Review - 3DO Homebrew Pack #1

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Trev
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Review - 3DO Homebrew Pack #1

Post by Trev » Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:45 pm

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Good 'ol Game Guru ... what power do you hide? Being greeted by it's familiar screen upon loading this disc, I at once renewed my determination to hack the device! "The 3DO homebrew scene will match the Jag's yet" I proclaimed with confidence. That was until reality set in. Quickly I remembered that I had absolutely no clue of how to even begin such a process. :( So, looks like I won't be building the multiplayer's next great game. But, I'm doing something that's almost as good ...

I'm posting a tiny review ...

of an obscure disc ...

for a niche platform ...

on a small forum. :roll:

Anyway, while this disc is certainly of interest it lies only with the serious collector, and mainly for the promise it holds rather than it's contents. The 'homebrew demos', '3DO sdk samples', and 'other stuff' do contain games, but they are very simple. The rest of the content is essentially screen savers that do a good job of showing off 3DO's graphical tricks but nothing more. It doesn't impress a great deal once the 3DO rose colored goggles come off (thankfully I've had permanent 3DO laser surgery 8) )
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Actually, having experienced the bulk of this content on the now very rare Icebreaker II release, my excitement has obviously lessened. And while it is always handy to have a storage manager, I've no real need for it owning both a Game Guru and several demo discs with one included. Is one look at this disc enough? Yes. I was curious, but am now satisfied with no real need to re-visit.

Still, this shows that homebrew is alive if hardly thriving on 3DO (IBII & GDG's Onside & Powerslide notwithstanding) MNEMONIC promises disk #2 which hopefully will arrive soon, and with meatier content. Like many 3DO collector's, healthy homebrew activity on the 3DO is my wish for the future. :)

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-Trev
Last edited by Trev on Fri Mar 02, 2012 9:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by 3DO Experience » Mon Jun 01, 2009 5:32 pm

I would like to add that I tested the Memory Manager on the disc last night. Although it is the one from the memory unit it does not work with the FZ-EM256 Memory Unit anymore, just the 3DO's internal memory.
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Post by 3DOKid » Mon Jun 01, 2009 7:14 pm

I have never, ever, ever, got 3DO game guru too find anything. Ol' Gir Draxa used to churn out 3DO Cheats with it like a churning thing, but me? Not a jot. I got painfully close to finding a cheat in Novastorm. So much so I can actually see the words Cheat Toggle but that's about it.

I too battled with the dream of a 3DO hack to load un-encrypted software. But despite actually 'knowing' why we simply couldn't just do it, the realisation took a bit longer to reach home. The words RSA still burning on my retina.

Still, hope springs eternal that one day another disk will emerge. I kind of enjoyed Ice Breaker II but the developer hates me because I sarcastic about Ice Break 1. Ah well.

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Post by Trev » Mon Jun 01, 2009 8:07 pm

You reminded of something I've been wondering for a while ... whatever happened to the re-launch of Gir Draxa's 3DO & Cd-i collectives?
Last edited by Trev on Tue Jun 02, 2009 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by 3DOKid » Mon Jun 01, 2009 10:12 pm

I don't know. I miss him. :(

He sort of appears, has a flurry of activity, and vanishes again. He's almost mythical in many ways. He PM'd me once. I'm that special.

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Post by desiv » Fri Jul 10, 2009 5:04 pm

This has me thinking about the key.
I haven't found much information about it, other than that "it's RSA".

I realize that back in the day, RSA keys were impenetrable and would take thousands of years with a bank of supercomputers crunching to brute force them.

But it's been awhile since then.

It seems to me that it would be feasible now to do this. Now, I'm not saying we could start it on our desktops and crack it in a week.

But, how long have we been waiting?

If I could start a process running one one of my PCs and leave it running (assuming I could have it stop and start for reboots and pick up where it left off..), and say it takes 2 years..

Well, then in 2 years, we'd have it. I don't know the number or time, but it seems to me it would be worth looking at. Now, I know, someone out there has the key and just won't release it yet. Maybe they never will, maybe they will.

Admittedly, I've written code, but don't consider myself a coder. And the last "brute force" I did was something that involved a 1200 baud modem and a war dialer. So, unless I find a great document, it might take me a while to figure it out. But it seems possible.

Now, if we can find someone who knows how to write distributed code (runs on multiple computers), it would be faster.

For those who think it would be inpossible, there's this:
RSA have a series of challenges for factoring public keys. The largest broken so far is the 512 bit value (RSA-155 since it has 155 decimal digits). Details are at: http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/chal ... sa155.html
polynomial selection 2.2 months
factoring 5.2 months
machines involved 292 plus a Cray for the last stage

So it might take a while, but it seems to me, a while is better than never.

Just thinking...
I'll take a look around for info on RSA and brute force. If anyone has anymore information on the particulars of the keys 3DO uses (bit size, etc?), that'd be great...

desiv

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Post by 3DO Experience » Fri Jul 10, 2009 11:34 pm

desiv wrote:Admittedly, I've written code, but don't consider myself a coder. And the last "brute force" I did was something that involved a 1200 baud modem and a war dialer.
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Post by phatrat1982 » Fri Jun 17, 2011 2:41 pm

HomeBrew on the 32X appears to be alive, I played 2 home brew games one was a port of Sonic the Hedgehog and the other was Wolfenstein and that one was actually pretty good.

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Post by Austin » Sat Jun 18, 2011 12:24 am

I knew of Wolfenstein, but what do you mean by a port of Sonic? Divulge the details, please... :D

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Post by phatrat1982 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:27 am

well it was only a preliminary hack, basically somebody got Sonic 1 Genesis to run on 32X hardware and bypassed the Genesis somehow or something like that. It was not very stable if I remember correctly but he said the only reason he was doing it was to learn the system. I started out trying to program for 32X because it was always been a dream of mine to see what the console was truly capable of, sadly my programming skills suck and I never got very far. The best I could do was animate a Christmas tree and that took me three weeks.

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Post by Austin » Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:35 am

That doesn't sound right.. The 32X needs the Genesis to operate, lol.. I don't see what good porting the first Sonic over would do either, unless they planned on beefing up the visuals.. I'll have to look into it further when I get home..

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Post by phatrat1982 » Sat Jun 18, 2011 1:42 am

ok here it is. I am not sure what it is all about but read up on it.


http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_32X

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