Be Excellent To Each Other

As always, I endorse any discovered and easy ways of running unsigned code on new consoles if it means being more experimental with them. I don't care much in the way of playing dodgy ISOs and all that malarkey with the newer stuff nowadays as there's still not many retail games I genuinely like (plus who can be arsed to blow their monthly bandwidth on filling their hard disk very quickly with Blu-Ray dumps?). But it's a shame that the Jolly Rogers in turn are making running homebrew an increasingly difficult prospect, mainly with the 360 and PS3.


It's a real, darn shame as I always envisaged, for example, the idea of newer emulators taking advantage of the extra grunt in the 360, and allowing us to play PS1, N64, CPS3, MAME, Amiga et al at a much better and more stable pace, not to mention taking advantage of the swanky 1080i support without the need to patch bios files or all that bollocks. I doubt Microsoft's current XNA service gives you proper freedom (like adapting open-source games and engines for instance), and don't they still charge you for it?


I think ever since the whole "online" thing became pretty near-mandatory in console-world things have changed. And all for the sake of feeling your cock grow slightly the more achievements you, well, achieve?

Not really, no.

Get a PC.

Have to say I agree with MrD - PCs run emus for every possible imaginable system, will happily output HD, and can support most controllers. I don't really see the benefit of using a console for that purpose.

Would probably be more ideal if I had a laptop. And I didn't have to worry about changing bits and bobs just to ensure less random crashes etc.

If you're having trouble with random crashes when using an emulator... what the hell kind of emulator and OS combinations are you using?

With that kind of poor luck with software, I'd advise against you softmodding your Xbox or aught, as you'd probably end up accidentally destroying the universe.

I already have a hardmodded Xbox thanks - sorry for daring to suggest that a 360 would've been an ideal retro-tastic console too.

My DS is basically a Speccy now as that's all I ever seem to find myself playing on it. As for the 360, I suppose a homebrew "banned from Live" scene could take root, but I don't know how much more power than a DS I'd really want to play speccy games again.

My worry over not being able to download and pay for games like World of Goo on WiiWare has heald me off softmodding my Wii (that and I lack a good guide - does anyone have any?) But likewise wanting to softmod my Wii has meant I haven't updated my Console to the latest update - so I can't use the Shop Channel to buy World of Goo.

Grumble grumble.

The XNC has made me not really have a desire for homebrew on the 360. Though I wish it supported making non-games on XNC too - but I supose the media stuff is good enough as is.

What's XNC?

I'm just not sure why it would be, that's all. I can see why there's a thriving DS homebrew scene, because being able to take games on the move with you is a great thing, but if you're at home, you may as well just use the PC given how much less effort (and risk of live bans etc) it is.

Came to thread looking for beer related stuff,

Left disappointed!!

Well I have to agree with the portable thing, although I recently lost my PSP and I'm still waiting to see whether the Pandora is actually worth using yet. All that extra grunt can't possibly be allowed to go to waste can it?

Whoops I meant, XNA.

Stands for 'X is Not an Acronym' (A GNU joke from MS - whatever next). It's the semi-official homebrew thingy where for £50 anyone can make and sell software on the 360.

Another question to those who are saying "why emulate this and that on a console"..... has that been your opinion all along, just out of interest? Like, including the Dreamcast/Xbox1 years etc?

I seem to recall many people (mainly in the WOS days, although I reckon some of those are on here now) praising the abilities of running-whatever-you-liked on the old-skool Xbox.

Also, I suspect I'm not the only one who suspects that Sony are cheeky bastards for yanking the backwards compatibility out of the PS3 partly so they could charge their customers for the same games again, but as downloads this time?

Get with the currency, it's like £70 now.

Nope. If that's how I thought, I wouldn't have modded my Xbox in the first place.

If we consider only emulators, there's only one defining capability you could possibly want: 'It emulates the system to the extend that it allows me to play the games at the correct speed without crashing.'

There's so many consoles and so many interfaces that allow you to do that now, there's not really much point musing over 'what could have been' on modern hardware. You mention running games in 1080i... are you really going to get that much of an improvement playing 256x224 SNES or PS games on an Xbox 360 emulator? "Get an Xbox, they're £15" or "Get a PC, you probably already have one anyway."

It's not likely that future consoles are going to be designed to be customer programmable in the future, because they never were. (The current compromise or whatever you want to call it notwithstanding, because they've monetised it), so just make do or learn how to be UBER HAX if you like.

There are capabilities that aren't yet available: it would be nice to be able to run PS2 and Xbox games perfectly in the sort of full-featured virtualised environment that exists in other emulators, but these things don't yet exist for the PC and that's where they'll be made first. If they're made at all.

Last time I checked, the bc downloads were ps1 titles.

ps1 backwards compatibility still works on the ps3, just not ps2.

Really? I thought they took ALL backwards compatibility out.

No, just ps2.

I've tested it with the amazing range of 4 ps1 games I own.

Both the PS3 and PS1 offer perfect PS1 emulation in software. A hacked PSP can accept any PS1 ISO and play the game, full speed etc, right out of the box. This emulation layer is used to support the downloads, which as Mr Dave notes, are all PS1.

Neither console can emulate a PS2 in software. For the PSP, it's never been possible. The first run of the PS3 in the US had, essentially, an entire embedded PS2 which was used for perfect backwards compatibility. The second model in the US and the first model in the UK had a part-hardware part-software BC which works with most, but not all games. As of about a year ago, this was dropped altogether from the PS3. This was either cost-cutting, to protect the still lucratic PS2 market, or a bit of both, depending on who you listen to.

If we ever see downloaded PS2 games on the PSP/PS3, they will be like Xbox Originals -- recompiled and optimised versions of the games, not a straight copy of the PS2 version.