Product Description
It doesn't take long for an avid--or just wickedly clever--gamer to be chafed by the limitations of videogame software or hardware. If you want to go far beyond the obvious--whether you want to modify your console controller to work on other consoles, create your own text adventure, or modify your Game Boy--there's an awful lot of fun you can have for cheap or free, using the creative exploits of the gaming gurus. Gaming Hacks is the indispensable guide to cool things gamers can do to create, modify, and hack videogame hardware and software.
Everything from social exploits and tips to be used in MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) to soldering-iron heavy hardware hacks is covered in this extreme-cool hack guide written by gamers for gamers. Gaming Hacks offers a stunning variety of hacks, exploits, and other creative acts on both modern and archaic console hardware and today's PC hardware--one hundred detailed, ingenious hacks are included.
Gaming Hacks also includes detailed software-based looks at MMO (massively multiplayer) titles, FPS (first-person shooter) games, machinima (real-time movies created using game engines), emulation, save-game hacking, and many other miscellaneous subgenres and topics.
Gaming Hacks shows hardcore gamers how to configure the best FPS peripherals, hack the Nuon DVD Player/Gaming System, modify their Game Boy, watch movies and listen to music and their Sega Dreamcast, and much, much more.
Gaming Hacks shows you how to do things you didn't know could be done. If you want more than your average gamer--you want to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, make your games do what you want them to do Gaming Hacks will show you how. You don't need to be gaming guru to pick up Gaming Hacks; you'll be one when you put it down.
About the Author
Excerpted from Gaming Hacks by Simon Carless. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Play homebrew games on Dreamcast’s LCD-toting memory card.
One of the more unique aspects of the Sega Dreamcast is the visual memory unit, a 128-KB memory card with a 48 × 32 resolution LCD monochrome screen. The VMU has clever uses for memory card management (you can manipulate and delete saves without plugging it into a Dreamcast and even connect two memory cards to trade saves), but we’re really interested in it for its ability to store games. It comes with a battery and built-in controls (a D-pad minicontroller and two buttons), so you can play standalone games using it, even though it normally plugs into your Dreamcast controller.
Basically, the device resembles a teeny tiny Nintendo Game Boy. As such, it’s eminently hackable.
VMU History
The VMU, also known as the Visual Memory System (VMS) in the United States, never reached its full potential during the height of the Dreamcast’s popularity. If connected to your Dreamcast controller, it would sometimes show the game, logo, vital statistics, or other information while playing games. Some multiplayer games provided personal data, hidden from your opponents.
You can also use standalone VMU games with a few commercial titles. Games such as Power Stone use standalone VMU games intriguingly. Sega’s Sonic Adventure is particularly interesting because it allows you to grow a cute-looking Chao creature on your VMU and then import this data into the Dreamcast game. There were also several official VMU games downloadable from the Internet via the Dreamcast’s web browser, for titles such as Namco’s excellent fighting game Soul Calibur. However, with the Dreamcast’s cancellation and the homebrew scene’s interest, the VMU has seen significant and interesting independent development efforts.
Acquiring Your VMU
As discussed previously, you should be able to find a Dreamcast VMU for anywhere between $5 and $10 at your local specialty game store or on eBay. They come in a variety of fetching colors, with even limited-edition VMUs sporting Godzilla and Sonic Team themes. White and transparent are the most common colors, so don’t spend too much time collecting. Just pick one up.When you track down a VMU, whether bought in the store or unearthed in the closet, you may find that its batteries have died. The unit takes two CR2032 lithium batteries, also found in watches and cameras, so it’s easy to track down replacements for around $5 for the pair. Just remove the small screw holding on the back compartment and replace the batteries to return your VMU to fighting shape.
Arming Your VMU
Transferring files from your PC to your Dreamcast may not be exactly straightforward. You have several possible choices:
Hop online
If you can browse the Web from your Dreamcast ("Use Your Dreamcast Online" [Hack #54]), simply type—the Dreamcast keyboard is an optional and handy extra here!—a relevant URL, and then click on the DC links to download VMU games directly to your memory card.
The advantage of this method is that you don’t need to burn CDs to manipulate VMU games. A major disadvantage is that you’ll need to take your Dreamcast online somehow, which probably means you need a dial-up ISP or an ultra-expensive Dreamcast broadband adaptor.
XDP for fun and VMU profit
A simple if dubious method for acquiring VMU saves is to burn a disc of the XDP Standalone utilities and web browser package from the Psilocybin Dreams site.
Click one of the browser options to reach the main menu, then use the digital controller to choose the Menu option. Finally, choose the VMU Mini Games option to see a web page (as if you were actually online) that includes over 30 freeware, freely distributable VMU games. This includes the vast majority of the games we’ll talk about in the next section. However, the disc also contains highly customized versions of Dreamcast browser software that, while possibly being abandonware in some abstract sense, the developers may not have permission to distribute. Bear this in mind before downloading. This solution works because the developers burned an offline web page and a web browser onto the same disc, so it’s a little like you’re online.
VMU copy
The final, incomplete solution unfortunately works only for vanilla VMU data saves right now, not VMU games.sunsite.dk/dl.php. VMUCopy allows you to burn up to 19 VMU savesinto a \VMUFILES directory on a disc image alongside the VMUCopy executable (called 1st_read.bin). If you then use a boot disc such as DCHakker and swap in your VMUCopy disc, you can run 1st_read.bin and then use the up/down directions on the joypad and the A button to upload them to your VMU (see "Burn Dreamcast Homebrew Discs" [Hack #57]).
While this option is excellent if you have normal Dreamcast save games that you’d like to transfer to your Dreamcast without going online and grabbing them, there’s currently no functionality to detect if a save is actually a VMU game, so VMU game support is broken. Perhaps this will change in the future, though.
