After years on lockdown, PlayStation Vita has finally been jailbroken (you still remember the Vita, right?). Unlike the PSP which was cracked practically overnight, it’s taken five years for the powerful portable to crack and now that it has, say hello to classic gaming.

 some clever folks at the hacking collective Team Molecule have come up with a solution that fully unlocks the Vita hardware for homebrew developers. Dubbed HENkaku, the jailbreak exploit not only works on the latest 3.60 Vita firmware, but also requires very little user intervention to execute. All you have to do is head over to the official HENkaku website on the Vita, tap on the install button, and then sit back and let the hack work its magic. The one drawback is that the jailbreak isn’t permanent, so if the Vita is fully powered off it needs to be reinstalled. 

I’ve never been much of a fan of retro-gaming on new consoles – after all, I didn’t buy my Vita or PS4 for that matter to play games from 1992. Either give me glorious 1080p or let’s pretend you don’t exist is my motto but for some, the glory of the past is everything and hey, who am I to judge?

 Once installed, the exploit allows users to access the Vita’s file system via FTP and transfer across homebrew packages. Those games and apps are then displayed on the home screen ready for use. Software is relatively scarce at the moment given how new the exploit is, although a Vita version of Doom and a handful of emulators are available for the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Neo Geo Pocket, Mega Drive (Genesis), and SNES. Users can also install VHBL, a PSP-based homebrew menu that features more fully developed emulators. 

So, if your Vita has been collecting dust and you have an affinity for crappy classic games, it might be time to fire it once again and game on.

Discuss:

Do you care to play classic games via emulators?

[Via Ars Technica]