#fun#games
4
switching around custom firmware
2023-01-08 · 2 min readmy personal history with custom firmwares & gaming consoles.
Something I just want to document is my love for modding consoles & custom frameworks. Getting started with the 3DS, I've slowly moved forward to my Wii and now even my Nintendo Switch. Late nights spent moving things back and forth from an SD card back and forth, rigging paperclips everywhere, and bricked consoles are just second nature to me at this point. Even with these "downsides" I think overall custom frameworks add to consoles (NOT piracy *cough* *cough*). Being able to back up your save files, learning what a pokérus is in Pokémon (the encounter rate for that is near 0), and sharing your games between consoles. Not only technically, but its just straight up fun to feel like a hacker—downloading, installing, and living on the edge of breaking your console (though really knowing you could probably fix it).Not only have I come close to bricking my Switch, but I literally have (not multiple times). Having to regenerate keys, taking random backups from the internet, and frantically typing away has honestly taught me the value of backups (I back everything up now :) ). Lastly it brought me back into programming when I didn't really care too much about it—writing config files, trying out lua, and making small mods. Without having that stress as a kid (OH NO U JUST BROKE A 200$ CONSOLE SANTAS GONNA KILL U) it was great for future debugging sessions, deep into the 100th GitHub issue that's still open with no documentation. Every small mod or custom shift I make to my console or computer, the closer I feel to it, to the point I honestly think I would be physically distraught if I either lost my switch or broke my computer. Either way thats my little rant/reflection on how modding is not only super cool, but also was literally one of my bigger reasons for who I am today.My bucket list item is contributing to one of these repos, but honestly I'm nowhere near good enough at C or C++ to make any decent contributions to exploits yet.
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