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ArsTechnica: Hackers unlock NES Classic, upload new games via USB cable
- Thread starter Pathfinder
- Start date
Perfect, thanks. I'll have a go later.The entire package.
Can I ask about the message telling me to wait until the red light goes off after I flash it, I assuming that the light should staying off rather than flashing as it had been doing for me? When they mention restarting the NES does that mean I still have to do something on the PC or I can just switch it off as normal and unplug it?
MikeHaggar
Member
F34R and MikeHaggar, thank you both so very much!!!!
I just threw a couple of ROMs on it and customised the controller, I've tried it now and it works brilliantly. I don't even want the games that I threw on it, they were just the first couple I found.
There aren't many games I actually want to add, things like the missing Castlevania and Mega Man games as well as a few SHMUPS and RPGs that I used to spend a lot of time playing. There's probably only going to be about 50 games altogether, I don't like the idea of having hundreds of games on there that I'll never even look at.
I know that you can use the inbuilt cover art finder but I tend to be quite busy about these things so I'll probably add them all manually from best quality image I find. I don't suppose anybody knows what resolution the default cover art is on the Mini so I can try and keep the as uniformed as possible?
I know it's not really important...but it sort of is too. Sort of.
The controller works brilliantly too. I can't understand why using Start and Select to reset isn't there by default anyway, it makes no sense.
It's stupid just how excited I am to be able to play my Dragon Warrior games on this. It;s ridiculous, it's not as if I can't already play them anyway. I'm so happy with this system now, once I've sorted everything out it really will be perfect for me.
God, I can't explain just how much I want a Mini Classic: SNES from Nintendo right now. It'd be even better than this for me!! ��
I just threw a couple of ROMs on it and customised the controller, I've tried it now and it works brilliantly. I don't even want the games that I threw on it, they were just the first couple I found.
There aren't many games I actually want to add, things like the missing Castlevania and Mega Man games as well as a few SHMUPS and RPGs that I used to spend a lot of time playing. There's probably only going to be about 50 games altogether, I don't like the idea of having hundreds of games on there that I'll never even look at.
I know that you can use the inbuilt cover art finder but I tend to be quite busy about these things so I'll probably add them all manually from best quality image I find. I don't suppose anybody knows what resolution the default cover art is on the Mini so I can try and keep the as uniformed as possible?
I know it's not really important...but it sort of is too. Sort of.
The controller works brilliantly too. I can't understand why using Start and Select to reset isn't there by default anyway, it makes no sense.
It's stupid just how excited I am to be able to play my Dragon Warrior games on this. It;s ridiculous, it's not as if I can't already play them anyway. I'm so happy with this system now, once I've sorted everything out it really will be perfect for me.
God, I can't explain just how much I want a Mini Classic: SNES from Nintendo right now. It'd be even better than this for me!! ��
A bunch of stage-based puzzle games use Select to kill the player and reset the stage, including Adventures of Lolo 1-3 and Moai Kun. It completely ruins those games if you're planning on using the menu for save states.
I've changed it to Down + Start which seems to clash with less stuff.
Does it require holding to bring the menu up, or does it just take a short while to appear?
Didn't realise that. Maybe not the best choice of buttons to use but I'm surprised they didn't include any options for button combinations.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
Author of hakchi2 uploaded an interesting video about how he went about doing this over the past few weeks(in russian, but there are good english subtitles).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApHI_hPv2z4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApHI_hPv2z4
rubbishmonkey
Member
Try using Zadig to install drivers. I remember that is what I had to do. http://zadig.akeo.ie/ edit > actually I'm not sure you need to do that any more > https://youtu.be/kQuanxcT79M?t=8m22s heh not sure if thats much help really :/ sorry
Tried Zadig, cant even get it to see my NES mini when it is plugged in to laptop.
rubbishmonkey
Member
Err.. maybe a try different USB cable? Or slot...Perhaps try (I followed one but cant remember which)
rubbishmonkey
Member
In FEL mode? Or just turning it on? You need to hold down reset for a bit while pressing power on
The guy is a hero.
runnin_blue
Banned
Yeah, Nintendo related emulators etc always seem to have the most active communities and most actively supported. Many other systems seem to slow right down in their support. Often drying up before they are anywhere near complete.
Fantastic video. Even if I didn't understand 90% of the technical stuff he explained I watched all 20+ minutes with great interest. Would love similar videos for other console hacks but I imagine very few people would like such publicity.
Thanks for that, it's quiet a bit smaller than I was expecting. I'll have a look later to see what I can find for the games that I'm adding.
superdeluxe
Member
rubbishmonkey
Member
I have been slowly replacing mine with 3D cover art. I think it "pops out" and looks nicer than the flat art. I used the
RetroKenisis pack and I am slowly filling any holes using that as a template (although, I find I am adding too much detail since the images get downgraded). FDS roms use a totally different image size though which means it will squish up your cart image to a square if its NES/Famicom sized. So I have been making what very few FDS images I need to, to fit that. Although they are smaller as they are square rather than rectangle. Maybe a future version of Hakchi2 will change that..I dunno.
Having 3D boxes does mean replacing the original 30 games for continuity If that bothers you, and re-adding the pixel art for the screen saver. Obviously you don't get the game demos...Mario just endlessly scrolls the folder. I have also added a couple of custom pixel arts.. like River City Ransom and turtles.
Dawnbuster
Member
The original Zapper? No. That requires an old CRT monitor/tv.
All the old light gun tech requred a CRT, which is why we haven't seen any in a long time. I still have some Time Crisis guns for PS2 that I can't use because my last tube tv died a while ago.
So theoretically what would happened if someone hooked up an NES Classic to a CRT tv? I use to have a CRT HDMI-enabled tv awhile back. lol
D.Lo
Member
No, it would need the console to output an analogue signal as well. A light gun needs the signal to literally scan lines on the TV to work.
Ah ok. Thanks for clearing that up. Doesn't look like I'll ever be able to buy an NES Classic anyways since they are nearly impossible to actually ever find.
Why would you do that?
Member
The NES Zapper relies on the lagless, instant response of a CRT. Other screen types introduce lag and will not work, and in fact, an HDMI connection on a CRT might not work either, actually...
The way the Zapper works is by sensing light. Simply put, when you pull the trigger in a game like Duck Hunt, for 1 frame the screen turns black and the ducks flash white, and the gun senses the light during that one frame. It registers a "hit" if it sees the white light, and a "miss" if it doesn't. However, if the TV has any lag, even one or two frames, then the Zapper will not see the flash in time and it'll always register as a miss.
It's even worse with other light guns like the Super Scope and beyond. They work by sensing the exact moment they see the CRT's tiny little beam as it moves (or "scans") across the screen, then telling the game console, which would determine exactly where the gun is pointed on screen based on the time it sees the beam. That definitely requires a CRT and absolutely no lag at all, but it has pixel accurate results.
Thanks for that, not quite sure how I feel about the 3D stuff though.
What I had considered doing was actually using the cartridges themselves like the blank cartridge image it shows when you add your own games without artwork. There are loads of images out there and I like that it unifies the artwork and it reduces the need in finding really good quality game artwork due to the size of the artwork on the actual cartridge.
There seems to be loads of them out there already and once you decide which cartridge template you want to use, it's simple enough to create your own using you're prefered template.
NES Roms [Cartridge Icons]
NES Cartridge Icon [Template]
I'm also thinking that the dimensions of these designs is better to both the NES and Famicom box covers because although the NES image is 140x204 it has to also take into account the Famicom artwork which is essentially the NES dimensions flipped over so it's 204x140.
From that I assume that we're allocated a square of 240x240 which means that the cartridge style artwork is going to leave less of a space around the image, it's closer to filling what they allocate to you.
I haven't done anything with this stuff yet but may have a mess around with it later.
On the topic of aesthetics, is there any way to use the Famicom mini theme on the NES mini? Although I've never actually owned a Famicom I do feel that it's a far more successful aesthetic in comparison to the NES mini version and it would be nice to have that option, if it wasn't too complicated.
I know, I probably think about this stuff far more than I should!! 😊
I wonder why it's stretching the PSDs when you're doing it, strange. What options did you choose while saving in photoshop?Without doing anything, this is what it looks like:
I still haven't had play with the images, hopefully I'll get time later though.
tornjaw
Member
Can you make 3D Boxart for Final Fantasy 2 & 3?
Earthbound64
Banned
rubbishmonkey
Member
I think it needs to be rectangular for NES/Famicom rom art, at least it would help keep the ratio when Hakchi2 resizes it. A couple of people on Reddit have been working hard making cart art I think it has a template in there too. Personally I find the art is a bit small when you just have it on a small label. I like looking at pretty pictures! Haha
I can and I have! Done a couple of different versions for each one
tornjaw
Member
I can and I have! Done a couple of different versions for each one
Thank you, I didn't see these when you made your first post about the 3D boxart.
rubbishmonkey
Member
MikeHaggar
Member
I'd like to know this as well. I'm really just interested in being able to eliminate sprite flicker. That would be awesome.
Just had a quick look and I'm getting the same thing, it does seem to stretch it into 204x140 for some reason.
I'm running hackchi2 on a virtual machine on my Mac so I'm limited in what I can do in relation to trying to work out why its doing this and seeing if there's a way of working around it. It's annoying because the default you get when adding new games is a perfect representation of a NES cartridge but without a label.
It's a bit of a shame as I was looking forward to that, it's hardly important though.
Over on Reddit user Honeylab has gngb (Gameboy) and SNES9x running on a mini. Without pads and some colors appear to be wrong, but it's a step.
Thanks for that.
Those images tell me what was wrong with the the other cart images I linked too. The ones you've linked to are 140x204 which includes the transparencies, although the carts in the ones I originally linked to are 256x256 including transparencies. I was expecting it to disregard the transparencies and jut use the actual cart images, I suppose that was expecting a bit too much of hakchi2. ��
EDIT:
I wish I'd read this before messing around with them. I'm not sure if they mean an unreleased version though, it looks like it.
USS_Babineaux said:
soulctcher said:
EDIT 2:
Hmm, it looks like it won't let me edit the default 30 games. I'll just have to replace them all with a duplicate.
runnin_blue
Banned
This is getting crazy.
tornjaw
Member
What am I missing here? Where is the download link to these images?