Romain Dillet reports via TechCrunch: Hacker group fail0verflow shared a photo of a Nintendo Switch running Debian, a distribution of Linux. The group claims that Nintendo can’t fix the vulnerability with future firmware patches. According to fail0verflow, there’s a flaw in the boot ROM in Nvidia’s Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip. When your console starts, it reads and executes a piece of code stored in a read-only memory (hence the name ROM). This code contains instructions about the booting process. It means that the boot ROM is stored on the chip when Nvidia manufactures it and it can’t be altered in any way after that. Even if Nintendo issues a software update, this software update won’t affect the boot ROM. And as the console loads the boot ROM immediately after pressing the power button, there’s no way to bypass it. The only way to fix it would be to manufacture new Nvidia Tegra X1 chips. So it’s possible that Nintendo asks Nvidia to fix the issue so that new consoles don’t have this vulnerability. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features
Enlarge / The clean look of the SNES Classic gets ruined a bit the second you plug stuff in. (credit: Kyle Orland) After guesses, estimations, and positive early tests, the Super NES Classic has emerged as a hackable little piece of gaming nostalgia—and quite an easy one to hack, at that. This weekend saw the September device receive a simple exploit in the form of hakchi2 , a Windows program designed by a Russian hacker who calls himself “ClusterM,” and, among other things, it allows fans to add far more games to the system than its default set of 21. If any of that sounds familiar, as opposed to gibberish, it’s because the same program and hacker emerged shortly after the launch of 2016’s Linux-powered NES Classic. ClusterM found a way to wrap that system’s FEL-mode exploit (read lots more about that here ) in a tidy Windows GUI, which allowed fans to use Windows Explorer menus to dump game ROMs, emulator cores, and even new art into their boxy ode to ’80s Nintendo bliss. ClusterM announced plans to repeat his trick well before the SNES Classic landed in stores, and his hacking hopes looked promising with the reveal, courtesy of Eurogamer , that the SNES Classic has a near-identical chipset and board compared to the NES Classic. Initial tests of the FEL-mode exploit, which requires booting into a telnet interface to talk to Nintendo’s Linux box, proved promising, and ClusterM returned eight days after the system’s launch with a new hakchi2 version—which now works with either “Nintendo classic” system. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Super NES Classic hacks are now oh, so easy to pull off—you can even add features
SNES Classic launches with digital trove of classic instruction manuals
Enlarge / Cranky Kong pops up a lot in the Donkey Kong Country manual to tell you how bad everything is. (credit: Nintendo) Last year, the NES Classic’s launch was met with something that I argued was more interesting and valuable in the game-preservation sense: a gigantic dump of NES and Famicom instruction manuals , all free to download in PDF format. They included a range of weird and rarely seen game-instruction books from across the world, and unlike their source product, people could actually get them. We are passionate fans of the days when games actually included printed instruction manuals, so one of the first things we did with review units of the SNES Classic was tap through its menus to the “instructions” tab, then jot down the URL where Nintendo would eventually dump a similar motherload of SNES and Super Famicom instruction manuals. That day has arrived. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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SNES Classic launches with digital trove of classic instruction manuals
Every Nintendo Switch appears to contain a hidden copy of NES Golf
On Saturday, the world may have gotten its first look at an NES game officially running on a Nintendo Switch. You might think the weird thing about this news is how long it has taken for Virtual Console support to come to the Switch. But this isn’t a Virtual Console story. Turns out, this is somehow weirder. Your Nintendo Switch may already have a fully playable NES game just sitting inside of it. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Every Nintendo Switch appears to contain a hidden copy of NES Golf
Ataribox retro mini-console plays current and classic games
Atari, in the hope of emulating the success of Nintendo’s Mini NES and Mini SNES , has unveiled the Ataribox—a modern console inspired by the legendary Atari 2600, which was first released in 1977. While technical details on the Ataribox are slim, Atari—or at least, the company that now goes by the Atari name after the original Atari went bankrupt in 2013—has revealed that the console will come in both red/black and wood editions, the latter paying homage to the 1977 original. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Ataribox retro mini-console plays current and classic games
Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ theme park is taking shape
Universal Studios Japan recently released the first trailer for its in-construction Super Nintendo World attraction, and now Disney has gone one better by building an actual physical model showing off its upcoming Star Wars Land (unofficial title). Due to open in 2019 at both Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida, the new area “will transport guests to a never-before-seen planet” — which just happens to look like every weathered, forgettable world characters from the films briefly touch down on to get a ship part or intel or what have you. There should be plenty to do at the “remote trading port” once you’ve filled your boots with expensive merchandise and your bellies with Yoda burgers. Ride specifics are pretty hazy, but Disney has revealed that visitors will control the Millennium Falcon on a secret mission as part of one signature attraction, while the other main draw will drop guests “in the middle of a climactic battle between the First Order and the Resistance.” Star Tours, a Star Wars -inspired flight simulator, and several other attractions were up and running at various Disney parks long before the company waved a check in front of George Lucas he couldn’t pass up. Now Disney owns the rights to the extremely popular franchise, it makes sense to create a more elaborate live experience for fans to visit — especially after the shot-in-the-arm that was the last two movies. Though a few years off completion, anyone visiting Disney World in the future will be able to kill two film-inspired birds with one stone, diving into the mind of James Cameron through the new World Of Avatar experience. Via: TechCrunch Source: Disney
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Disney’s ‘Star Wars’ theme park is taking shape
Researcher uses Game Boy Camera to capture 2-bit photos of space
The Game Boy Camera, released in 1998, wasn’t even close to the weirdest peripheral for Nintendo’s classic handheld console and even earned a Guinness World Record for the smallest digital camera in the world. Its 2-bit, 128 x 128 pixel CMOS sensor managed very grainy black-and-white shots, making it far more fun than technically impressive. And yet, a Dutch researcher and tinkerer just used one to catch some charmingly blocky photos of the moon and Jupiter. Astrogphrapher Alexander Pietrow used a universal cell phone mount to strap one of the 29-year-old monochrome workhorses to an appropriately old telescope (built in 1838) in Leiden University’s Old Observatory and aimed at at the stellar bodies. The resulting photos are barely detailed — Jupiter is half a dozen pixels wide — but they’re blocky in a charming throwback to the original Game Boy’s 8-bit graphical style. Pietrow even managed to pick out three of the gas giant’s moons, singular pixels in a field of star dots. (Note that the image below has been blown up 400 percent to make it visible, since the Game Boy Camera takes photos at a whopping 112 x 128 pixel resolution.) Maybe it doesn’t do much for astronomy as a field, but it’s a lovely reminder that space still fascinates at any resolution — that we still find meaning when stretching for the cosmos with the crudest of tools. Via: PetaPixel Source: Alexander Pietrow
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Researcher uses Game Boy Camera to capture 2-bit photos of space
Plug-and-play SNES Classic coming Sept. 29 for $80 with two controllers [Updated]
Update: In a statement provided to Polygon , Nintendo said it is not “providing specific numbers, but we will produce significantly more units of Super NES Classic Edition than we did of NES Classic Edition.” The company said the new hardware will be produced at least through the end of 2017 and said “at this time, we have nothing to announce regarding any possible shipments beyond this year.” Original Story Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Plug-and-play SNES Classic coming Sept. 29 for $80 with two controllers [Updated]
GE is working on a massive 3D printer for jet engine parts
3D printing is coming of age in numerous ways. On a large scale, MIT researchers built a 50-foot-wide, 12-foot tall igloo in just 13 hours. They’ve also debuted the first completely 3D-printed rocket engine. On a much smaller level, our own Sean Buckley printed a little d-pad for his Nintendo Switch, while medical researchers have produced a 3D-printed patch that can heal scarred heart tissue. Now we’re seeing this technology coming to the industrial world with a new laser-powered metal 3D printer from GE . GE Additive is a new business under the larger GE umbrella. It is developing what it calls “the world’s largest laser-powered 3D printer” to create parts that fit within one cubic meter cubic of space. “The machine will 3D print aviation parts suitable for making jet engine structural components and parts for single-aisle aircraft, ” said GE Additive’s Mohammad Ehteshami in a statement . “It will also be applicable for manufacturers in the automotive, power, and oil and gas industries.” Additive printers fuse fine layers of powdered metal with a laser beam to print objects. The new process could make complex parts like jet engine components easier and less costly to make than traditional casting and welding techniques. GE Aviation is already printing fuel nozzles for jet engines that will be found in Airbus, Boeing and narrow-body jets. GE has a prototype large-scale metal prnter, called ATLAS, that can print 2D objects up to 1 meter long, but the new one will extend that to a third dimension. Beta versions of the new printer should be ready by the end of this year, according to Ehteshami, with a production version slated for 2018. Source: GE Reports
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GE is working on a massive 3D printer for jet engine parts
Microsoft Reveals Xbox Scorpio’s Impressive Specs
Microsoft has promised that their next console, Scorpio, will be “the most powerful console ever, ” and today the company delivered on that promise, revealing a set of beefy specs that, in terms of raw power, surpass any video game console on the market today. Read more…
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Microsoft Reveals Xbox Scorpio’s Impressive Specs