phantasy Star Online to boot

      from across the network.

      Read again and compare to the DreamCast entry.

      • in the realm of home console, DreamCast is the only thing that let your run whatever you like.

        That's good for gaming in front of a TV. But which handheld system sold in brick-and-mortar retailers in the United States is the same way?

      • The basic difference is that, on DreamCast, you only need to burn the homebrewed software you need, put it into the DC, and it just-works(tm). Any stock machine is designed in a such way that you can boot anything you want on them. (Maybe it was initially designed so, to enable e-zines to ship CD with their issues.

        Bootable multimedia functions for music CD's. [wikipedia.org]

        Personally, I thought the Atari Jaguar's went out in style (unlike the rest of it's lifecycle). At the pushing of several developers who had games in

        • Expelled? Void your warranty? I doubt either of these are true.

          On XBox, Microsoft tries to detect non-authorised modification done to a XBox and bans the user. Most people wnating to be able to both play online AND run homebrewed software use a mod-chip with a switch (to switch between XBoxLive compliant BIOS and BIOS for Homebrewed software)

          Soft-mods don't work because most of them rely on subverting the XBoxLive entry on the menu.

          About the mod chip :
          First they didn't say "only".
          Then the action replay is a

  • My God! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Monkeys!!! (831558) on Sunday June 11 2006, @08:51AM (#15512657) Homepage
    *throws an editor at the article*

    My spelling and grammar are quite bad but the article made me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.
      • I don't like what you seem to be asserting here. If XBMC is any indication, it's completely possible for homebrew software to utterly pants anything released by a real developer.

  • Wii (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hyfe (641811) on Sunday June 11 2006, @08:56AM (#15512667)
    Anybody know if random people will be able to program for it? If we can, I image will see a shitload of cool stuff, as that controller is sooo begging for simple cool games. I mean, just something like pong would be insanely fun :)

    The Wii-equivalent of 'Mount and Blade' would utterly, utterly rock (M&B is a simple down-to-earth fighting game RPG'ish which gets simple fight-dynamics sooo right)

    • I've been looking into the options for this being an indie developer myself. Nintendo mentions on the Wii website [nintendo.com]:

      It also will be home to new games conceived by indie developers whose creativity is larger than their budgets.

      However I've found no information anywhere other then stating all game developers require to negotiate with Nintendo to get a licence and pay a sum per game assuming you even get Nintendo's approval to appear on the system.
      According to rumours dev-kits for the Wii are expected at a m

  • Emulators for DS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2006, @09:06AM (#15512686)
    I picked up a DS for Nintendogs and because I could run Sam and Max Hit the Road via http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ [drunkencoders.com] ScummVM DS. The rest of the emulator scene, however, is a little hit-or miss.

    The DS benefits because it can also run homebrew that was developed for the GBA, and consoles from the NES and earlier are emulated well. The SNES and Genesis emulators are just in their infancy, however.

    Besides the emuilators, there are a lot of good homebrew games and applications, including most of the usual favorites from linux distributions. Congratulations to the coders of the DS homebrew scene for making such progress on a unique system!

  • Misleading (Score:4, Informative)

    by LocalH (28506) on Sunday June 11 2006, @09:54AM (#15512778) Homepage
    The "article" (which is actually a forum thread) says, and I quote, "The State of Homebrew On All Consoles", which is a complete lie. What's missing from the forum thread?

    Atari 2600? Check.
    NES? Check.
    Game Boy pre-GBA? Check.
    Sega Master System? Check
    Sega Genesis? Check.

    And there are probably some that I've forgotten as well, but at least I'll admit it.

    "Because we are the only dedicated Homebrew Network on the web covering just about all scenes"? STFU and GTFO, you suck.

    • Can the average person just go online and buy rewritable cards for the Atari 2600, NES, 8-bit Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis? Or is it like a lightsaber in the Star Wars universe, where you have to solder one together yourself?

      • Can the average person just go online and buy rewritable cards for the Atari 2600, NES, 8-bit Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis?

        You can purchase 2600 and 5200 homebrews here:

        http://www.atariage.com/store/ [atariage.com]

        A 7800/2600 "CuttleCart" (which allows you to play games from a MMC card) can be purchased here:

        http://www.schells.com/cc2.shtml [schells.com]

        You'll note that the CuttleCart3 will be for the Intellivision. There used to be a cart called the "IntelliCart" that used a serial cable, but it's been unavailable fo

        • I don't know much about the NES homebrew scene, but I do know there are a lot of them. Look around and you'll probably be able to find carts for purchase.

          I used Google [google.com], AllTheWeb [alltheweb.com], Yahoo! [yahoo.com], and MSN [msn.com]. All the results were for GBA flash carts to which one can write an NES emulator. The only relevant result from the first page of each search engine's results (ars [arstechnica.com], citing source [ameba.lpt.fi]) was disappointing: "While you can buy the circuit boards from this guy he's pretty adamant about not selling the finished product".

      • ToToTEK [tototek.com] sell flash carts for the Megadrive, Master System and a few other machines. Gameboy flash carts used to be widely available (and were the reason Nintendo shut down the original Lik-Sang) but I don't know where you can get hold of them nowadays.
      • Can the average person just go online and buy rewritable cards for the Atari 2600, NES, 8-bit Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis? Or is it like a lightsaber in the Star Wars universe, where you have to solder one together yourself?

        I guess this has already been answered.
        As a guy who has his own 2600 homebrew released and sold, I'm glad at least someone here was pointing out the oversight.

        Misconception #552: "Multiplayer console game means split screen."
        Fact: It doesn't.

        Ah but the converse "Splits

        • As a guy who has his own 2600 homebrew released and sold, I'm glad at least someone here was pointing out the oversight.

          So how do I get my own NES homebrew released and sold?

          "Splitscreen"? (not every game is splitscreen, ala Smash Bros, Bomberman) "Couch"? (too general, a lot of singleplayer gaming happens on couches) "Party gaming"? (too specific, now that it's a subgenre ala Mario Party)

          Multiplayer console games that are not split-screen (Smash Bros., Gauntlet, Bomberman) are called "shared-view

            • But I think going to the shop to buy some blank cd's (you can even buy them in the supermarket ffs) is an order of magnitude easier than buying some electronics off a shifty site in Hong-Kong.

              If you want to be able to play handheld video games without any mail order, using only products and services available in a brick-and-mortar shop throughout the developed world, then homebrew may not be for you. Stick to PDA software.

    • What's missing from the forum thread?

      Hmm, I'll take "systems that don't support some form of game storage that non-EEs can readily make use of" for $1000, Alex.

      Although the fact that people write "new" homebrew NES games may count as an intellectual curiosity, almost nobody runs them on an actual NES.


      "Because we are the only dedicated Homebrew Network on the web covering just about all scenes"? STFU and GTFO, you suck.

      Wow, bitter much? Which emu group do you belong to?

      I'll grant that the FP li

  • Wii Dev Kit (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xistic (536149) on Sunday June 11 2006, @10:03AM (#15512798) Homepage
    The Wii is interesting because the dev kit is only $2000. That puts it well within the range of an avid hobbiest. If I had a really good idea come to mind about a game using the wiimote I'd consider getting one.

    It would be interesting to see what kind of legal agreements come with that dev kit. Can a group a homebrew coders get there hands on one and start churning out free games? Will there be an easy way for us to play these games?

    Kyle

    • Re:Wii Dev Kit (Score:4, Informative)

      by antime (739998) on Sunday June 11 2006, @12:31PM (#15513154)
      I very much doubt Nintendo will sell kits to hobby coders. For one thing they won't allow anything to be released without going through their normal approval process (for image reasons, if nothing else). In the past you have had to present a complete business plan when applying for a license, and I don't think that will change. The big difference will be that online delivery means developers won't have to pay media costs (in advance, for Nintendo-set amounts) which means smaller companies can afford the process.

      • In the past you have had to present a complete business plan when applying for a license, and I don't think that will change.

        Do you, or does anybody else reading this, have tips for writing a business plan for a game studio?

    • Re:Wii Dev Kit (Score:4, Informative)

      by idiot900 (166952) * on Sunday June 11 2006, @03:12PM (#15513619)
      The Wii dev kit may only be a couple thousand US dollars but Nintendo really wants to know who you are and that you are a legitimate corporate developer:

      http://www.warioworld.com/apply/wii.html [warioworld.com]

      To even get to the point where they send you an NDA seems pretty tough for the average hobbyist at the moment.

    • The up front fees to become a console dev don't cover the actual cost to the company. The hardware you'll get costs a few bucks, the software costs them a few bucks, and just getting their time so they can get it to you and get you up and running on it costs more than a few bucks.

      When selling one of these kits, N is certainly expecting to see some back-end revenue from the license fees when you sell your game. So giving away a game is probably not going to fit into their plan.

      Additionally, the legal agreeme

  • They forgot the atari 2600! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bender_ (179208) on Sunday June 11 2006, @11:28AM (#15513008) Journal
    The granddaddy of all consoles does actually have one of the largest active homebrewing scenes.
    Just a random selection of links:

    http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/print/a/4849 [oreillynet.com]
    http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/ [atariage.com]
    http://www.alienbill.com/2600/ [alienbill.com]

  • Odd that... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Sj0 (472011) on Sunday June 11 2006, @11:36AM (#15513020) Homepage Journal
    They mention that it's unfortunate that there's no legal SDK for the xbox. This is mistaken, there is. OpenXDK isn't perfect, but I've been using it for a while in my quest to get my favourite compiler to create xbox executables natively.
  • "but its also a Pocket PC type device so you get the best of both worlds"

    did this guy bother to check anything at all? The Zodiac ran Palm OS. It says so right on their front page

    • Re:Who bothers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Grey Ninja (739021) <matter.grey@gmai l . com> on Sunday June 11 2006, @09:17AM (#15512712) Homepage Journal
      Why spend hundreds of hours making a game that no one can/would use. Seems like alot of work for no gain. Stick to computers for homebrews and cellphones for portables, easier and much bigger audiences.

      I am the author of Dissonance [drunkencoders.com]. Before developing it, I had a tiny bit of NDS programming under my belt, a moderate amount of GBA, and a fair amount of PC. I am not a licensed developer, which means that my work will eventually... as you mentioned, be viewed by a very small number of people. However, it's not always about that.

      I wrote Dissonance first and foremost, for myself. I've wanted a portable internet radio client from day 1. As soon as the homebrew scene got to the point that it was realistic to code one, I wrote it. I worked day and night getting it out the door, and it felt GOOD when I got it out the door. I had overcome many obstacles, and had a whole lot of fun coding for such a well made system. In the end, my product didn't do me a whole lot of good (yet), but it made me happy to code it, and I got to code something useful for the NDS. At the end of the day, isn't that why we code things for free? To have some fun, and try to make something that's useful while we're at it? My main interest just doesn't lie with PCs. I prefer handhelds, and I like to have a little more to work with than a cell phone.

    • Re:Who bothers? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lord_rob the only on (859100) <(moc.liamg) (ta) (3003avihs)> on Sunday June 11 2006, @09:56AM (#15512784)
      Even if this post is a troll, I'll answer anyway. When I was younger, I managed to download a (warezed) version of psyq, the developpement kit for the Sony Playstation 1. Using this program, I wrote a PSX version of "the snake game", the game you could find on Nokia 3210 cellphones. I was pretty sure, none of my (real life) friends would care of that homebrew game, so I never bothered showing them. Anyway, even if almost no one that owned a PSX was likely to care of such things ("yeah the snake game running on a playstation, jesus it's a playstation, not an Atari 2600 you know ..."), it was fun to do and very instructing about the inner workings of the playstation.

      "Seems like alot of work for no gain."

      When you do something like that, the gain is mainly personal. It's a bit like gardening : personaly I wouldn't want to waste time to put seeds of vegetables in earth, expecting to get some crop. But some people like that so what ?

        • It's a gain if you're interested AT ALL in getting a job in the videogame programming field.

          So how does homebrew help me earn the thousands of dollars that it would cost me to move from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Greater Seattle, Washington, and live for a few months while I interview at 100 different video game development studios?

    • Re:Spelling? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by despisethesun (880261) on Sunday June 11 2006, @10:20AM (#15512842)
      Porting stuff is easy because it's Linux + SDL for the most part. Optimising is the tricky part, and at the moment the second processor in the unit is mostly useless (at least as far as emulation goes) because it has no MMU and a very small cache. It's a fairly capable machine though and I'm pretty happy with mine.

    • Re:Anyone actually using a GP2X? (Score:5, Informative)

      by despisethesun (880261) on Sunday June 11 2006, @10:29AM (#15512866)
      I've got one, and I'm pretty happy with it. Right now it's got a pretty good number of emulators running at or near full speed (the Genesis emulator in particular is great, and there's a very accurate PC Engine emulator that just hit 1.0 that does most games full speed with sound). Some emulators are still coming along though, which should be expected somewhat with a machine that's only about 6 or 7 months old. There are also some pretty good "interpreters" out for it (ports of Doom, Commander Keen, Quake, and Duke3D are all notable.) Batteries are a bit of a sore spot for some people, but if you can get your hands on some good 2500mAh NiMH rechargeables, you can expect about 5-6 hours per pair. Not great, but better than a PSP's battery life and you can swap them out when they die. Like I said, I'm happy with mine but it's got its quirks so it's not for everyone. Do a bit of googling and find out if it's for you.
      • the PSP will get about 7 hours battery life if all you do is homebrew. Most of the power drain for it is the disc reading, so if all you're reading is memory cards it lasts much longer. You can also get extra batteries to swap, but those are expensive.

      • Not just for games... (Score:4, Informative)

        by freeze128 (544774) on Sunday June 11 2006, @12:56PM (#15513221)
        The term Homebrew is probably a holdover from the '70s homebrew computer club, where the likes of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Woz and other mainstream computer founders would get together and display their own computers, or computer programs. It's a part of our computing heritage, so it can easily be applied to computerized games, though I do agree that the term is probably used a little too much in place of DIY.
    • There are many reasons people run homebrew. Unfortunately Piracy is one of them. But to say that people only use it for illegal purposes sounds quite short-sighted and fairly ignorant. There are other reasons people write and use homebrew games and applications.

      First it is to get the console to do something that people want it to do but, for some reason, it doesn't. The XBox media center is a good example of this. I believe it plays videos, music, and can even download podcasts (I do not own an XBox, so I a

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