ModChat

I didn't think we'd be doing back-to-back extra long episodes of ModChat, but here we are! The progress across all console scenes hasn't slowed down it seems! Talking about a ton here including the Switch getting TWO Atmosphere updates, the current status of the PS3 scene due to the 4.93 update, and explaining the complexities surrounding the PS5 12.00 jailbreak. Not everyone out there is a Star Wars fan, but there's good reasons to be one! Oh, and if you're on the latest firmware, there's some fun to be had. The PSP, a handheld near and dear to me, also gets some AMAZING developments in the form of exFAT support and ExtremeSpeed. Literally!

This might be the most densely packed episode of ModChat released to date! With some HUGE accomplishments such as the Xbox One's bootrom being hacked, a Linux port for PS5 being announced, multiple major releases for both PS4 and PS5, and the legendary SEGAGAGA being translated to English.

We've got a wide range of generations to cover this episode from the Atari 2600 all the way up to the PS5! We start off with some major Switch news with SciresM announcing his retirement from the scene. PS4 gets some major love with the long anticipated release of Vue After Free, allowing consoles up to firmware 13.00 to be quickly and easily jailbroken! If you're wanting to move onto PS5, don't sleep on these PS4 developments... Some of them are actually helping to improve current and future PS5 developments! We also go back to the PS3 as BadWDSD with qCFW has finally released! Well, kinda, tune in for more on that. Oh, and of course for some Xbox 360 developments that flew under the radar.

A bit late in the month, but we've got a giant update blast ahead! Tons of game news here from Twilight Princess being decompiled, to plenty of homebrew ports of games to different consoles such as Marvel Rivals and Sonic Mania. Even oddities like Supra Mayro Kratt and OpenWRT running on the Xbox 360 of all things! PS2 DVD entrypoints continue to come in the form of YADE, plus some love for the original Xbox with XboxMemCard for RP2040/RP2350 devices and some helpful 3D printable tools for 1.6 RAM mods. The PS4 and PS5 also get a TON of coverage here, starting with the PS4's progress so far with the upcoming PlayStation Vue entrypoint being Vue After Free. The news of the PS5's ROM keys being found is also covered here, just not in the way I'm sure most people are expecting. We even cover the rise and fall of a previously hyped PS5 jailbreak! Plenty more in here, so tune in and enjoy.

Wrapping up 2025 strong with some current and upcoming developments ranging from the Dreamcast all the way up to the PS4! We discuss the latest developments with the upcoming hard drive based Xbox 360 softmod, as well as give a ton of love to the Dreamcast with some impossible port builders and even modern software such as GIMP supporting the Dreamcast in the modern day. The original Xbox gets some love with the upcoming release of the Kratos board, plus the entire family of DS consoles get the gift of the DSpico. There's also a TON of PS4 news here! From the release of a BD-JB based jailbreak working up to 12.52, a tease of another BD-JB based entrypoint working up to 13.02, a whole different entrypoint in the form of the PlayStation Vue application, and even a port of the Netflix entrypoint! Oh yeah, and a CFW enabled PSP takes front and center stage at a WWE event.

Starting off with the original Xbox getting a new cosmetic hardmod to introduce power and eject button sounds, as well as a return to form with XBMC4XBOX Redux's release. We also discuss the latest Atmosphere CFW update as it contains some pretty important information for CFW users thanks to the latest system firmware update. The PS4 and PS5 get a lot more love thanks to a new kernel exploit release working on both systems. There's also a few entry points which have gotten awesome developments with Y2JB being paired with Lapse for a full jailbreak, as well as new entry points being seen with the Netflix app and now games using the Ren'py engine!

Xbox-Scene's Modfest returns for the second time! Participate in some friendly competition, maybe win some prizes, and help the community with some innovations all in one go! Aside from that announcement, RXDK gets some more love with its own Neighborhood release spanning across all major operating systems. Clone Hero gets a homebrew port to the Xbox 360, and even more love for the sake of customization comes with a really helpful Aurora skin making guide. Even the Xbox One and Series get some coverage here with the open source release of the ASPECT2 PCB! It isn't all Xbox centric news around here though, especially with the release of Y2JB for PS5. The GameCube also gets some love thanks to the release of Cubiboot. Finally, 'tis the season for spooky games, and why not celebrate it with an integrated randomizer for the classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night?

Tons of scenes heating up this month as the weather cools down! We discuss a new update to the modified original Xbox backwards compatibility files for the Xbox 360, now with individual games being able to be configured with additional fixes. Insignia Live gives us an awesome progress update regarding support for EA titles and a bit about the Xbox 360 side of house. Speaking of the Xbox 360, we get two major pieces of news! One being the release of ABadAvatar, a new entrypoint for Bad Update that no longer requires any game to load it. SSD support is now available for all consoles, including totally stock retail systems! Anyone wanting to know about BadWDSD gets a taste of what the developers have been cooking up in the background for the last few months. The PS5 gets a bit of love with Kstuff being updated to work up to 9.60, with more to come it seems! The Switch has a few projects highlighted for it, along with the Pokémon mini handheld of all things, and an awesome preservation accomplishment has been achieved for the arcade build of Soul Calibur 2!

Only a single topic being covered for this episode, but this was big enough to warrant a quick ModChat to discuss the excitement around this announcement. Grimdoomer has accomplished the impossible and achieved yet another milestone in the world of game console reverse engineering by showing evidence of a real softmod! No RGH, no JTAG, no Bad Update. Seeing is believing, so see for yourself!

Starting off this month with PicoLoader being released for the GameCube, an open-source project which utilizes the power of a Raspberry Pi Pico and intercepts the DVD drive to quickly load a piece of homebrew such as Swiss. We also see some awesome releases for the PS4, allowing for some pretty quick and stable jailbreaks up to firmware 12.02! DIY Game Boy cartridges, custom soundtracks for the original Xbox, and the dramatic improvements to Bad Update on Xbox 360 all get some highlights in this episode. Oh, and we could start saying the Switch can handle optical media, more on that at the end.

Starting off with some Switch 2 news this month, the same month the Switch 2 released! We discuss a Day 1 Userland ROP Chain demonstrated on the Switch 2, the bans using MiG Flash cartridges, the beginnings of a microSD Express adapter, and get clarification on how far SciresM will support the Switch 2's homebrew scene. In Xbox centric news, rumors regarding an Xbox Classics program are clarified, along with a program similar to Cheat Engine being ported to the Xbox 360, and some awesome patches are shown to run the original Xbox's Dashboard at native 720p! Every model of the PS2 can now officially take on a Memory Card based entrypoint thanks to the release of ProtoPwn. PSP users get some love with BatterySteve to help with some aging and misleading batteries out there.

A ton of awesome releases and advancements in this month's ModChat! First comes the release of the Lapse Kernel Exploit for both PS4 12.02 and PS5 10.05 firmwares. BadHTAB for the PS3 evolves into BadWDSD, a separate but better and more exciting development for PS3 owners allowing further access now on Super Slim variants! The original Xbox revision 1.6 gets a huge development as well, now with the ability to reflash the on-board BIOS for the first time. We touch up on some Switch news for the first time in a while, with a new Atmosphere CFW update for the latest Switch firmware, but not all good news when we discuss the EULA changes. However, some reverse engineering efforts towards the WaveBird receiver, Mario Party 4, Mario Kart 64, and even Dinosaur Planet have all released this month!

A whole lot has happened since the last episode of ModChat, and there's still been a few topics not covered within this episode! For the ones we do go into, the first is covering some major progress on the PlayStation Home revival project Home Laboratory, which is now available by default on the XMB for the latest PS3HEN and Evilnat CFW users on PS3! The PS3 also gets some renewed Hypervisor related interest in the form of BadHTAB, which is based on old HTAB related work from geohot and has been worked on here again in 2025. The Xbox 360 side of house gets more love, with Sonic Unleashed being ported to PC thanks to XenonRecomp, both of which have been released. The OG Xbox gets a fancy new payload in the form of Skeleton Key which serves as a Swiss Army Knife for stock OG Xbox users to run and quickly have several powerful tools available on their screen with minimal effort. Finally, a new FATXplorer tool releases in the form of XDON, allowing for easy Xbox and Xbox 360 drive mounting over a network.

At last the long awaited Xbox 360 Hypervisor exploit shown by Grimdoomer has arrived in the form of Bad Update! This means that unsigned code can be run on any Xbox 360 up to Kernel/Dashboard 17559 using only a USB drive and the NTSC version of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. This does not require any other modifications to be done to the hardware and can be performed on an unopened and unmodified console, making this the first software-only exploit available for the latest system software version! As this episode will only be focused on Bad Update, we walk through where this started from Tony Hawk's Pro Strcpy, read through a couple of blog posts Grimdoomer made leading up to the release, and of course we set up and try Bad Update for ourselves before giving some final thoughts.

Some great new functionality being added to consoles old, new, and even a whole new FOSS based handheld to check out! The wpa2psp plugin for PSP was released and took off, allowing most PSP consoles to get back onto modern WiFi networks again. The PS Vita gets some more love with a couple more ports, one for Carmageddon and another being the Ultimate Spiderman game on Android. We even go to the library on this episode thanks to the Video Game History Foundation's launch of a digital library! PS5's JAR Loader gets updated as we now see read and write access on firmwares up to 7.61! A newer minimalist type setup for a PlayStation ODE is shown thanks to PicoStation's recent updates allowing for better compatibility across the PS1's library. After the pleasant surprise of Grand Theft Auto 3 being ported to the Dreamcast, we're in for another surprise seeing the beginnings of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City being ported over! A whole new system you can build from scratch, the Game Bub, is a project we check out being a handheld FPGA console compatible with the Game Boy family of games. Finally, we take a look at... McDonald's India API security? Yeah, I won't explain that one, just give it a listen and a laugh.

A Dreamcastic (or maybe Dreamtastic?) episode of ModChat starting off 2025 with some awesome ports for Sega's last console! We talk about the recent Grand Theft Auto III port being released in an open-alpha test, the DOOM 64 port, and even the beginning of a port of Xash3D for Half-Life! PC players also got an AWESOME port of Star Fox 64 in the form of Starship. Evilnat has been working hard on his custom firmware for PS3 which has results in the final release for 4.91.2, officially being out of beta! If you needed more DOOM, you can now have more DOOM, this time around in a PDF! Finally, we talk about how a recent Nintendo service announcement might have been the greatest advertisement Pretendo could have ever asked for.

Last episode of the year for ModChat! This time around we've got some awesome developments for original Xbox developers, a whole Lightshow for the Xbox 360 just in time for the holidays, the power of the PS3 being shown on a Raspberry Pi 5, and finally some Dreamcast secrets many could have dreamed of.

An Xbox centric episode of ModChat with a side of preservation to wrap up the month of November! We cover what seems to be the first Xbox 360 Slim 3D printable shell for use with a DVD-driveless console out there. Xbox-Scene gets a bit of a shout with the announcement of their upcoming Modfest, covering both hardware and software categories across all Xbox consoles. Doom also now runs on the original Xbox at the BIOS level with the aptly named DoomBIOS release! An ambitious homebrew project being a Breath of the Wild demake for the Nintendo DS leaks out onto AliExpress of all places, and finally we cover a bit of preservation! GOG's efforts have evolved into the GOG Preservation Program for PC, and if you've ever wanted to purchase Unreal or Unreal Tournament digitally but can't... Why not just download them? Don't worry, Epic Games has given a few links their specific blessing.

Some truly hyper news over Hypervisors for not one, but TWO different consoles! We discuss the recent PS5 Hypervisor exploit released named Byepervisor, the Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx shut down, and give some credit where credit is due with... Well, a hidden credits screen found in Majora's Mask on the GameCube! We also discuss two amazing breakthroughs on the Xbox 360: One being a Hypervisor exploit for the latest kernel version, and the other making it possible to reflash some SSD models to work on retail kernel, unmodified Xbox 360 consoles!

Just a couple of topics for this month's episode, but we first talk about XWine1, an upcoming translation layer capable of running dumped Xbox One games on Windows. Second is a new jailbreak for the PS5 in the form of UTMX, currently working through WebKit up to firmware 5.00 and with capabilities of working up to 7.61 using an alternative entrypoint!