Hacker News Reader

Comment by graphe | Hacker News Reader

The vita sucked with no homebrew and the switch is another psp. You could run games off the pro duo or a microsd adapter but vita was locked down, slow and a bunch of lame remakes and psp titles. The PSP emulated up to the PS1.

By the time the switch was around people had been emulating on Android for a long time. They can do better graphics but there hasn’t been a game that made me feel like I needed 4K on handheld. The switch really is another golden age for gaming with the switch being hacked so quickly and having such good homebrew.

View on HN

At least regarding the homebrew, I disagree completely. While it took a while for the vita to be thoroughly hacked, it has been thoroughly hacked. And the benefits are numerous: Using normal SD cards, expanding the the integrated psp hardware into a virtual psp, reformatting of the internal storage, extending it by replacing the 3G modem.

Meanwhile the switch had the big bootrom usb stack exploit, but everything apart from the original SoC doesn't have a publicly known easy exploit (there are mod chips, but nothing like the 3DS/PS3/Wii U/Vita/PSP/...). There also wasn't that as much "cool" stuff to do as on older consoles with homebrew due to the hardware simply being an android tablet with controllers (which doesn't make a difference as a console, but makes it more boring homebrew wise). So there is the usual stuff (savegames, different controllers, piracy, themes, overclocking), but nothing unique to the switch.

By the time it was thoroughly hacked, it was too late. Much better hardware was around. People could do most of what the vita was eventually able to do with a phone.

Besides piracy what do you expect from the switch? The PSP had an ebook reader, movie player and could play mp3s as well as other cool old games very early in it's release. It could play media and play games up to the ps1. Modding a PSP vita today is like maxing out a citron 2cv instead of buying an e scooter. When the PSP came out it was amazing. Now it's yesterday's news. I'm impressed by the hackers that did it but the vita just doesn't impress even with hombrew today for the capabilities.

The PSP had amazing battery life and felt like a better Gameboy advance at the time.

I wish the person I sold my fully-loaded 1/2 TB MicroSD Vita to a grand adventure with a pocketable gaming/homebrew/emulation/piracy machine. Nothing matches it in tis market given its capibilities. The Switch lite tried, but I ain't touching that crap without HDMI output and no mods available.

Yeah, hacking portable console was interesting and useful on PSP/DS era even for a script kiddy users, because there are not much affordable portable devices. Now we have a smartphone, so it's for who enjoy hacking and run emulator and/or pirated games.

What really killed the scene for video games was better devices. I got a PS4 that was hacked and there's not much homebrew on it. I would update it to play online since I don't do cool stuff with it but I don't even play it enough to justify that. Now you can get a cheaper better htpc and use that instead of something like xbmc on Xbox.

The Vita had a ton of amazing JRPGs, niche weeb stuff, visual novels and indie games. Bit of a weird lineup but for many years it was my most used system. These days the Vita has been cracked wide open and there's loads of homebrew.

Right now it's only the early Switch units that are hackable.

Did you have a PSP? The vita was such a downgrade from it and the vita like the PSP mostly had remakes, except the vita had psp remakes too. It had no killer game or multimedia capabilities by the time it released. I can't name an exclusive on there at all, I don't even know if it had one.

Yes lol. I had a PSP shortly after launch. I still have one. And yes, the Vita had games and exclusives. Most of its launch lineup was exclusives, Uncharted Golden Abyss, Wipeout 2048, Hot Shots Golf World Invitational, etc. Even for just playing PSP games, the Vita is better. OLED display+ the ability to remap the right stick to the D-pad or buttons. Makes games like MH: Freedom Unite waaay better.

And a lot of indie games, JRPGs, Visual Novels just fit the handheld form factor better than PC or PS4 even if they weren't exclusive.

The PS Vita predated the Switch by 6+ years... by the time emulation and CPU speed to match its requirements, it was already discontinued by Sony. It fulfilled its purpose.

The vita was a direct downgrade from a PSP if you valued fast loading times, emulation, homebrew and piracy. Even if you didn't pirate you gained the ability to rebuy your PSP games, and new expensive games with an OLED that had less battery life.

A downgrade from UMDs? Perhaps you're referring to the density of textures and newer, more demanding game engines, because the UMDs were such a pain. Trying hard not to get hyperbolic here.

Never touched a UMD. With the microsd loading or memory like PSP go it was instantaneous especially at 333mhz.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com