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PSP Hackers Go Retro

Posted by Zonk on from the hi-mom dept.

ByteWoopy writes "Hello World!' That's the traditional phrase that programmers display when they create their first piece of software for an unfamiliar operating system. Owners of Sony's handheld PSP game system were delighted to hear May 5 that a hacker had managed to write a small program that displayed those words on a PSP. They wondered what would be next. As it turned out, it only took hackers five days to go from 'Hello World' to Mario World. On May 10, sites like PSP Hacker reported that a Japanese hacker known only by the name Mr. Mirakichi had developed a program called RIN that let the PSP play software written for the original black-and-white Nintendo Game Boy system.'"

4 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. But can everyone benefit from this? by pnice · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought running these applications was limited to just the Japanese V1.0 firmware. The rest are unable to run any of these programs. This kind of limits the cool factor to me. If this one particular firmware didn't have the loophole/exploit (whatever you want to call it) would the PSP be moving along as fast as it is...well, for those with the right PSP/firmware?

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    My Xbox Live Gamer Card
    1. Re:But can everyone benefit from this? by pnice · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is the point I was trying to make. I would love to see a slashdot article that points us towards downgrading the firmware to an older version so we can all benefit from the advances in PSP homebrew. I honestly didn't think it was possible yet. Can you point me towards any information?

      --
      My Xbox Live Gamer Card
  2. Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Is it just me or does anyone else think that if you could emulate and play Gameboy (and eventually Gameboy color and advance) games on a PSP that it really negates any reason for buying a Gameboy Advance or DS?

    It's like buying a PSP and getting a gameboy for free. Granted it is illegal, and the ROMs won't play as well as the originals, but how much will people notice or care?

    1. Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy by ivan256 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      3. PSP is teh ghey

      Um... Wow.

      4. PSP is *not* powerful enough to emulate the DS and all its hardware, emulation isn't easy at all, even pentium 4's cant emualte DS at fullspeed (not implying DS is anywhere close to the power of a P4, just explaining how difficult emulation is)

      This is total bull. If the low-level specs for the hardware were available, it would be emulated on a modern PC fairly easily. Your comment can't help but remind me of the people saying you'd need a 1 Ghz machine to emulate an N64 back around 1997 when hitting 1Ghz was an unobtainable milestone... Then UltraHLE came out and people with a P233 were playing Goldeneye. It's the lack of hardware docs that make emulation hard. If the hardware design docs were available, any third year CS student worth his/her future diploma could emulate it on a box that was approximately twice as fast.