rC3 Talk: Hacking the Game & Watch

At this year's Chaos Computer Club congress, called the rC3, I gave a talk about the adventures of hacking the Game & Watch. This is the recording of that talk, I hope you enjoy it!

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:06:00 - The hardware
00:08:30 - Debugging port
00:11:10 - RAM dump analysis
00:12:35 - Dumping the flash
00:19:48 - Dumping the original firmware
00:24:40 - Getting Homebrew and DOOM onto the device
00:30:05 - Emulators
00:32:54 - The community

Links:

[richardhead]

_It just makes sense that a device with such a nice screen and powerful processor should be able to play more than a couple factory-installed games._ 🤔

[nicco]

I'm glad that people like you make these things and hack these seemingly unhackable things. Without people like you, we wouldn't have all these things that we use today pretty regularly. Thank you!

[Dogelition]

Great talk!

There's a small mistake around 17:11 :
When you have a ciphertext encrypted with AES-CBC and you flip n bits in one of the encrypted blocks, only the corresponding plaintext block + the bits at the same indices in the next plaintext block will be corrupt. The following blocks will decrypt normally. So if you set n bytes to zero (assuming they all belong to the same block), you'd get 16 + n corrupted bytes in the plaintext.

[abysJaq]

I have followed your progress since day one on twitter and YouTube, Watched the live Rc3 with a great intro! Great talk, fun and informative!

[afox]

Dispite the fact that i have the technical knowledge of a potato i found this video very interesting and informative thank you!

[dewbiedew]

Loved the intro! I am not that technical, but I found this video to be very informative and well paced. Glad that you put this video together! Appreciate all the work on this even if it is more of a curiosity for me than anything else.

[Evercade_Effect]

I'm impressed this project has come a long way. It's only a matter of time before hacked ones show up on Ebay.

[TheAppelsiini]

This must be the best console reverse-engineering talk ever! The game & watch turns out to be a great fit in terms of complexity for hardware hacking and homebrew!

[PexySancakes]

People like you survive the apocalypse. Good job.

[TensorWave]

8:17 I love how you moved your whole setup to make the view clear for the right side.

[dccelly]

It has been said but, great intro! Thank you for all the hard work you’ve put in for this. No way I can duplicate the process to try this myself.

[eleuthi]

This just popped up in my reommended, and I gotta say... This is REALLY Cool!

[nsp]

I wish I could give this video a thousand likes. Absolutely amazing mate! Great video! And what a community you have built around this little device. I can't wait to see more.

[itsworkinprogress]

Thank you for this very informative video. I've never looked into hardware hacking before, but you are a very good, easy-to-listen-to teacher.

[sucotronic]

That was a great presentation and summary of a lot of time and hard work invested in the game and watch. Thanks for sharing it with us and opening everything ;)

[Mr._Sandman]

I can't wait to see what else comes from this! My hope is to turn mine into a classic mario\nintendo\g&w item.

[pitust]

This talk was awesome (I watched it during rC3).

[valshaped]

You've inspired me to get a G&W of my own. Super excited to unlock it and use it for Nefarious Purposes, like super-low-quality DOOM

[xbenedikt]

Hands down the best CCC talk this year!

[jackmaginnes]

Hell yes I am so hyped on this. Working on moving into some hardware hacking, and who doesn't love pissing off Nintendo