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Homebrew on Consoles Detailed
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."
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
BASE Conflict for Quake 3
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.
This poo is cold.
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 and MaxConsole.net for information on homebrew games and programs. One can check DSLinux.org for information on, appropriately, DS Linux, and one can check GBADev.org for information on DS and GBA development.
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