Why HENkaku is such a massive success
HENkaku was released two weeks ago, and if Yifanlu‘s statistics are to be trusted, this has been a massive success for the hacking community, with more than 25’000 installs in the first week. By comparison, the former hack Rejuvenate had about 10K installs in its entire lifespan of more than a year.
That’s not surprising, those of you who have tried Rejuvenate know that the hack, despite being promising, was not convenient at all. It required your PS Vita to be plugged to a computer in order to launch every single homebrew, required a daily email to be sent to your Vita in order to refresh your “license”, a limitation that did not come from the hack but from the tool it was relying on: PSM. The PSM dev app was required to run the hack, and of course Sony pulled it off its PSN store shortly after the release.
In comparison, HENkaku is a bliss to install and comes with virtually no limitation. It also runs on firmware 3.60, which although not being the latest firmware, has basically all the latest functionality of the Vita.
Rejuvenate was a ray of hope, but it was just a sparkle that died quickly. It wasn’t due to lack of effort on the scene’s end though: I drove a homebrew competition with $1000 in cash prizes for the Rejuvenate hack, but that wasn’t enough to bring more users to the hack. That effort wasn’t in vain though: It’s thanks to the revitalize competition that we had native Vita homebrews such as VitaQuake, Snes9XVita and SMSPlusvita available on day 1 for HENkaku. The winner of the Revitalize competition, VitaShell, was used as the base for HENkaku’s main program MolecularShell.
VitaQuake
In hindsight, it’s almost as if everything’s clicking together right now, not because the stars aligned, but as if Yifanlu and team molecule had prepared their masterplan for years: release a semi-successful hack first to get the first tools in place (SDK, an early list of emulators and homebrews,…), then release the perfect hack with a bang and an existing library of homebrews.
Of course it probably didn’t completely happen this way, but it’s still nice to think it did.
Nevertheless, the major success of HENkaku is mostly due to the professional level of the hack: the release was executed flawlessly, the hack is easy to install and does pretty much everything automagically, which is something I had never seen before in the PSP or PS Vita scene. Installing homebrews through VHBL on the PS Vita was a pain due to the many limitations we had to work with in the PSP emulator.
Sure, HENkaku is a native exploit and can probably remove many of the limitations easier than what happened in former hacks. But Team molecule could have stopped at the exploit level: release a webkit proof of concept, and call it a day. Lots of hackers do that.
I’m someone who has fought for a very long time about the importance of releasing something that’s easy to use and provides direct value to the scene, rather than a half-*** hack telling the users “Here, I’ve done the work, now go figure it out yourselves” (my disappointment when my hack of game Patapon was leaked before we had a polished version of HBL available for the PSP can be seen here). It had always been essential to me that HBL, on the day of its release, would be able to play a majority of homebrews, in particular the popular ones. As such, I’m impressed with the work that Team molecule has done here. Their passion for the system and the scene shows.
It’s important now that we, the scene, do not drop the ball on this one. We’re given this one chance at reviving the PS Vita in 5 years since it was released, and we’ve been given the tools to do it. I’m seeing lots of great activity in the scene so far, and I’m sure you can feel my excitement as well. (Nowadays my part is to make sure people stay up to date with the latest news on that front, and I’ve been trying my best to do that, which means I’ve been spamming your rss feeds, if you haven’t noticed).
Vita homebrews are just getting started, there’s lots of improvements coming down the road for emulators, lots of homebrew games and utilities that can be made, lots of discoveries in the Vita system too. So if you were thinking of working on a programming project this year, now’s the best time to get started!
im surprised theres not yet people saying first
you clever ******* *****
someone deleted all comments.
They were baned.
I just got a copy of UMVC3 and have HENkaku… My life is complete.
whered u get the copy from
First of all I’d like to say a big thanks to all the devs & wololo for making this possible in the first place, now 1 question if i may, do you guys think any emulators other than NES, SNES, & Sega Genesis will be able to run? Like N64, Sega Saturn, Dreamcast, PSP, PS1/PS2 and/or Mame? Is the PS Vita powerful enough to run those types of emulators if they are ever ported that is? Thanks in advance for any insight.
Saturn will never happen at any sort of playable reasonable speed
buy a real saturn
Saturn was a complex machine (several procesadors..),but it should be perfectly emulable(full speed),maybe a yabuse Android port ).Also maybe Dreamcast.
Says the guy who has never used SSF for Saturn emulation.
We have a list here: http://wololo.net/emulators-for-the-ps-vita/
Retroarch supports some of what you’re asking for, others are probably just out of reach…
N64 runs at 60 fps in VHBL (tested with super mario 64), you can install VHBL with HENkaku
SM64 isn’t as demanding as games like Zelda or Paper Mario. Plus, doesn’t VHBL just use the PSP emulator? The PSP can do the same thing, so this info isn’t helpful.
Thank You Molecule Team !!! And special thanks to Yifanlu
You wrote “automagically” in the 7th (6th?) paragraph.
Not sure if intended or accidental, but please keep it that way. “Automagically” perfectly describes HENkaku.
Ha, yes, that was intended 🙂
Isn’t that Pratchett word? I think he used it first in Discworld books.
Hey wololo hope you are doing alright man. I wanted to say that personally the progress is quote well. However I now wish to join the community. Particularly the Doom Homebrew, I’m willing to work on that just to start and work on other projects. What would you recommend my first step be in developing for the vita. I appreciate you and the progress of every contributed but I’d like to take some action myself now.
screw homebrews, when will i be able to pirate games
This ^
Wonderful avatar, sir.
or fan trasnalations
Damn. I didn’t think about that! Now I wan piracy as well!
most likely not to happen,
I’m just bummed out about psx emulator….
Screw pirating games, when will I be able to use multiple accounts in some way?
Oh, the irony!
When everything is done.
Maybe someone here can help me. I’ve installed the homebrew installer from henkaku.xyz, but I don’t have an offlineInstaller bubble. Reinstalled several times, but nothing doing. I’d ask in the forums but I asked a question there that got several views but not one response.
You need to download the offline-installer vpk found on xyz’s github, here: https://github.com/henkaku/offline-installer/releases/download/1.0/offlineInstaller.vpk ,ftp it across using molecular shell (pressing select), find it and install it then follow the instructions through the bubble.
you install that separately. Install Vitashell, use it to ftp the .vpk over, install it, voila offlineInstaller and Vitashell
Dumb question. Figured it out. Still, how do I copy my previous games back onto the memory card with filezilla? CMA tells me I have to update and open CMA doesn’t seem to work anymore. I’ve been off the scene for a while.
I use QCMA, it’s open source and seems to work fine.
Thanks. Will try now. Another question, when transferring anything larger than10mb (say an nds rom), filezilla will time out and cancel the upload. The vita doesn’t disconnect from wifi or go to sleep or anything. Anyone else have this problem?
try and update to latest filzilla
If you actually read the article about offline Henkaku, you would know that you had to download and install a vpk that isn’t included with Henkaku.
Ninja’d.
Can I play PSP games with this?
You can play PSP games by purchasing them from PSN
Get off your high horse dude. There are PSP games you can’t get on PSN.
Playing purchased games is now a high horse activity? The scene has struck a new low…
Maybe you didn’t see the last ting I typed. “There are PSP games you can’t get on PSN”.
But sure, go ahead and keep being judgemental.
I can’t speak for others but I do buy my PSP games over PSN when the option is available, but when there’s a certain game you want to play whether it would be a game they’ll never have or a fan translation of a japanese game maybe this is where being able to run PSP ISOs would come in handy? I also never would have known about Corpse Party if it wasn’t for the PSP hacking scene making it so easy to acquire these games just so I can try them, now I own both PSP games legally and I bought the Collector’s Edition of the PS Vita instalment so in the end they got my money because they earned it.
My problem with people like you and the other guy I replied to is they get off on this moral superiority complex they think they have. They see a guy asking if you can run PSP ISOs and their smug response is something like “Yeah, you can purchase them on the PSN” trying to send them through a guilt trip, and please don’t tell me you’ve never used Vita hacking for piracy, unless you own the games you’re running through emulators that is legally piracy and that is money you’re taking away from other outlets like the Nintendo Eshop, so if you’re doing that while at the same time degrading people who want more options from their PS Vita then kindly *** off and stop being a hypocrite.
+1 for Radcliff – Agreed 100%. And I don’t give a *** about the moral complex either way personally. Yes I’d like to play games for free that I would have never EVER purchased in my life. The ones that are great I buy (for sure on the online games). I don’t feel bad one bit. I buy many games and the consoles (in some cases more than one console). I buy them some times multiple times for PC/Console/Handheld/Mobile etc.
Supporting the companies will keep them in business to make more awesome content…now Emulators and games that are so old…I would never buy them again (though I have bought some console classic devices which have disappointed me … like a Sega classics console from Walgreens believe it or not. It only had one channel audio so all the games sounded bad lol). I paid for the games that I played as a kid, and I can play those again via emulators.. I will check out games i never played and toy with them for a couple of minutes and move on to other games…I will never pay for these cuz I am simply demoing them basically. If I want to buy a classic – I can do so from gog.com and used bins from gamestop/ebay/amazon etc etc. Old games vs new games = the same to me. Try before you by. That’s been the Warez scene’s motto forever….and yes not everyone really does that. But some people do 😉
I draw the line when people sell content that’s not theirs illegally. That’s not cool in my opinion…but hey to each’s own.
/end rant – Just love Radcliff’s reply on that 🙂
nop
Not right now, but give it time.
Only if you pray every night before bed and morning.. im doing it..XD.. join my choir
It’d be an even more success and never die if it enable piracy and a cfw………
yeah that is true, but then only the games which have already been released will be all that will be left, all development will probably be stopped and no new games will be made (which is very rare even in this state), but piracy can wait a little more, new games really do ma……………………..what the (censored), forget it, just release piracy and cfw! 🙂
PIRACYFORPREZ2016
hahaha funny man
I was legit about to ask the last time a good a** triple a game was made for the system and remind you that almost no one os developing for it anore xP
Read again…..
notice that words under brackets like: (which is very rare even in this state)……
that depicts that i am intelligently thinking that ‘no games are being made for vita anyways’ at the back of my high IQ mind, but i am not actually trying to say it but you can read it, its like you can read my mind….no wait, its like…..de ja vu
Piracy won’t stop the developers. It never has before. No console ever died because of piracy.
bro its does not stop…..but it does slow the process, no?
if ur answer is no then puck you.
Erm…..the strangest was destroyed by piracy.
*dreamcast
true……but thats not all why it failed >_<
very nice read
First
Good job for getting here early!!!
I hope more emulators gets ported to the vita.
man I really enjoy this checking the news every day reading comments and if im lucky the release something cool im like *.* is a great time to have a vita thats why i never sold it now is the time to really give the console a new life.
Dead of HENkaku?
Step 6…. both links seems to be down… where can I download that file for the update to 3.60 manually
My question is why the f are we not emulating with vita speed ? Snes is laging … 333 is for psp? Correct me if im wrong .
It is sucessful because a lot of people know the potential for piracy this has. Like it or not.
I really hope to port ppsspp and dolphin emu.
Please don’t said vita already had psp emu. I know that clearly. I mean to play psp games on high resolution. It would be amazing. Don’t forget vita now has JIT dynarec support. Which is extremely important to play emulators in fullspeed. also dolphin emu is big deal to get port. I’m sure it would be great if we get two this emulators. I hope our dreams will come true.
Thanks devs for your hard work. Keep it up.
Any chance of getting nvidia game stream working on the vita? That would be cool.
GO Team molecule , Thank you all
can someone make someone mame4vita and my life is complete that’s all i’m asking. and big thanks on molecule team. cheers.. ☺️
I can’t wait for the hack to unlock my US 3G psvita to support other Mobile neteorks.
Keep it up guys, CFW is the way forward
Every homebrew enabler is always a success no matter the device, be it a gaming console, a scientific calculator, or a mobile device (like the Symbian / UIQ days and the bypass of signed sis files). The desire is common for most of us: we want our favourite device to have a variety of features. PS Vita is also the first handheld console that can offer something different in emulation and not just the usual 8-16bit consoles emulation.
I personally dont care at all about playing ‘backed up’ titles. I just want to see my favourite console to gain some awesome software like file managers, media players, better browsers, an aternative way to import media files without syncing, better emulation than most other consoles etc.
I 2nd this..
even though
backups would be dope
As happy as I am with Henkaku, I am still yet to see anything that makes me go WOW! I mean,doom and quake have been ported to everything conceivable by mankind and snes,nes,gba etc emulators are just old news, Im just waiting patiently for Dreamcast and ps2 emulators and a port of quake 3 with online multiplayer! that would be so good
wonder if it would be possible to have a gamecube emulator *.*
both my gamecubes died and still got my brother’s 20 original gamecube games in perfect state, with all their manuals ^^
would really love to play my fav gamecube games on my vita
Wii plays gamecube games and cost about 25-30$ with wii pad here.
yh but my brother’s wii died too xD
based off the specs of the cube i’d like to say yes but i know my old pc which had higher than the vita had issues so..
I am the unluckiest person ever… just the day after henkaku was released my psvita v3.36 with PSP exploit stopped working… the screen is completely black but the touch works and I can hear my vita playing the bground music but the display is gone…I think I need a replacement… (;_;) Fortunately I downloaded the PS vita 3.60 update file in my computer just in case I missed the hack before the new update was released… guess I have to replace the screen to get my vita to former glory…. Have fun with your vita guys (T•T)/
May it get well soon
I am hoping for something with the PSP side soon, I really am itching to get up to 3.60 from 3.18 but I still have a ton of my PSP games to finish. I am hoping as we have kernel access somebody can do something to the PSP emulator to resurrect eCFW.
My old PSP died and the screen is so much nicer on the Vita plus several of my games aren’t on PSN so I had to ISO the original disks!
can the VITA emulate the ps1 and psp games? or even ps2 games? is it possible?
The vita has built-in psp and ps1 emulation (in fact, it even run them natively, but that’s another story). PS2 games at a decent speed are doubtful at this point, but if a working PS2 emulator comes you should see news about it around scene websites.
i hope by now some hackers can give us that emulator…want to play old games…
Is it a success? I cant even install. Is it compatible with Ps Tv?
I still am running my vita with 3.18 and the PSP CFW.
Through that I have access to emulators and PSP games.
any reason to update and get HENkaku instead?
I don’t see any reason that would justify updating a 3.18 Vita and giving up on TN-X and PSP games.
Maybe in a few weeks/months, but if 3.60 doesn’t get a TN-X or its alternative (PS1 bubbles don’t count, they are nowhere near TN-X in convenience and functionality) and ePSP (preferably with XMB support such TN-V), I’ll stay on 3.18 and prepare to buy another Vita.
I’m still in 3.50 and eCFW Ark happy
wow, just saw package installer 2.0 for 3.60 henkaku. Awesome ! It’s on vita homebrews. Hope youtube links are allowed. “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDs6D5N-hVY”
Thank you guys for henkaku ! Great job !
No not really! You just have to jump through a bunch of hoops to be able to do what we have been doing for a while now. Its just easier for emulators now and i can do that on my android phone. I just wanna be able to play ps1 and dreamcast games on my beautiful vita screen. Isnt that what everyone wants? With perfect sound of course. I’ll update from 3.36 when i can play NBA JAM T.E. ON VITA! TILL THEN IM NOT UPDATING!
N64, Dreamcast, Saturn emulators would be cool to have if the PS Vita can handle it. Also i wonder if EPXSE might be ported too? If this was possible to play upscaled PSX games.
Bello i justo hoy a vita toda. I already have a ps4 so i jave a Psn account. Ive been trying to acces to Ps store but it want me to update… i tried Vita update blocker but it doesnt let me log in into the store… ks there any way to do it??
Thank you very much
I dont mind to update the Vita (is on 3.60) I will try henkaku first … but I wanna download games becauae im a Plus user =(
I’ve been all over this for a couple of days. I think we’ll just have to wait until another update blocker of some sort is released.
Im looking forward to the ps4 kernel exploit which everyone should be talking about not to mention everybody probably wont get a chance at a jailbreak this simple unless a miracle happens and sony yet leaves another exploit. But that by far could mean 1-3 years which will probably be for this future jailbreak well should have soon. Soo Thnx to you wololo keep us posted on what you can share. Im out Keep calm play it safe…
hold up – was that ‘the’ Dark Alex that commented earlier? im surprised nobody noticed this
Probably an impersonator. Always think about the most likely explanation when you’re surprised 😉
Nahh…This thing dont mean anything for most people..As most of us want play vita game…right?? lol. Although piracy is bad, lmao..like we all care..
Allow to play vita games, then we give our head to u..salute from us XD
hey wololo? what’s a memory leak? I ask you this because trying to run ultimate psptube 2.0 via Henkaku VHBL bubble running vmenu seems to load the app normally but soon crashes vhbl with a warning: memory leak error.. thankyou for your time dude, much appreciated
That’s VHBL saying the game you just ran didn’t clean up properly wheen it exited. In general that’s not an issue but means you’d better restart VHBL before running your next homebrew. Youtube-based PSP homebrews aren’t maintained and do not work anymore, don’t even try them honestly.