How to Hack the NES Classic Mini

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2017-02-14 | By Maker.io Staff

There has been huge hype around the NES classic mini in 2016 and as expected they have been consistently selling out with limited available units. Those who are lucky enough to get hold of the mini console have been thrilled by the 30 classic pre-installed games taking back those early youth days of the 80’s.

It hasn’t taken too long for some enthusiastic boffin in the NES community to hack the console to give the ability to load any classic NES rom up to around 85 in total, much to everyone’s delight. With most community forums come great hacks and GBX.ru is no exception.

The Hack

The first step with this hack is to use the FEL subroutine of the AllWinners SOC boot ROM to dump the unit’s flash memory, (yes, the NES classic uses a AllWinner SoC like so many dev boards we have seen pop up last year using the AllWinner SoC). From this point it’s a matter of using certain tools to upload extra ROM files before re-burning the modified image to the back to the console. The tool used to do this is called “hakchi”, and it requires a Super Mario saved game to be placed into a particular slot to work properly, although there have been some new revisions that do not require this method.

This hack does not come without its risks and there are several. In addition to actually bricking your console there has been a number of Anti-Virus programs blocking the tool from use.

If you are still interested in creating your very own Retro Arcade, then check out this guide which uses the Raspberry Pi 3 and RetroPie OS.

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