Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
Emulation - Blog Posts
Only 13 percent of video games are readily playable and accessible. No other form of media is as endangered as video games. There is no legal path to preserve or archive video games. You can go to libraries and archives for books years out of print. You can rent a movie or download a pdf. There is no legal equivalent for video games. Games companies do not double as archival organisations and they never will. They have never been about preserving. They are about selling. Which is not inherently evil compared to anyone else but they along with the law are directly preventing archivers and preservationists from doing their job and allowing this entire medium to be experienced in the future.
if youre a loser to pay for games then at least dont crusade on others for choosing not to do so
the company you defend doesnt care about you
Internet Archive finds #001: Hacking the Xbox, An introduction to Reverse Engineering by Andrew "Bunnie" Huang. (full read)
"In the beginning, a hacker was someone who worked passionately for the sake of curiosity and exploration. There were hardware hackers who took it upon themselves to remove the covers from computers to optimize their design (early computers were built out of discrete components, so they could be modified in meaningful ways with simple tools), and there were software hackers who labored to make the most compact and elegant code, since computational resources were scarce and slow. There were hackers who explored the ins and outs of the phone system, and those who explored the roofs and tunnels of buildings of university campuses. Quite often, early hackers engaged in all of these activities. Hackers would share their findings or results (hacks) with each other freely, as their rewards were not financial, but came from satisfying their intellectual curiosity and from the enthusiasm of their peers." - Andrew "bunnie" Huang.
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Interesting thought from a friend:
Jail breaking. Reverse engineering. Without these we wouldn’t have emulation which is kinda saving a lot of peoples childhoods seeing as actual physical copies are skyrocketing in the retro gaming market. People are afraid physical media is going to completely phase out because everything’s going digital. So people are taking advantage of the market in some arguably bullshit ways. Ya know business. -Xora March 2024
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DISPOSE OF PUFFY BATTERIES ASAP!
They CAN explode!
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hacking your 3DS/2DS
https://3ds.hacks.guide/
troubleshooting 3DS software/CFW
https://gbatemp.net/forums/nintendo-3ds.199/
https://discord.gg/MWxPgEp
https://3ds.hacks.guide/troubleshooting
getting games
https://hshop.erista.me/
https://vimm.net/
physical 3DS issues
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Nintendo_Handheld_Console
3DS Tumblr Community
FAQ post
Submissions + Asks are open! Send me photos of your DS/3DS If you wanna!
decorated 3ds's are tagged under '3DS inspo'
Also, bigotry of any kind is not accepted here. terfs/radfems/gender crit will be blocked + reported. Free Palastine + ACAB
GET PRETENDO NETWORK !!!
obtaining roms:
edge emulation (missing some consoles; CD-based games come in compressed formats such as CHD; very fast DL speed)
myrient (pretty much everything, no strings attached; fast DL speed)
cdromance (mostly has games for CD-based consoles; games come in uncompressed iso or bin/cue; has a lot of pre-patched rom hacks; medium-fast DL speed)
planetemu (largely in french; has a lot of obscure titles other sites lack; very fast DL speed)
alvro collection spreadsheet (pretty much everything, including many newer consoles; slightly inconvenient to navigate; download site has timer and limits to 1 download every 30 mins, can be worked around with vpn; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed)
script that lets you download from emuparadise post-shutdown (pretty much everything; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed; can occasionally be uncooperative)
ROMs Megathread/Archive (everything, really; slow DL speed; usually a last resort if you can't find something anywhere else)
i don't currently recommend Vimm's Lair due to very slow speeds, download limits, and offering nothing that isn't on other sites (unless you need prepatched xiso format Xbox roms)
console-focused sites:
HShop (all 3DS. very complete, easy to navigate. has qr codes for direct download from 3ds; yes, the qr codes are safe; fast dl speed)
MarioCube (focused on GameCube/Wii and has everything you'll ever need for those platforms; requires joining a google group for standard roms but it takes like 2 clicks; very fast dl speed)
NoPayStation (practically every PS3/PSP/Vita game and update, downloaded directly from sony's servers; fast dl speed)
sites offering switch and other modern games get shut down very frequently so i won't be linking them in order to keep this post from getting outdated, but you can find them if you snoop around reddit (the switchpirates sub in particular) a little
romsets:
Cylum's Romsets (my personal favorite - not fully complete sets but heavily curated, so no going through a million revisions of the same game)
for 1fichier directories, you can use a tool like 1fichier-dl to download in bulk. i'd recommend doing this on the alvro collections if you want more complete sets.
softmodding and loading roms on some popular consoles:
Switch
Wii
3DS, Vita, Wii U
PS2
PSP
recommended emulators and emulation guides:
Emulation General Wiki
netplay:
wanna play with your friends online?
fightcade covers nes, genesis, pc engine, dreamcast, and snes along with a variety of arcade boards from capcom, snk, sega, and konami. playstation is incoming. all platforms on it have rollback netcode.
mednafen covers psx, saturn, pc engine cd and sega cd, and i find its snes performance better personally. delay-based netcode with server structure. here's a pre-packed version with a gui included and here's a netplay guide i largely wrote myself.
other than that, dolphin is naturally used for gamecube/wii, and project64 with the AQZ netplay plugin is used for N64.
games are great. go play some games.
[edited 3/25/23]
obtaining roms:
edge emulation (missing some consoles; CD-based games come in compressed formats such as CHD; very fast DL speed)
myrient (pretty much everything, no strings attached; fast DL speed)
cdromance (mostly has games for CD-based consoles; games come in uncompressed iso or bin/cue; has a lot of pre-patched rom hacks; medium-fast DL speed)
planetemu (largely in french; has a lot of obscure titles other sites lack; very fast DL speed)
alvro collection spreadsheet (pretty much everything, including many newer consoles; slightly inconvenient to navigate; download site has timer and limits to 1 download every 30 mins, can be worked around with vpn; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed)
script that lets you download from emuparadise post-shutdown (pretty much everything; inconsistent medium-to-very-fast DL speed; can occasionally be uncooperative)
ROMs Megathread/Archive (everything, really; slow DL speed; usually a last resort if you can't find something anywhere else)
i don't currently recommend Vimm's Lair due to very slow speeds, download limits, and offering nothing that isn't on other sites (unless you need prepatched xiso format Xbox roms)
console-focused sites:
HShop (all 3DS. very complete, easy to navigate. has qr codes for direct download from 3ds; yes, the qr codes are safe; fast dl speed)
MarioCube (focused on GameCube/Wii and has everything you'll ever need for those platforms; requires joining a google group for standard roms but it takes like 2 clicks; very fast dl speed)
NoPayStation (practically every PS3/PSP/Vita game and update, downloaded directly from sony's servers; fast dl speed)
sites offering switch and other modern games get shut down very frequently so i won't be linking them in order to keep this post from getting outdated, but you can find them if you snoop around reddit (the switchpirates sub in particular) a little
romsets:
Cylum's Romsets (my personal favorite - not fully complete sets but heavily curated, so no going through a million revisions of the same game)
for 1fichier directories, you can use a tool like 1fichier-dl to download in bulk. i'd recommend doing this on the alvro collections if you want more complete sets.
softmodding and loading roms on some popular consoles:
Switch
Wii
3DS, Vita, Wii U
PS2
PSP
recommended emulators and emulation guides:
Emulation General Wiki
netplay:
wanna play with your friends online?
fightcade covers nes, genesis, pc engine, dreamcast, and snes along with a variety of arcade boards from capcom, snk, sega, and konami. playstation is incoming. all platforms on it have rollback netcode.
mednafen covers psx, saturn, pc engine cd and sega cd, and i find its snes performance better personally. delay-based netcode with server structure. here's a pre-packed version with a gui included and here's a netplay guide i largely wrote myself.
other than that, dolphin is naturally used for gamecube/wii, and project64 with the AQZ netplay plugin is used for N64.
games are great. go play some games.
[edited 3/25/23]
