3 ms·

The Wii has got be the most hacked (literally!) console ever.

by ThrowawayTestr 2y ago

anthk 2y ago
Not even close. That would be the Play Station or the Play Station 2.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  Don't forget the Dreamcast. It got hacked on more than it got played.
  - klik99 2y ago
    It was def the dreamcast - the first model didn't require any hardware, just a burned CD-ROM. It's demise and Segas departure from consoles is blamed on the amount of piracy. A real shame, because it had some great games
    - bpye 2y ago
      The Dreamcast GPU was also really neat. It was tile based and could do order independent transparency!
    - jyrkesh 2y ago
      One thing I was found interesting about Dreamcast piracy was that everyone was burning them onto 700 MB CD-Rs. But the retail games were actually pressed onto 1GB GD-ROMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM For a lot of games, it totally didn't matter (shoutout Ikaruga, 38 MBs! https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-smallest-dreamcast-games.html https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-sm...) But for games that took advantage of the extra 300 MBs, pirates had to use all these tricks to get the game down to a CD-R size. They'd compress assets, compress or sometimes rip out the FMVs...I think they might have even split some games across multiple CDs. That's why DRM cracks me up, the pirates will always figure a way around it one way or the other. (Especially in today's day and age where the live service model is so effective. I'd weep for the AAA single-player game, but I can't remember the last one I played and enjoyed. They've been dead for a long time. Long live the indie single-player game.)
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  Are there a lot of mods that literally hack up the mobo? I haven't seen many portable ps2s.
- jyrkesh 2y ago
  For pirating games: PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, for sure For straight up modding: definitely the Xbox. The 007 and Mechwarrior bugs blew everything wide open, and the fact that it was just a PC with real (upgradeable!) storage spawned projects like XBMC, now known as Kodi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) And also piracy was rampant, but not the Swapmagic or Modchip kind. You could just upgrade the drive, _backup_ your games on there, and play 'em all of the drive. The Wii and 3DS are also suuuuper open and hackable though. The homebrew scenes on both are incredibly impressive, not to mention the whole ecosystem of full blown launchers and shells and stuff. (Which, now that I think about it, was also a big deal on Xbox.)
  - anthk 2y ago
    On the XBOX, I wish PostmarketOS supported it. I know, x86, not x86_64, but it's still a nice platform to have. With the 128MB addon, Alpine/Linux/PmOS can do tons of things with the forked dillo (light HTTP/S | Gopher | Gemini client, a musis/video player with MPV, light office with Abiword/Gnumeric, a rescue system in case of something bad happens on the main PC, retrogaming with emulators, ScummVM (it will work with tinyGL)...

The Wii has got be the most hacked (literally!) console ever.

anthk 2y ago

Not even close. That would be the Play Station or the Play Station 2.

pessimizer 2y ago
Don't forget the Dreamcast. It got hacked on more than it got played.
- klik99 2y ago
  It was def the dreamcast - the first model didn't require any hardware, just a burned CD-ROM. It's demise and Segas departure from consoles is blamed on the amount of piracy. A real shame, because it had some great games
  - bpye 2y ago
    The Dreamcast GPU was also really neat. It was tile based and could do order independent transparency!
  - jyrkesh 2y ago
    One thing I was found interesting about Dreamcast piracy was that everyone was burning them onto 700 MB CD-Rs. But the retail games were actually pressed onto 1GB GD-ROMs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GD-ROM For a lot of games, it totally didn't matter (shoutout Ikaruga, 38 MBs! https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-smallest-dreamcast-games.html https://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2023/03/the-worlds-sm...) But for games that took advantage of the extra 300 MBs, pirates had to use all these tricks to get the game down to a CD-R size. They'd compress assets, compress or sometimes rip out the FMVs...I think they might have even split some games across multiple CDs. That's why DRM cracks me up, the pirates will always figure a way around it one way or the other. (Especially in today's day and age where the live service model is so effective. I'd weep for the AAA single-player game, but I can't remember the last one I played and enjoyed. They've been dead for a long time. Long live the indie single-player game.)
ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
Are there a lot of mods that literally hack up the mobo? I haven't seen many portable ps2s.
jyrkesh 2y ago
For pirating games: PS1, PS2, Dreamcast, for sure For straight up modding: definitely the Xbox. The 007 and Mechwarrior bugs blew everything wide open, and the fact that it was just a PC with real (upgradeable!) storage spawned projects like XBMC, now known as Kodi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software) And also piracy was rampant, but not the Swapmagic or Modchip kind. You could just upgrade the drive, _backup_ your games on there, and play 'em all of the drive. The Wii and 3DS are also suuuuper open and hackable though. The homebrew scenes on both are incredibly impressive, not to mention the whole ecosystem of full blown launchers and shells and stuff. (Which, now that I think about it, was also a big deal on Xbox.)
- anthk 2y ago
  On the XBOX, I wish PostmarketOS supported it. I know, x86, not x86_64, but it's still a nice platform to have. With the 128MB addon, Alpine/Linux/PmOS can do tons of things with the forked dillo (light HTTP/S | Gopher | Gemini client, a musis/video player with MPV, light office with Abiword/Gnumeric, a rescue system in case of something bad happens on the main PC, retrogaming with emulators, ScummVM (it will work with tinyGL)...