Both the NES Classic Mini and its Japanese sibling the Famicom Mini have been hacked already, with the ultimate objective being the installation of additional games.
However, hacker Bakueikozo has discovered something rather unexpected during his efforts - a message left in the console's code:
This is the hanafuda captain speaking. Launching emulation in 3...2...1. Many efforts, tears and countless hours have been put into this jewel. So, please keep this place tidied up and don't break everything! Cheers, the hanafuda captain.
In case you didn't know, the hanafuda reference relates to Nintendo's history as a maker of Japanese playing cards. It's quite cool that such a message was left in the console's code, and hints that someone at Nintendo obviously knew that at some point the system would be hacked.
[source kotaku.com]
Comments 21
Lol!
This reminds me of the hidden messages in Commodore Amiga games source code.
Lol
Kinda like https://tcrf.net/Mad_Professor_Mariarti but much more polite.
Like it, at least they have not lost their sense of humour
@Waninoko
That's nothing compared to the person buying 200 monkeys.
@Waninoko @RadioShadow
If you've got some time to kill, here's the king of long winded developer rants: https://tcrf.net/Final_Fight_(Amiga)
(Copy and paste that link, as NL doesn't seem to like hyperlinking that last parenthesis.)
"Don't break anything"
Lol, they just did that!
Ah, finally you guys call it what they are: Hackers. Not those "data-mining" nonsense, just hackers. Finally!
@Henmii Agreed, seems hackers want to "legitimize" themselves by giving themselves a different name. The same way they make up in-community rules that mean "we're not reeeeeally hacking."
@Henmii
@DanteSolablood
Actually, there are subtle differences between "hacker" and "dataminer". These two words are not exactly interchangeable.
Generally speaking, a hacker's goal is to take over a computer process and/or system, to make it do things that weren't intended by the original developers. A dataminer, however, only parses through computer files in search of hidden data relevant to their interests.
I'd think the message was probably meant to be directed at the other devs, instead of future hackers.
@GeminiSaint Very true, however some hackers incorrectly use the term for themselves as it makes them feel more legitimate. There was the case of the autistic man who hacked into Pentagon systems to look for info on UFO's, I believe he considered himself a dataminer.
@SmaMan
Are you a fan of Larry Bundy Jr. by any chance? He did a video on this, which featured that rant. It's the first one that came to mind when I saw links to tcrf.
"Cracked, Trained, Nobbed-Up and ½-parted by the amazing [BLANK]!!!"
"Please consider buying some Virtual Console games instead!" XD
They still make those
The reddit thread on this says the Mini NES and Mini Famicom were programmed in Paris, France by whatever Nintendo team is located there. I didn't expect that, figured it was all done in Japan.
@Henmii @GeminiSaint
I wouldn't really call them hackers, either. There wasn't really any nefarious "stealing" or reverse engineering going on, since the source code for this thing has been out for a while now.
@edhe
Oh yes! And I can't wait until he gets to the Japanese game developer rants. I've read some of them on another site years ago and... yeah. Makes the examples quoted here so far look like children's literature.
Best pick-up line ever.
@SmaMan Links to some of those?
@PlywoodStick
The original article I read about these is probably long gone by now, but I do remember this one, archived at TCRF.
Again, I must warn you, this translated message treads into NSFW territory. That said, I remember another one that was much, much worse.
@SmaMan Wow... That's quite a dramatic peek into the early days of Atlus. I was particularly interested to learn that the Producer of Majin Tensei II, Yuichi Iwata, joined in midway and worked so hard on that early Atlus game.
Got any more good stories?
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