Say what you will about the terrible anime series or the potential animal cruelty factor of a game that is basically a non-stop onslaught of cock-fights, Pokemon was one of if not the most influential game of Nintendo's portable game strategy. 

Apparently created by a fan collective, Pokemon Online is a completely non-Nintendo project that aims to turn the Pokemon universe into a working MMORPG complete with quests, an open world, and opf course a great deal of pokemon fighting.

Taping into the most interesting, if basic aspects of the Pokemon games, this could prove an interestijng template for Nintendo to pay attention to--could the future of Pokemon reside in the MMO genre, and if so can Nintendo match fan expectations?

If you build it, they will hack it.

Several sites recently have kindly outlined a load of hacks that crafty geeks are working on next-gen consoles. Some are cheap and workable. Others not so much.

Some of these have already been mentioned on this site, but hey, why not put them all in one place for easy access, right?

First, one we've already covered.

For the XBox 360 comes this clever but expensive way to "back up" your HD-DVDs with your PS3. This will cost you several thousand dollars, which seems pretty useless to me since it would be a lot more economical to just go out and buy a couple more copies of the HD-DVD you're really backing up.

(grin)

But hey, if you reaaaaaaallly want to do it, all you'll need is an Xbox 360, a HD DVD drive that will output 1080i or 720p via component, at least four eSATA drives in a RAID 0 array (and possibly an external SATA card), an AJA XENA LG analog HD capture card, and a fast PC.

The other two we've noticed on the web are for the Wii.

One allows you go rig together your own Wii component cables, since it's not like Nintendo is getting enough into stores. What it entails is tracing the Wii AV pinout, rearrangeing the pins on an AV cable, then rewiring them to a new set of cables with RCA connectors.

The other lets you use homebrew and emulators on the Wii. Hmmm... enticing. This isn't so technically challenging, but it will requre some patience on your part as you'll have to enter about 30 lines of code after you string up an SD card, an SD to GameCube adapter, and a GameCube Action Replay pack.

Both seem to be quite workable and rather inexpensive -- the kind of hacks we love.

Remember kids... don't try this at home!

Wink, wink.

Word of this comes from M3mnoch over at Addicting Entertainment, (a great place to find unconventional news and commentary).

He spotted an interesting trend on the official PS3 forums that was then backed up by the (I assume) EULA. Essentially it goes like this

While on the PlayStation3 forum, please keep all content related to the Playstation 3, its games and accessories, thanks.

Comparison threads about other consoles and their contents vs. PS3 aren't permitted on this board.

Thats right, every "comparison thread" (thread that mentions one of the other consoles somewhere in it) is being promptly deleted.

I haven't noticed this with Nintendo or Microsoft. Iis this a common practice? If so, what's up with that?

So, last week the site "Level My 360" showed up - We all laughed it off and assumed that it was just a publicity stunt... After all, NOBODY is that shallow... Right?

WRONG!  

8bucks50 from The Forums pointed us in the direction of this listing on eBay

For SELL:

XBOX 360 HARD DISK DRIVE WITH ALL LIVE ARCADE INSIDE, GAMERTAG RANCE6 FIRST IN THE WORLD!!!!!

I am selling cause PS3 coming out.

MANYMANY SAVES INCLUDED IN HARD DRIVE (1GB MORE), 5000 HOURS SPENT ON THE GAMES.

TRY TO KEEP FIRST POSITION IN LEADERBOARD AND CONTINUE PLAY GAMES!

  Thats right, the current #1 gamertag on Xbox Live is for sale on eBay... Currently available for a low low price of 6,000 dollars!!!

So yeah.... If you're insanely shallow, go bid it up - I want to see that selling for at LEAST 10 grand!

Oh, and I should probably mention that he attained the #1 spot through not-entirely legitimate means

Ugh, I don't even have anything witty to say about this.

Adventure gaming was a giant genre in its day, and though some might say it never left, nowadays it doesn't make the impact it once did in the industry.

Independent developer Frictional Gaming is pushing the boundaries of originality and inventiveness with its adventure horror game Penumbra.

And what's more... it's freeware. Yes, freeware. And I found it to be well worth the time to download it.

My detailed review after the jump...

Continue reading "Penumbra Review"

Hey All,
Andy here with what can only be properly classified as a Nerd-tacular Call to Arms!

Remember that game Psychonauts that came out last year on PC, Xbox and PS2? No? Well you're not alone unfortunately... Created by Double fine Studios, it was a sorta trippy platformer that was really very well recieved by the gaming press in general but still failed to sell any significant number of copies. It could be claimed that this failure to sell had something to do with a lack of proper marketing on the part of the publisher (Majesco) who was having Financial Issues

But really I think it's that even though real gamers claim that there isn't enough variation and originality being brought to the table (as we see more and more sequels every year that passes) I think the sad truth is that people don't trust originality. New and different? Sounds stupid.

Whatever the issue may be, I'm talking about it tonight because on the Doublefine news site, Tim Schafer (president) is crying out for real gamers to help him convince microsoft to let Psychonauts (One of my top 3 games of 2005) be playable on the Xbox360.

From the news post:

I called up the good people at Microsoft and said, "Hello friends. How is the emulator coming along? Will it ever run the Excellent game Psychonauts?"

"Believe us, we have top men working on it now," they said.

"You know, if it would help, we'd be willing to fly all our engineers up to Seattle, and they'd do all the programming! Or, they could just tell you exactly how our engine works, and we could probably get it running on the 360 in just a few hours!"

"TOP... MEN." Is all they said.

Source

What can you do to help make this dream happen?

Write an email to backcomp@microsoft.com calmly and politely asking that they make Psychonauts backwards compatable.

And if you've never played Psychonauts, do! I can't recommend it more. You can actually buy autographed copies of the game on the Double Fine website Here

It's rare that I really pimp a game or a product so much, but this title was really special to me and it kills me to see not just the title be ignored, but the company - It's groups like Double Fine that make me think that we might actually see some new innovative titles in the years to come, and not just Halo 6 and Metal Gear Solid 12 and Splinter Cell 21.

-Andy

Morning All,
Andy here, freshly showered at this ungodly hour of morning about to go pick up Edie (who should really fill in her bio) and John (who also needs to) and hit the 1st annual SEX IN VIDEOGAMES CONFERENCE. We really have no idea what's going to be happening there, from what I've heard it'll mostly be talks about how to turn on players etc. etc.... As I said in the podcast previously, I really have no idea how much coverage we'll give this event since we're more of a gaming site than a porn site, and all the press releases we've been getting have been like

VISIT THE HOT AND (very) STEAMY SEX BOOTH OF _______ ______ ENTERTAINMENT! WE ARE YOUR PORTAL TO THE WORLD OF ADULTS AND THEIR BOOBIES

....Alright, I made up the part about boobies... But seriously, I feel like i'm walking down a bad alley in Oakland and I got people trying to (at the same time) sell me crack, sell me bootlegs, and mug me.

But we go for you, gentle reader - We three journalists brave the wilds of pr0n and videogames for you....

But we'll only report on the videogames part, since we ALL know that that's all you're interested in.

Right? ^ ^

-Andy

I've decided since my return that I'll be doing a little less underground writing. No, it's not because of some legal action taken against us or me or something like that, it's just that I'm a little more excited about doing columns and covering the new consoles and such. That being said, I will still let you all know that the DVD firmware hack for the 360 that has been reported about has finally been 'released into the wild' and can be found in 'the usual places' in the underground scene. I haven't personally tried it (and won't until it can do homebrew/linux), but I can vouch for its legitimacy through knowing many who now have it working on their consoles. It is unknown at this point if/when Microsoft will do something about this hack, but it is technically possible for them to detect it.

-Matt

So, I've been out for a while. I've been horribly sick and recovered... then got a job working way too many hours for a full-time student. Anyways, I'm back, but my posts may be a bit slowed due to the job. So... on with the news!

Xbox DVD Firmware Hacked!
The biggest underground news that happened in my absence was the hacking of the Xbox (1) DVD firmware by TheSpecialist. Basically, this means that the DVD drive is tricked into thinking it's reading a retail game, when in fact it's reading a homebrew DVD. Essentially, it's a modchip-less solution to modding an Xbox without risking the damage that a softmod can cause if done incorrectly. TheSpecialist declined to make a howto or tutorial, but enough information can be found on the XboxHacker.net forums for pretty much anyone to do the hack.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 Update Disables Kiosk Disc
This one is pretty self-explanitory. The new 360 update didn't do much except fix the "crashing when pulling up guide while in-game" problems, but it did remove the ability to play the kiosk disc. Honestly, it doesn't mean too much because the Hexic flash player was very limited.

Finally, the GP2X v2 has finally started shipping.
The GP2X, a low-cost, high-performance, linux-based handheld, had a few very large flaws at launch. So many, in fact, that many retailers refused to carry it. The manufacturer has now fixed all the flaws and the re-launch is looking to be going very steady. Since it's all linux-based and open source, the homebrew is coming along well and it's great for budding game programmers or just geeks in general. I may get one soon and do a review and/or a few columns about the homebrew software available.

That's all for now, folks!

Game ON!
-Matt

XboxToday is carrying a guide on how to surf the internet on your Xbox 360... I've taken a look at the procedure, and honestly it's not really a "standalone" client, you need to have a PC hooked up to the Xbox360, and really then all it does is just lets you...Well, take a look for yourself. I'm a Mac user, so it's not compatable for me - If somebody could try it out and let me know, I'll update the post

Instructions after the jump

...Owls freakin rock my socks

Continue reading "Surf the web on your Xbox 360!"

For those of you that don't follow the underground scene, Blacklisted411 is an established hacking magazine with over 20 years under its belt. Lucky for us, their newest issue (.pdf) has some nice dirt on a (fake) Xbox 360 modchip courtesy of Ustler. For those of you that are technically inclined or just like reading that kind of stuff, check out the full article. For those of you that don't want to deal with that, I'll do a little paraphrasing.

Continue reading "The TEAM ICE Fraud - Update 1"

Hey everyone! Its Zak again with another report. This time I'm finishing on my 2nd half of Emulation. Today in this emulation discussion is about MAME. Some of you might know the MAME program, but for those who aren't to familiar, I will explain. But before doing that I would like to say my Public Service announcement. Gamerandy.com and myself do not encourage illegal emulation, however we do think backing up your data is a smart move.

Continue reading "Emulation.... Whats best? Pt 2."

Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, author of the highly informative Hacking The Xbox, has posted his thoughts on the current state of Xbox 360 homebrew on his blog:

At any rate, some very interesting things are afoot. Much of it stems from the discovery of an all-media bootable kiosk demo disk. Many hackers will instantly recognize the value of this, but it's still interesting to reflect on the significance of this find.

Like the original Xbox, the Xbox360 uses a media flag on its executables. The media flag tells the OS what type of media it should be on; typically, games are released with the flag set to Microsoft's proprietary secure Xbox DVD format (which is in itself not that secure...). Significantly, only the executable is signed for a game; the data sections typically are not signed (presumably for performance reasons). Thus, one has the ability to fuzz the executable by corrupting the data sections, potentially invoking a buffer overrun or some other unintentional behavior–if one could effectively modify the data sections. Remember that this is normally not possible, since modifying the data segment requires making a copy to a writeable media, and this contradicts the signed media flag.

Full post after the jump.

Continue reading "Bunnie Speaks Out On The Current State Of 360 Homebrew"

A member of the Xbox-Scene forums by the name of illicitx posted his successes with the 360's flash player. Apparently the Hexic flash file (HexicDeluxe.swf) can be replaced with a Zlib-signed flash file. It runs SWF V6 files (can also launch V7) at 1280x720 at a full 60fps. Because of these dimensions, the files run extremely slow on PCs, but the flash player on the 360 seems to be optimized to run very large files very fast. The flash player is buggy at best, however. Lots of ActionScript is buggy or unimplemented, but so far this is looking very promising! Again, I'll bring more on this to you as it unfolds.

GAME ON!
-Matt

Joystiq ran an article recently about Hexic being hacked via the kiosk rip I posted about earlier.

The hacking community has beey very busy this weekend. Accomplishments include:

1: Successfully ripping Hexic off of a kiosk disc and executing it in a PC browser (it runs very slowly)
2: Successfully modifying Hexic and running it on an Xbox 360 connected to Xbox Live
3: Hacking Hexic to earn several of the achievements without doing any of the work
4: Successfully running simple Flash applications that were never on the Xbox 360 (such as a clock application)
5: Modifying certain aspects of the King Kong kiosk demo to create the simple program pictured here
Speculation:

* Could this third item be behind the reset of the Xbox Live leaderboards? We hear people were earning some sick scores in Hexic before the reset (according to a blog post by Xbox Live's Larry Hyrb, the reset is a technical glitch having nothing to do with security issues.)
* These findings might make it possible to run a flash-based browser, flash-based media players, or even other flash games not available on Xbox Live Arcade
* There are many avenues of research that the hacking community is exploring. Given the history of past efforts by Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft to prevent modification (all to no avail), it seems inevitable that one or more of these seeds of opportunity will yield fruit
* How far away are we from a gamer points reset, given that some gamers have been able to cheat to obtain them?
* Will it become possible to cheat at other games? That's the surest way to sap the enjoyment from any game, as Halo players on Xbox Live who have been the victims of cheaters can attest.

Check out my speculation after the jump.

Continue reading "Xbox Live Arcade Hacked?"

Hey everyone! Its Zak again! I would like to make my first "real" report on Emulation.

Ok lets start off with some basics...

Sure Emulation can be legal in someways... but put into the wrong hands, it can be wrong, VERY WRONG. So first of all, gamerandy.com and myself do not encourage illegal emulation which is theft. We do however agree on backing up your data, AS LONG AS YOU HAVE AN ORIGINAL FOR PROOF.

Read on to learn the secrets of the masters...

Continue reading "Emulation.... Whats best?"

Using the dumped UK Kiosk disc released about a week ago, Tser from XboxHacker.Net has posted that he has had success in modifying the DirectX shaders in the King Kong demo during runtime:

am trying to figure out 3 things here
- one, is it possible at all to mess with the shaders (simple replace blue water by red water)
- two is it possible, to read from any memory location at all ,using an array overrun
- Three is it possible to write to that memory also

one has been done as of 30-12-2005
two would really be useful, but i doubt if the gpu has no overrun protection
and three sounds currently to impossible to believe for myself

and

!!!!
It is Possible to Alter the shaders!
AO created All yellow shaders. and..

It worked!

http://tser.org/album/index.php?imagesize=640&d=d.html&image=z2005_12_30.jpg&Album=35

We modified the shaders of the king kong demo.

for example, to let it be all white :
return float4( 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f);

So what does this mean? I means we have (at least some) control of the GPU and its memory at runtime. Yes, it would be easy for MS to patch the 360's kernel so that the kiosk disc couldn't run, but if we get going fast enough, an overflow is a (remote) possibility to through/past/around the hypervisor and into the unencrypted kernel to run unsigned code. We're getting a little closer every day.

GAME ON!
-Matt

Mod Chips Here We Come...

We all knew it was inevitable, but it hit faster than anybody could have imagined.... Team PI got their hands on a PAL retail kiosk disc (The kind you'd find at game stores such as GAME in the UK) and discovered that it didn't have all the protections that your standard disc has. Now, to be honest, i'm pretty noobish about this stuff so I'm gonna let their blurb explain it better.

YES you can run this! Burn the iso, put it on your xbox and be very amazed... Next, think of the posibilities of hacking this little demo disc that we might start running code on the retail xbox360's ! :) So the second task is done. We hope this encourages all hackers, coders and crackers out there to take up the challenge. Enjoy!

Interesting

Expect this to be talked about at legnth later this week during our special roundtable podcast talking about modding

-Andy

Edit: Dur, I'm an idiot - heres the link to the iso...

I sent out my 360 for repair earlier today, so for now I'm getting my gaming done on a friend's Dreamcast... maybe if you guys are lucky I'll do a review of Skies of Arcadia for fun.

In 360 Underground news:

From The Free60 Project Wiki:

There is now initial support for the Xbox 360 hardisk filesystem (XTAF) in [CVS]. This is a patch for the 2.4.32 Linux kernel.

Notice how the Xbox 360's filesystem (XTAF) is the same as the Xbox's (FATX) backwards. We should be seeing dumps of the HDD any time now.

More news after the jump:

Continue reading "Xbox 360 Underground Update"

Well, I thought that since I'm the underground guy, I'll keep you guys up to date on the current 360 modding news without getting MS mad.

So far, a hardware mod looks to be the least possible solutions for 2 reasons:
1 - MS's software is usually at least somewhat sloppy and usually has numerous security holes.
2 - Because MS had the CPU designed and manufactured specifically for the Xbox 360, the info that was in the EEPROM and TSOP in the original Xbox (BIOS, serial, etc) is probably in the CPU this time rather than some sort of flash memory. Though we do know that the onboard TSOP is 128Mb which is probably just too small for a dashboard and just too big for a BIOS/kernel.

The software exploits are coming along nicely. The Xbox Arcade and backwards compatibility executables and files (*.xex, *.xcp, etc.) are being dumped and examined by the best minds in the scene. It has also been discovered that the 360 has the ability to run almost any Windows MCE program as long as the program has a special link and optimization (easily user-made). The 360 acts as a terminal of sorts, while the MCE PC actually runs the program. Not only does this mean that we can run personal dashboards and media center apps (DivX/Xvid anyone?) but it also means that data is being sent (probably) unencrypted over ethernet/WiFi. With a small vunerability, a lot of time, and some luck, it could be a ticket to success for exploiting the 360.

If you don't understand this, don't feel dumb. All it really means is that 360 hacks/exploits are on their way and the first ones will most likely be software exploits rather than hardware mods.

That's it for now, just thought you guys might want to keep up to date on this kind of stuff. Let me know if you like/dislike this sort of underground news.

On a side note: My PDZ review should be up late tonight or early tomorrow.

Game on!

-Matt

Disclaimer:

GamerAndy.com, its writers, and affiliates stand firmly against piracy of any kind. This article is for informational and open source research purposes ONLY. Any attempt to open or hack your Xbox 360 in any way can (and most likely will) result in voiding of your warranty. We are not responsible for any loss or damages caused by use (legal or illegal) of this information.