Retro Gaming Hacks

Preface

A few months ago, I was playing a classic Game Boy game, in all its 15-year-old monochrome glory. But the version I was playing was markedly worse than what I remembered from 1989—it ran a little slowly, had some graphic glitches, and there was no sound. And it was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen.

Why? Because I was playing it on the Sony PSP.

It had been a pretty amazing week. Intrepid, brilliant Japanese hackers had discovered a security loophole in Sony’s new portable game console that let them run executable files off of the Memory Stick media. Within days—literally days—they’d progressed from a simple “Hello World” display to a program that emulated the Game Boy hardware. As we went to press on this book, there were PSP programs that played games from consoles like the Neo Geo and Turbo-Grafx CD. By the time you finally read these words, there will probably be software that lets you do much more.

This volume is dedicated to the appreciation, understanding, and application of just that sort of impressive hack. And you don’t even have to skirt copyright law to do it—you’ll find that public domain and freeware games exist for most gaming consoles. The creation of these so-called homebrew titles is in and of itself a retro gaming hack—and a damned impressive one at that! And if you want to try your hand at creating a Game Boy title of your own, you’ll find tips and tricks to help you get started right here.

As for me, I like having the actual classic game hardware. ...