This is a pretty big subject here. Modifying game consoles....What does this mean for the user? Pretty much opening the machine wide-open and showing off what it's hardware is really capable of....You think your Xbox360 is just good for playing Xbox360, Xbox1 and DVDs? No, using modifications, you can play emulators from other consoles from the old school Nintendo to Nintendo 64 as well as Sega hardware! Ever had a favorite game on one console from the 70s/80s/90s but didn't have the console to play it and didn't think it was worth hunting down a console on ebay or craigslist just to play that one game? Well, more than likely it can be emulated on an Xbox360 or even a PS3! Some systems like the PSP can play NES, SNES and Genesis games on the go! I wouldn't be surprised if this is what Nintendo was thinking of when they made the Virtual Console for the Wii and 3DS. Being able to play classic games on ONE console, and I am sure they were hoping it would cut down on the hacking and modification...but no, the Wii has been hacked up and down! BUT.....with hacking and modification comes the LEGAL aspect of it. Downloading ROMS for games that you don't own is NOT legal. You can't LEGALLY download Super Mario Bros ROM and play it on an emulator. Now, of course, I seriously doubt you are going to have the cops or FBI knocking on your door asking you to show your legal cartridge of Super Mario Bros for NES.....but, its still a risk. Like when people smoke a joint or speed down a road....you are taking a risk of getting caught, you can do it all you want, but you are taking a risk with each time! Also, modifications to game systems *WILL* void your warranty...you are installing unsupported software or hardware to your system altering the way the machine works, thus voiding your warranty. Some systems, like the PSP, Wii, PS3, Xbox1, PS2, all can be modded without taking the system apart. Others like Sega Saturn and Xbox360 will require the system to be taken apart. Then you got "hardware mods" or "hard-mods" and "software mods" or "soft-mod" that can be done to most of these. Sure, all these systems have a "mod-chip" of some sort that can be programmed to play back-up games off a burned disk or off an external hard drive, but these always require soldering....and sometimes, ALOT of wires. Chips can also be expensive....$25 is what I paid for my WiiKey plus the WiiClip. I have no soldering skills, so I needed the clip thing. What this does is, allow someone else to do the soldering for you, ship you the unit with the WiiClip and you snap it onto the chip inside the Wii console....again, these chips require console disassemble and voiding warranty. Now, they have software mods for the Wii...however...Nintendo has gotten a little bit smart with their DVD-ROM drive changes over the years. As of now, I don't think you can even modify the newest revisions of the Wii to play games off DVD-R....BUT...you can STILL play games off a SD card or external USB hard drive! I do prefer the hard drive method myself....you don't have to fool with burning disks, and ALOT of Wii games aren't even a full 4.37GB so you can fit ALOT of Wii games onto an external hard drive. New Super Mario Bros Wii for example is around 365MB for the game. so you could EASILY get that on a 512MB card even! I've had 5 games on a 4GB card before....they were my favorite games on the Wii at the time, and I pretty much left the SD card in the Wii and when I played it, 9 times out of 10, I could just load the game I wanted to play off the SD card! Now again, you can download Wii games off the web, but also, this is ILLEGAL....Only back-up your games you PAID for! This is great for families with small kids and/or indoor pets. You know how it is, kids leave games laying out, drop them, crack them, scratch them. That $50 Xmas present is too scratched to play before New Years! Or you lay it on top of the console, forget to put the disk up later on, go to work or sleep and your pet knocks it onto the floor and plays with it! Damaged disks are highly likely in any situation...handling them on a regular basis will get scratches on them. My favorite system is the Xbox360. I used to have a flashed DVD-ROM for playing burned games. Ripping Xbox360 games is a pain in the butt (when done legally of course)....you got to have what they call a "Kreon" DVD-ROM drive in your computer. This allows the computer to read the Xbox360 game. If you put an Xbox360 disk into a computer that isn't equipped with a Kreon drive, you will get a DVD video saying "to play this disk, insert into an Xbox360" (or something very close to that). so the disc has security preventing you from copying it like you could Sega Saturn or PlayStation1/PlayStation2 discs...Pretty much the security of the Xbox360 is in the DVD-ROM....so if your DVD-ROM drive matches the Xbox360 hardware for YOUR machine, it will load the disk. So, when you flash your DVD-ROM drive, you are taking your current firmware from your DVD-ROM, dumping it onto your PC, altering it a little bit, then re-flashing to your current DVD-ROM, put the DVD-ROM back into the Xbox360 and if you did it right, you should be playing back-up games. Microsoft has made many alterations to the Xbox360 DVD-ROM to prevent such hacking, but so far has been a success, every time they release a new DVD-ROM in a system, it gets hacked with a little time. Some drives are easier to do than others. I personally prefer the Toshiba-Samsung drives of the earlier 2005 model Xbox360s. However, these came with the Xenon motherboard which had a VERY high failure rate. I've had 2 Xbox360 fail on me, but repaired one. The first one, i just didn't know what I was doing and could have probably been easily fixed. Now, my current Xbox360 has a JTAG hack. This allows you to do ALOT more with an Xbox360 than a flashed drive. Flashed drives just allow you to play burned games....there is no hardware modification to the actual console, just the DVD-ROM. JTAG hack lets you do ALOT more. JTAG allows you to rip games to your Xbox360 from DVD-ROM and convert them to be played without a disk in the system like a Demo or XBLA game would do. Also they have "Games on Demand" or "GoD" games, this is like OnDemand movies on your cable or satellite company. You browse a selection of games on the internet from your Xbox, find one you want, pay for it and it downloads to your hard drive. These can take up ALOT of space! Xbox360 games average around 6.5GB for the older ones and now these newer games are 7.5GB. So, if you have the 20GB hard drive, you are NOT going to get very far. The JTAG hacked Xbox360s allow you to take a standard SATA hard drive from pretty much any computer shop and put it on your Xbox360. You will need to at least have an Xbox360 official hard drive laying around to take apart and get the SATA cable out of it that hooks up to your Xbox360 hard drive. sadly the cables aren't very long so its not like you will have a hard drive sitting next to your Xbox360 out of view. You can (if you are very careful) put your new drive inside the original housing of an Xbox360 official drive. I chose not to b/c if i fill up my drive, i want to be able to swap drives back and forth in less than a few minutes. Xbox360 Offical Drives are really nothing special at all. In fact, my 20GB drive was a Samsung drive. My MacBook has a 500GB Samsung drive...they look identical, except for the 20GB says 20GB on it and the 500GB says 500GB on it. I replaced the drive with a 640GB Western Digital from Best Buy for only $60. This is MUCH cheaper than what Microsoft sells the "offical" drives for and there is no reason for them to do this. The Offical 250GB Xbox360 drive sells for $109. I Paid just about half that for more than 2x more space! You can replace the Xbox360 hard drive on a non-JTAG but its a MAJOR pain in the ass and you can't use a 640GB drive like I did, you have to use drive sizes that MS officially supports, 20GB, 60GB, 120GB, 250GB and 320GB. The non-JTAG method requires you to hook it up to a computer and all that mess. Using a JTAG you can just put it on the Xbox360 and format it like any other removable storage on Xbox360. However, JTAG Xbox360s cannot be used on Xbox LIVE! JTAG has advantages and disadvantages.....but I am not an online gamer and with PSN and Nintendo Connect being free, I don't think that Xbox Live should cost money! (yea, I have heard the Xbox Live service is better because the servers are better or something of that nature...but still, not buying it)
So, that is my blog on Game Console Modification. It can lead to legal issues if you abuse it, it can lead to preventing disk damage if you are careful in how you use it which could lead to saving money. To me, its just plain FUN to modify them! :)
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