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ArsTechnica: Hackers unlock NES Classic, upload new games via USB cable

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
Can you also do this to a Famicom Mini, does anyone know? :(

Yes, i've done it tonight - works no issues (at least so far)

C1lO1wnVIAA-M7r.jpg
 

mike4001_

Member
Can anyone explain why - if you are willing to mod the device and use roms - you don´t just use a RetroPie for the whole thing?
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
Can anyone explain why - if you are willing to mod the device and use roms - you don´t just use a RetroPie for the whole thing?

it's a neat form-factor?

Dont worry - there's at least 6 Raspberry Pie's running all sort of gubbins around the house.
 

Nairume

Banned
Can anyone explain why - if you are willing to mod the device and use roms - you don´t just use a RetroPie for the whole thing?
Ease of use. I love my Pi, but it's a pain to use sometimes and it's not really great for social gatherings if you aren't hanging around a bunch of people who already know how to do things in Retropi.
 
Just as an FYI, here's a list of mappers the emulator supports. It's pretty limited so no weird-ass chips:

7 (AxROM)

Why in the world would they bother emulating the mapper board used almost exclusively by Rare's NES games if Microsoft owns most or all of them? Coincidentally, about the only AxROM game I know of that *wasn't* made by Rare is Solstice, the rights to which may or may not still be owned by Sony.

There's so much we don't know about you, NES Classic Mini.
 

Impotaku

Member
Yes, i've done it tonight - works no issues (at least so far)

C1lO1wnVIAA-M7r.jpg

Is there a decent guide in english yet? I have the tool but i there's no decent translated instructions so far, just some very rough attempt at translation on imgur. Until i know the process 100% i don't want to risk a brick.
 

Nairume

Banned
Why in the world would they bother emulating the mapper board used almost exclusively by Rare's NES games if Microsoft owns most or all of them? Coincidentally, about the only AxROM game I know of that *wasn't* made by Rare is Solstice, the rights to which may or may not still be owned by Sony.

There's so much we don't know about you, NES Classic Mini.
Might have been that NERD worked on the tech before the game list was locked down and thought that one of the Rare games was possible due to whatever agreements were made regarding DK64 on the VC (since it still has Microsoft owned stuff in it) and Rare Replay.
 

Chucker

Member
I've got a Pi, it's in the bedroom and that's nice. I veg out and play games on it.
I like this for the living room because ANYBODY can hit power and play it, bam.

My parents love the dang thing.
 
It's not as if you could buy one :/

I hope they don't postpone the next batches because of this, and also they don't remove the power-over-USB part, because that's far more convenient than a dedicated power port, especially if your TV or A/V receiver can power it...


From what I understand, it could be done "braindead easy", I can see people distributing ready-to-use software that just require to plug the Nes Mini into a PC and replace the original 30 with a batch of 60.

Edit: well, apparently, it's already done...

I power mine through the PS4 USB lol
 

DCharlie

And even i am moderately surprised
Is there a decent guide in english yet? I have the tool but i there's no decent translated instructions so far, just some very rough attempt at translation on imgur. Until i know the process 100% i don't want to risk a brick.

just use the tool a few pages back - all you need to do is

1) plug famicom mini into PC using USB cable
2) download HAKCHI
3) run HAKCHI
4) hold down the reset button on the famicom mini and power up
5) unlike NES Mini, we've no light indicating on or off ... so this is a bit of a pain
6) i personally dumped the kernel just in case - i got an warning message, but continued anyways
7) find some roms you want to add - click the "add more games" button
8) click on the individual rom and you can select cover art/search google and apply
9) once happy - click "Uploaded selected games to NES Mini"
10) first time you do this , it will inform you that you need to build a custom kernel which it does for you - when i dumped the kernel , HAKCHI informed me that a driver had to be installed on the Famicom Mini - so i clicked yes, i assume this will happen at this point too.
11) once done, the install of your games will run.
12) once complete, you will be asked to wait for the power light to go off, before switching power off and restarting machine. Obviously with a Famicom mini, we don't have the light so i'd just give it 5-10 seconds.
13) then you are done! if you want to add more games all you have to do is , again, attach PC to Mini with USB cable, hold down the reset button on the famicom mini and power up - then just Add More Games followed by Upload selected games to NES Mini.


it's pretty straightforward
 

Harlock

Member
Somewhere someone from Kotaku is writing an article with the headline "another top 30 games to add to your NES Classic".
 

Impotaku

Member
just use the tool a few pages back - all you need to do is

1) plug famicom mini into PC using USB cable
2) download HAKCHI
3) run HAKCHI
4) hold down the reset button on the famicom mini and power up
5) unlike NES Mini, we've no light indicating on or off ... so this is a bit of a pain
6) i personally dumped the kernel just in case - i got an warning message, but continued anyways
7) find some roms you want to add - click the "add more games" button
8) click on the individual rom and you can select cover art/search google and apply
9) once happy - click "Uploaded selected games to NES Mini"
10) first time you do this , it will inform you that you need to build a custom kernel which it does for you - when i dumped the kernel , HAKCHI informed me that a driver had to be installed on the Famicom Mini - so i clicked yes, i assume this will happen at this point too.
11) once done, the install of your games will run.
12) once complete, you will be asked to wait for the power light to go off, before switching power off and restarting machine. Obviously with a Famicom mini, we don't have the light so i'd just give it 5-10 seconds.
13) then you are done! if you want to add more games all you have to do is , again, attach PC to Mini with USB cable, hold down the reset button on the famicom mini and power up - then just Add More Games followed by Upload selected games to NES Mini.


it's pretty straightforward

Ah i wasn't aware the hackchi worked on the famicom mini as i thought it was only for the nes classic mini, i thought only honeylabs tool would work for Japanese ones.

Wonder if it will accept Japanese text in the tool so i can rename them properly.
 

shanafan

Member
This would be awesome but Windows Defender says it's infected.

Not uncommon. It just detects "malicious" code used to alter programming. I get a similar message when running my WWE2K16 match editor.

GBATemp is a highly trusted emulation website. Download and use with confidence ;)
 
Can anyone explain why - if you are willing to mod the device and use roms - you don´t just use a RetroPie for the whole thing?


Because it's $60 in a preconfigured and easy to use factor.

Raspberry pi is 35... But you also need a case... And memory card... And a controller... And a power supply... And to configure an OS and emulators...

Meaning A: raspberry pi is more expensive

B: it's hard and more time consuming to setup.

But we all know you and everyone suggesting this already knew this... But you all think you're unique for suggesting this and somehow smarter for coming up with this "better" solution.
 

JP

Member
Oh hell, that's amazing. My NES games will never have looked as good as this. :)

If only I didn't cancel my Nintendo Store pre-order due to other gaming stuff being released around the same time. There aren't actually that many games missing from the console for me but it would certainly be a hell of a bonus being able to choose which 60 games I could have on it.

I wonder if it means that Nintendo will be adding games at some point? I know they said they wouldn't but maybe there will be some sort of transfer mechanism with the Switch?
 

Nairume

Banned
Because it's $60 in a preconfigured and easy to use factor.

Raspberry pi is 35... But you also need a case... And memory card... And a controller... And a power supply... And to configure an OS and emulators...

Meaning A: raspberry pi is more expensive

B: it's hard and more time consuming to setup.
Not to mention it doesn't have an intuitive UI and requires you to either learn a bunch of button combos or do more work with keybindings to get stuff working adequately.
 

JP

Member
Don't know anything about how this deals with emulation but has anybody tried trying a SNES ROM on this? Just incase?

I really can't imagine that it would work though, unless the rumoured SNES Mini is identical hardware/software but in a different shell.
 

Nairume

Banned
Cross posting from the NES Classic thread. Actually it's $25 all in for a NES box. Everyone has heard the pi argument but I just wanted to clear up some of your inaccuracies.

Pi Zero $5
Case $5
1gb SD $5
USB power $10

$35 controller budget.

Anyone saying the interface is simple should check out Recalbox. Just as simple in my book. Copy/paste to SD, turn the box on, connect it to the Internet, drag and drop roms via the Web based interface, play.
And I'm going to cross post from the NES thread to point out your inaccuracies that you are leaving off the cost of the USB hub necessary for the controller (if you want more than one player or controllers that don't use micro sd), the cost of the HDMI cable, and the cost of the games themselves along with the tools to rip them.
 

MrFlooD

Member
Not sure why people keep bring up Pi. It's a different audience.

If people where ok doing it with a Pi they would have already.

The NES classic mod is for people like my wife/parents. They want a cute little self contained system that just works. It's also not nearly as ugly as a Pi.
 

Nairume

Banned
As far as games... guess you got me. Nobody owns these games from Nintendo on previous hardware.
I'm sure people have their own games lying around, but not everybody is going to have that big of a collection lying around and will need to start hitting up stores to build up to the point where you have at least the thirty games the NES Classic comes with.
 
I almost feel like console vs PC all over again. Almost.

People who bought NES Classic want simplicity and plug&play nature of a console. The hacking is as simple as loading a song to iPhone. RPi is basically a mini PC that you need to put together and configure to make it works and some people just don't want to deal with any of that.

I don't know why it's so difficult to understand for some.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
So I'm using hakchi 2, dumped the original kernal, added the roms to the list to add back in, it says to flash the custom kernel, but when I do that it says it can't repack the ramdisk. I think my anti virus is stopping it from running even though I changed permissions for it.

Any ideas? I am computer stupid so keep that in mind
 

Aeana

Member
Cross posting this and consider it a final warning.



1) We get it, the Raspberry Pi is a cool solution. It's not the same thing and there are reasons to want the NES Classic.
2) Accusing everyone of piracy when you don't know their situation is irritating noise and is something that is explicitly against the rules in any sort of discussion about console hacking for this reason.

Stop spamming this thread and the other one with the same stuff over and over again. We heard you the first hundred times.
 

truly101

I got grudge sucked!
Ok found the problem and I was able to upload the customer kernel and all the new games. Instructions say to wait for the power LED to go off and then restart the NES Mini. Did that, now what?
 
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