PSP Hackers Go Retro

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.'"

Comments

But can everyone benefit from this?

[pnice]

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?

Re:But can everyone benefit from this?

[alvinrod]

If it's anything like the Xbox, you'll more than likely need a certain model or firmware version in order for any mods or hacks to work properly. Early versions of the Xbox were fairly easy to mod, but Microsoft changed a few things in later versions that made it harder or less desirable to do.

I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to hack the newer firmwares so you can play Gameboy ROMs as well. But no, not everyone benefits from this, especially Nintendo.

Re:But can everyone benefit from this?

[pthor1231]

Yeah, it is limited to a certain version of firmware, 1.0 as indicated in TFA. But this doesn't stop you from hacking. I have a friend who has downgraded his 1.5 firmware version to 1.0, and now can run all that fancy hacking schtuff.

Re:But can everyone benefit from this?

[pnice]

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?

Getting started

[Anonymous Coward]

The PS2DEV forums is currently the best resource to get started hacking your PSP with 1.0 firmware. There's even the beginnings of a PSP GCC toolchain: http://www.oopo.net/consoledev/files/psptoolchain- 20050603.tgz.

Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy

[alvinrod]

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?

Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy

[FLAGGR]

1. It's illegal
2. It only works on Jap 1.0 firmware
3. PSP is teh ghey
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)
5. You couldn't control/view DS games properly.

I know I loose any chance at getting modded anything but troll for the 3rd reason, but oh well, at least im still 80% imformative :)

Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy

[alvinrod]

I think that Nintendo mostly doesn't care about whether or not someone has hacked the firmware because people aren't using it to pirate games. When it comes to protecting their games, Nintendo takes the cake. The N64 used carts which no one wants to steal, the GC uses non-standard discs that Nintendo apparently controls the distrobution of. The DS uses carts as well if I'm not mistaken. Because no one goes around selling blanks and a machine to write data onto them, they're not to concerned.

Now if some website had a DS emulator for a PC, they'd probably be a little more irked about that. However, from your description of the DS, and the fact that N64 emulators aren't very good (probably because no one wants to bother making a good one or optimizing the ones that already exist. I mean, it's an N64, there aren't too many great games on it that don't have better versions on the GC or SNES.) makes me think this is unlikely. But I don't see a PSP having a problem with a regular Gameboy game.

Essentially what I'm saying is that this takes away an advantage the DS has with a huge back-library of games. What it boils down to is which system will have better games or features, because the playing field is a little more even.

Re:Hello World, Goodbye Gameboy

[ivan256]

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.

Anyone else annoyed...

[Tickenest]

by the fact that the author writes "from Hello World to Mario World" when the Game Boy version was called "Super Mario Land" (note: I'm fine with leaving out the "Super", but changing "Land" to "World" just to get a cute line is cause for making a declaration of shennanigans.) Still, the ingenuity of those who manage to hack the PSP and similar systems never ceases to amaze.

Re:good old hello world

[Eric604]

The ultimate crack protection is to stop time.

Re:Why is this being posted now?

[TheRealJFM]

the early "hacks" were really just finding clever ways to use the web browser built into wipeout. they weren't actually running any proper code on the PSP itself, and you had to stay near a proper PC or laptop to use them

these hacks are *actualy pieces of code* being run *directly on the firmwire*...

i'll be really impressed when I see linux boot, but i'm waiting for linux on a DS far more

(before anyone says "why the hell.." - the DS is a dual processor, touch screen system - it would make a great cut price PDA)

Nothing new

[b1t r0t]

I read last week that you could get homebrews to run on the 1.0-J firmware, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't news even then. After RTFA, this is the same thing that I already knew.

Wake me up when this works on a current US firmware release.

Now that my rant is done with, I will say that I expect the PSP to be broken for homebrews eventually, probably through some kind of buffer overflow exploit like the one in 007 Agent Under Fire (?) for Xbox. You may have to carry a UMD of some particular game around and use it every time you want to run a homebrew, though.

Here's the current list...

[wheresdrew]

...of emulators that'll run on a J1.0 PSP:

Gameboy/Gameboy Colour - Rin, Rin Unnoficial
GameGear - SMS PSP
Genesis (Megadrive) - Megadrive for PSP, Generator/PSP
MAME (Arcade) - XMame PSP
Master System - SMS PSP
MSX - fMSX, Hitbit
Neo Geo Pocket - NGPSP
Neo Geo CD - NEOGEO CD
Nes - InfoNes, Famicontest, Nes for PSP, Nesterj PSP
PC Engine - PCEP
Snes - UO Snes9x PSP, Snes9x PSP, Snes9x Optimised
Wonderswan - Oswan PSP

They're not all running at full speed, but some of them are great pieces of work. Rin, for instance, is damned near perfect (and getting better with each release). I use it to play the Zelda GBC games and they look (and sound, and play) great.

The work on them is continuing at a rapid pace - a lot of the emulators are getting updated several times a week - and they're just going to get better.

The one I'm waiting for (that hasn't shown up yet) is a GBA emulator. I think that's the one that's really going to get people's attention.