'Why don't you just hack a Vita?'

I love the PlayStation Vita, but I'm not sure how a modded PS Vita stacks up against all of the litany of portable emulators we already have out on the market...

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[RetroGameCorps]

Agreed, hacking the Vita is very easy and simple until it isn't. I've probably done it 10 times and every time some new hurdle will present itself. But that's the fun, right? RIGHT?

[BryceDixonDev]

As someone who's been into console modding off and on for about a decade, the reason people are such strong advocates for using text guides rather than video guides isn't out of elitism, but because text guides are *significantly* easier to keep up to date.

If something in the process changes due to a system update or just the homebrew itself changing in a way that will cause the old process to either not work or damage your system, I guarantee you will continue to find the outdated video guides for the old method around for years since there's no way of updating them on YouTube. Old text guides will stick around, too, of course, but the likelihood of the primary text guide having updated links, descriptions, or even screenshots will always be higher than a video guide which requires recording, editing, voice over, and then getting stomped by the YouTube algorithm prioritizing the old, now outdated guides because they have more views.

[Noah-msyw]

As an avid console modder, (modded Wii, Wii U, Vita, 3DS, and a Switch.) I can say easily that the worst thing you did was relying on the video guides, almost universally the written guides, and sub reddits for these communities will have the most up to date info on these things, also don't forget that most of these communities really do just have many people who could easily help you if you just reach out to them.

[zvb]

I actually just modded my Vita about 4 days ago (that's how I found your video). I didn't have any of these issues at all. To anyone wanting to do this, *definitely* use the written guide. Stuff is changing and improving practically every week, so it's much better to use an up to date written guide than a video a few months old. It is good to have a video in addition to the written guide to actually see how to do some things, but don't use it as the primary. A lot of the issues he had is very likely that the micro SD wasn't set up right or something along those lines.

With that being said, it is *not* the greatest retro emulation device. Like he said, for SNES or other older consoles, this isn't it. What this is *amazing* for is PSP and PS1 emulation. In my experience, both have been flawless. It is also worth noting that there is an entire generation of Vita games, many of which will probably be new to you. So for those 3 consoles, this is a no brainer.

It's unfortunate he had so many issues, because now people will automatically assume it will be a miserable experience. It wasn't any more difficult than any other console for me, but just like other consoles, you have to take some time to understand everything. I'm glad I modded mine. I also agree that the community can be very annoying about pretending it's the best emulator in the world.

And yes, the homebrew browser that comes with it by default doesn't work anymore. There are new ones that actually work though.

Wishing you all the best!

[probablytaha]

Say what you want about the Vita, but that soft theme playing in the background while you navigate through your games and apps is a banger

[jackbeknown]

"I don't want to read a wall of text, I'll just watch this video tutorial instead"

Yeah that was your first mistake. Video tutorials are only worth following if they were brought out in the last few weeks at most. The hacking process changes constantly, so that's why everyone points towards the 'wall of text' to do it properly.

[Lisa_Minci]

I'll bet 99% of this would have been avoided if this guy would just read the text guide instead of following a video that's like three firmware versions outdated

[jtothebell]

The PSN password thing I'm pretty sure is Sony making your life difficult, not the hack. I ran into the same thing trying to buy a game for my vita a few weeks ago. The resolution was to go into my PSN account on a web browser and generate a single use password for my vita and then put that in on the Vita instead of my regular password.

[Wormy]

Another tip: the emulation blurriness isn’t a Vita thing, it’s a Retroarch thing. The fidelity is why Retroarch has its “Filters” and “Overlay” features, to help out fidelity.

[areawantedalien]

You made this hard for yourself. When I modded mine it took about 10 minutes. After that I got the stuff I wanted and no issue.

[Keanine]

It's interesting that you had so many issues with it. I have had a flawless experience with Vita hacking personally. The biggest issue used to be reliance on the PSP N64 emulation where only SM64 ran at full speed, but since the Vita version of Daedalus released it sorted out those issues and increased performance for a lot of games

[ricioly]

This was painful to watch. When I hacked mine I just had to go on a website on the vita browser and it would automatically install vitashell.

[mfRoge]

I hacked my latest Vita sometime last year and followed the Vita hacks guide. I feel like a lot of what you went through could've been avoided had you read the guide. I understand that you need the video guide but it was worth reading the hacks guide because it covers everything and is up to date. The homebrew shop IS broken though. At least for me it is but luckily you don't need it to install homebrew. Yeah, whoever said it was easy was definitely lying but i guess if you do stuff like that often, it won't seem very difficult.

[wolfgangzoppelt]

I think a lot of people have covered this already, but the way you went about hacking your vita was all wrong. Like you I enjoy watching video tutorials because I like to visually see what to do, and that’s what I did for my first go of Vita hacking. I too had many problems with getting it to work right and eventually months later, I just flashed the system and restarted again. This time around I used the vita hack guide and it worked flawlessly, I had no hiccups in getting it to run because everything has been made fairly easy to setup. I don’t think it’s fair to call it a bad hack and say that you are disappointed in the people who recommended this hack to you because you’re the one who didn’t set it up properly. The vita is an amazing portable hack that allows you to play a wide variety of games with little problem.

[IYamJayJay]

I can always count on wulf to literally never turn off bilinear filtering for gba games. Its not scalin foo, its default on half of all emulators ever

[MegaOverclocked]

Honestly the issues faced in hacking the Vita in this video seems like user error. The Vita was the first device I ever hacked and what got me fully into homebrew and emulation scene. Following the Vita Hacks guide site holds you hand to the point that its nearly impossible to find oneself in a position where they have no idea what went wrong. I get that watching a video guide can be more comfortable and helpful, but a lot of them work under the assumption that viewer have some knowledge going in which can lead them to leaving out information that may seem obvious to some but essential info for others to know.

[NoG-Inc.]

ok... bro you honestly made this so much more complicated then it actually is. i dont understand how you had so many issues with such a straight forward procedure. not all games work seamlessly but for the majority work great. im happy i hacked mine.

[MonteXMat]

The fact that he spent 3h over multiple days on a 20min hack says it all.

[mat_max]

The reason why gba looked so bad on the vita is probably because you probably had bilinear filter turned on + non-integer scaling. The best thing to do with retroarch on handhelds if you don't want the letterboxing that comes with integer scaling is to use a shader preset called sharp-bilinear-simple found inside the interpolation folder in the slang shaders. It will first do a integer scaling to the closest multiple and then use bilinear scaling from there to fit the screen resolution. It will be just a little bit blurry while retaining pixel perfect ratio instead of the warped pixels.

Also, did you tried the snes9x 2005 core for the snes or the regular snes9x (or bsnes) core? because the 2005 is the one with the best performance so is what people use for handhelds

[MindofaMadman]

Guess I was one of the lucky ones. Found a few videos from the creator Robles Junior. Walked me through the initial mods, the PS2vita setup, then the downgrade process (needed to be on 3.60 Henkaku enzo to use Adrenaline Psp emulator which was main reason I wanted to mod mine), even the sharkfood setup to run games that need higher firmware and I don't run into any issues and still run and try new things.