PokéWalker hacking: A complete device takeover and ROM dump using infrared
dmitry.grThis reminds me of the VMU on Dreamcast. It was a memory unit with a built in monochrome screen. When 'docked' in the controller it would show extra information about the game you are playing. As well as saving games, you could also download minigames that could be played solely on the VMU. Some of them let you play with friends by connecting two VMUs together (no cables needed, the connector is half male half female so two connect together) - although supposedly I was the only person in the world with a Dreamcast, as all my friends at school had PS1.
https://venturebeat.com/2009/09/12/the-best-dreamcast-vmu-ga...
Same dude has a VMU hack section. http://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=25.%20VMU%20Hacking
I wonder if it ever had a positive impact on sales. It seemed so overkill, even back then, and today even more so. The idea was nice but imagine the additional costs for hardware development and also for software. Seems so silly nowadays.
For games where the VMU wasn't useful, they usually just put a logo or a looping animation.
For games where it was useful, you got cool things like picking football plays on a private screen, or having a private screen to see your items, hidden from the other players in the room, or inventory/status information. Etc
I didn't use any of the VMU contained games though, coin cells are too expensive.
The Wii U kind of took the same idea and ran with it.
This is brilliant. I love when people find unused features or weird implementation details in things.
Also kind of jarring how this is the first bit of "retro" tech that I have seen a reverse engineering post on that I actually used when it was new..
> I love when people find unused features or weird implementation details in things.
I also like trying to guess what these unused features were originally meant for.
My guess is that the "directly giving an item", "directly giving a pokemon", "special map", and "special route" were meant to be used in real-life events sponsored by the game developer. For instance, all attendees to a convention who own that device could receive an item or a pokemon as a bonus; the convention booth would have a custom device which knows how to send the necessary commands.
The "direct memory write" was probably to allow the DS game a limited ability to "patch" the device in case a bug was found later, or a new feature had to be added.
Tsss... Nintendo :p
> Curiously, at the time it came out, a study deemed the PokéWalker one of the best pedometers available at the time.
I still remember the "Duck hunt gun" on the Super Nintendo which was widely interesting.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/26875/how-did-duck-hunt-...
(couldn't find the original source of that information though)
> I still remember the "Duck hunt gun" on the Super Nintendo which was widely interesting.
The Duck Hunt zapper was for the original Nintendo, but the Super Nintendo had the Super Scope. :)
https://theoldschoolgamevault.com/blog/articles/1007-super-n...
The link doesn't open for me. It simply says "access denied" and that it's powered by cloudflare. None of my two VPN servers help overcome this. God I hate cloudflare.
>Tsss... Nintendo :p
Chances are this was subcontracted.
That's less likely than you might expect. Nintendo for a while ran their own manufacturing. Judging from the data structures I would expect this at minimum had a Nintendo Project Manager in charge.
Flip side: you are going to be techincally correct. Nintendo has deep relationships with local companies even when those local companies are not fully Nintendo owned. Deepest example might be Intelligent Systems which programmed and manufactured Nintendo's devkits up until the Switch era.
Game Freak in theory is independent. They used Sega to publish their pet project platformer game. Yet somehow Nintendo just a few months ago moved them to an amalgamated office tower along with all other 100% Nintendo owned Tokyo studios. The message being that Nintendo keeps strong control through their project managers.
Source: my uncle works at Nintendo. /s
Now this is 'hacker' news!
Check out the projects page on this site. The guy is a genius with a lot of spare time..
This Dmitry guy is incredible. I saw a talk he did at the MTVRE meet up and it was great, and there's so much crazy stuff on his blog.
Very cool, love seeing projects like this produce repeatable results.