E-Reader Cracked – Make Games With a Pen and a Playing Card!
Nintendo 'dot code' 'does an 'N-Gage'.
The real thing
An interesting article on legendary tech-fiddler site Slashdot points out that Nintendo's e-Reader system has been cracked, opening the path to amongst the cheapest and perhaps even easiest homebrew software to bedroom coders across the globe.
The site declares that "the Reed Solomon error correction used by the Nintendo Game Boy Advance e-Reader has been figured out", and offers several homebrew titles to prove it.
And the procedure is amazingly simple to carry out, at least the part after you make your own game. Making your own game is never easy. Unless you're one of those people who can program things. Which, aside from Gareth and Gavin, we're not.
Anyway, once you have figured out the e-Reader code, a few simple printer adjustments can rattle out games printed to higher quality paper.
In the wider sense, this kind of access to immediate homebrew game creation is perhaps the healthiest thing the industry could have accidentally given the public access to. These was a time when pressing the BREAK key on your Acorn Electron would give you access to the game code, enabling you to tamper at will. With today's machines, this kind of hands-on access has been denied to gamers and would-be programmers.
Indeed, if you were to ask almost any games developer, they all started out in their bedrooms fiddling around with one of a variety of home machines, breaking into games and learning how they worked. Although in the case of the Amiga, this ease of access unleashed endemic piracy. As to the extent of sales damage, this point is still the topic of fierce debate. In the main, we have the golden era of the early-to-mid 80's to thank for almost everything we see commercially released today.
Check the Slashdot Games website if you are interested in finding out more.
The site declares that "the Reed Solomon error correction used by the Nintendo Game Boy Advance e-Reader has been figured out", and offers several homebrew titles to prove it.
And the procedure is amazingly simple to carry out, at least the part after you make your own game. Making your own game is never easy. Unless you're one of those people who can program things. Which, aside from Gareth and Gavin, we're not.
Anyway, once you have figured out the e-Reader code, a few simple printer adjustments can rattle out games printed to higher quality paper.
In the wider sense, this kind of access to immediate homebrew game creation is perhaps the healthiest thing the industry could have accidentally given the public access to. These was a time when pressing the BREAK key on your Acorn Electron would give you access to the game code, enabling you to tamper at will. With today's machines, this kind of hands-on access has been denied to gamers and would-be programmers.
Indeed, if you were to ask almost any games developer, they all started out in their bedrooms fiddling around with one of a variety of home machines, breaking into games and learning how they worked. Although in the case of the Amiga, this ease of access unleashed endemic piracy. As to the extent of sales damage, this point is still the topic of fierce debate. In the main, we have the golden era of the early-to-mid 80's to thank for almost everything we see commercially released today.
Check the Slashdot Games website if you are interested in finding out more.
Companies:
Nintendo
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Comments
Joji 21 Apr 2004 14:57
1/1
I never bought on e card reader, so i ain't that fussed. It was a bit of a side show for kids anyway. This may be bad for Nintendo, but a good thing for encouraging a new breed of bedroom coders.
Modders and coders creating there own games sees the industry go full circle and return to it's roots. Not a bad thing in my book. Hopefully if their interest continues they might want to work in the industry at some point.
It's the circle of ones and zeros.
Modders and coders creating there own games sees the industry go full circle and return to it's roots. Not a bad thing in my book. Hopefully if their interest continues they might want to work in the industry at some point.
It's the circle of ones and zeros.