What is your favorite moment from the console hacking scene?

[Dr. Dew]

I got in to homebrew back in the day of dark alexs psp cfw. My favorite time in hacking history was during the 3ds 9.2 exploit.

 

[Coolsonickirby]

The Wii U Brazilian method. I remember all the speculation going around about how it works til everyone found out it was 2(or 1?) bytes that needed to be changed.

 

[H1B1Esquire]

Probably when I heard of Bleem!.....back when EGM was a household name.

After that, Dreamcast rips. That was a good time to be old enough to play, but young enough to enjoy playing.

3DS will probably be the most prolific console for hacking, ever, seeing as most members of 'temp have roughly $2,000 worth of pirated games.

That one member, Chory probably has $9,001 in Sonic games....but probably 200+ copies of Sonic '06.

 

[bowlofspiders]

Not sure if this really applies, but the Geohot Sony rap has really stuck with me.

 

[Shadowfied]

Not sure if this really applies, but the Geohot Sony rap has really stuck with me.

Holy shit how did I miss this? That's pretty damn good tbh

 

[Searinox]

I'll have to be unconventional and pick the Govanify leak that ended up inadvertently putting hombrew and CFW dev tools for the 3DS into ppl's hands and forcing Gateway to allow homebrew on their card. I find it hilarious that such a milestone in the scene was achieved not through some technical breakthrough, but through a trainwreck of an idiotic scandal.

 

[mike087]

Wii u brazilian method of course!

 

[cdcrossy]

modding my first playstation them 12c508 chip mods

 

[kuwanger]

The cat and mouse game that was the 3ds 9.2+ exploit until Nintendo finally patched everything properly...and then we got ntrboot because Nintendo built it in. A lot of the other hacks are probably more interesting, especially from a technical perspective--the Vita seems like quite a crazy system to hack--, but the actual progress was done a lot less in public so a lot less in a way that you could follow. At least, that's what I witnessed of it.

 

[lordelan]

I remember the day Loadiine for the Wii U came out and we needed to be on 5.3.2 so I shot a used Wii U (still in pretty good condition luckily) on eBay and bought Splatoon to update to that firmware.
Also I bought Sm4sh the month after to have higher compatibility in Loadiine.

The next big thing (it seemed like we've waited centuries for that to happen) was when RetroArch finally came to the Wii U. It was very unstable in the beginning but has matured to a very good port nowadays.

My final biggest console hacking moment was when shortly after plutoo, derrek and naehrwert showed at the 34c3 that they were able to conquer the Switch's security, a video of some kind of a RetroArch port appeared on YouTube:



That fulfilled my deepest wish since the announcement video of the Switch. As a big lover of retro games, that time around I used to play a lot of retro games on the Wii U and while the Switch was revealed and I realised, what it was (technically the Wii U gamepad but hosting the whole console so it's really portable), my only thought was:
I need that console and god please, let it be hackable and make a RetroArch port happen.

I was even playing Chrono Trigger (once again) that time so that YouTube video was like a "There you go, mate" from god himself (still don't believe in him but back then I did for at least that day ).

And please don't tell me I could have bought a controller grip for my Smartphone for having RetroArch on the go there.
As much as I enjoy playing retro games, I'll take the Switch games as well. Spent countless hours in Breath of the Wild and Diablo III.

Edit: Can't end this post without saying thank you to @m4xw for all he has done. RetroArch is pure joy on the Switch these days.

 

[RCP90totheface]

First Xecuter chip coming out for the OG Xbox. Man, when I got that mother booting into EvoX and a 120GB HD installed - Snes, Genesis and Mame emulators all working like a dream within months, media players...I'd never seen anything like it. Some of my mates damn near shat their pants when they saw I had like 3000 arcade games on a home console

 

[YugamiSekai]

My favorite moment was everyone waiting for the Wii U's IOSU exploit, and the whole Hykem drama, but b9s being announced was a very close second

 

[Catastrophic]

When DIOS MIOS added USB loading support after years of people saying it couldn't be done. That was cash.

 

[Deleted User]

The famous NES 52 in 1 game cartridges (as well as the 128 in 1 GameBoy one). Later the Utopia Bootdisc for sure.

 

[lordelan]

Hykem

Long time since I've read that name the last time lol. That was some real drama and FBI raiding his house black stories back then. Kind of miss those days haha.

 

[Chary]

The first major PSP exploit being released, probably. That, or if it counts, the Supercard DSTWO launching.

 

[ShonenJump]

Wii letterbomb release

 

[FAST6191]

I will go with something a bit more subtle, and that did not actually bother me.

The early hacks for a new revision of xbox 360 drive* were made out to be super hard and would be a charged service (just a small one) on a website to decrypt the dump to get the keys or something.

Someone else comes along says "nah" just before said charging stuff kicks off and releases a tiny little tool to do it which probably ran and finished in less time than it took to double click it.

Names and timeframes escape me right now (think it was liteon 8 series).

No particular reason for that one other than I like to see the proverbial rug pulled out from people from time to time.

*for the unaware then the 360's DVD drives did authentication of the disc and had a writeable firmware on it, mostly worked just fine online as well (about once a year they would issue a banwave). This meant the main hack for most of the scene was to flash the drive and burn dual layer discs.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

When the Twilight Hack came out in 2008. I was just getting into Homebrew and console hacking and such, but kind of lost interest when I saw Wii stuff required modchips. Just a few months later, and poof, Wii hacks available using a widely available, popular game came out and poof, the Wii scene started.

When the Acekard 2i came out as well, was one of the first DSi compatible flashcards which was pretty neat back in the day.

 

[Seliph]

Not sure if this really applies, but the Geohot Sony rap has really stuck with me.

Thought that was gonna be really cringey but it was a banger