That time of the year is upon us again! No, I don’t mean Christmas. Not Summer either, that’s just about to end. I’m talking about contest season! It’s the stuff that fuels scenes, where developers compete for the better entry and strive to do better than their peers! I, for one, love these contests because they usually bring so much great stuff. If you guys don’t remember, about a year ago we had the reVITAlize contest organized by Wololo himself, to try and give a boost to the development then surrounded around the Rejuvenate hack. The contest brought us entries like VitaShell 0.1 and VitaQUAKE 1.0 and back then I did a series of articles with stuff I would have loved to see come out of the contest.

Well Rejuvenate and reVITAlize are now a curious part of the history of Vita hacking and thanks to our friends at CustomProtocol, we now have a new contest: GekiHEN.

As far as I’m concerned that’s all the motivation I need to bring back the wishlist and maybe inspire developers who have no idea what to enter as a part of the contest. It worked for VitaShell, so maybe I can do my part once again with this series of articles. However, I am going to change some of the rules from last time:

1. This time around I won’t do different articles for games/apps. Everything goes on the same article.
2. There will be a round where I will ask you the reader, using a poll, what you’d like to see and after sorting through the realistic answers, publish them on an article.
3. As with last time, the order of preference is not defined by how soon/late the entry appears.
4. I will always try to keep the choices realistic because I know enough to not go around asking for devs to port PCSX2 onto the Vita. I mean, really?
5. If the an open-source version is available, I will link it in the title. I am doing your research for you devs! 😉
6. I am going to focus on games for the most part because the Vita is a gaming console. I may touch on a few apps, but only those I believe could truly enhance the Vita experience^TM.

With that said, I’ve wasted too much time already, let’s get on with the damn list already!

Plugin Wrapper for Legit Games:

If you follow my Twitter, you should know that I was slightly disappointed when plugins were announced for Henkaku+Vitamin, they were locked to people who were using their own legit game dumps. However, not only are Vitamin and MaiDumpTool extremely unreliable for dumping games (nor can they work together without issues), they don’t make 1:1 dumps of games and resort to all sorts of hacks to make them work, which is why many a game doesn’t even work properly on them. I am not alone in this however, so hopefully if someone can’t make this, maybe Henkaku will eventually evolve to include something like that. Whatever the case, Team Molecule already gave us more than I ever expected, so I won’t be crossing my fingers for that to drop any time soon (or ever).

Exult for Vita:

Do you want to play what is considered one of the best cRPGs ever made for PC on you Vita? Do you? I sure do! Even though ExultPSP is an actual thing, the old graphics don’t really look that good, even with filters, because of the 480×272 resolution of the PSP being upscaled into the marvellous 960×544 that the Vita boasts. Although, in my honest opinion it is about time we bury VHBL (no disrespect Wololo, but its time is come and gone) and PSPemu homebrew and start focusing on the great things that we can bring natively to the Vita.

If you want even more Ultima on your Vita, you could also port:

• Pentagram: an open-source implementation for the poor cousin Ultima VIII
• xu4: an open-source implementation of the revolutionary Ultima IV
• Nuvie: an open-source implementation of Ultima VI, which also allows you to play the two spinoffs Martian Dreams and The Savage Empire

There’s plenty classic gaming to be had here friends… and yes, own all these games on GOG.com but I would love to be able to play them on the Vita instead of my 1080p monitor.

OpenTyrian:

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You seriously didn’t see this coming? Like not even from a mile away? I mean c’mon, it’s Tyrian 2000! It’s even free on GOG.com if you want to play it right now! But as with most shmups, I prefer to play it on the Vita. There are some games that just feel much better if you take them with you on the go. Did I mention it’s Tyrian 2000? Because it is. On to the next one!

XBMC/Kodi:

If you were around on the days of the original Xbox scene, you might remember XBMC. heck, you might still even run it on your Xbox. I know I do.

For those that don’t know what it is, Kodi (formerly known as Xbox Media Center) is a very powerful media center that features a metric ton of plugin to enhance its functionality even further. It can read local files or stream them from other devices that are sharing media on your network. However, I do not know how viable it is to port this to the Vita. I know that the Xbox version was dumped because the system was not powerful enough to run the newest versions, but maybe the Vita can do one better. Not expecting it, but it sure as heck would be cool.

GemRB (BioWare Infinity Engine implementation):

I mentioned greatest RPGs of all time earlier, so it is only fitting that I mention one that was so popular, the Kickstarter for it’s spiritual successor gathered $4,188,927. Over 4 million dollars. You know what I would do with that kind of money? I would be set for life! heck, two lives! But getting back on topic: GemRB is an open-source port of the engine that powered Planescape Torment, as well as Baldur’s Gate 2 and the two Icewind Dale games. The best thing is that it is not an impossible port to achieve: the GemRB website features screenshots of the engine running on everything from PC to Android and even a NOKIA N810! I am not kidding. Here’s proof. This would be the greatest thing ever. One of the greatest games of all time running on the most underrated, underappreciated portable console of all time. If you ask me, that’s a match made in heaven.

Prince of Persia:

The last entry in this part of the GekiHEN Wishlist is going to be another classic. Before Ubisoft successfully brought back the saga and then killed it deader than a fly on the wind-shield of your car, the only version of Prince of Persia I knew was the one I had played on DOS I don’t even remember how many years ago. It doesn’t look terrible considering it a DOS game and the gameplay is very solid and challenging. There are also mods for it to further the value of such a port so it doesn’t seem like a bad idea now does it? I know my girlfriend would never let of the Vita if this got ported.

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So there it is! The first part of the GekiHEN Wishlist is come and gone. Did you like my picks? Do you feel like throwing me out a window and into the front of a train? Whichever it is, please feel free to sound off in the comments with your picks! ^{Please don’t say PCSX2, it’s not going to happen. Ever.}

Let’s hope GekiHEN brings us a ton of cool stuff, while checking on Twitter I’ve already seen one developer asking if a major update to his plugin could get entry so that’s a promising start. I want more cool stuff for my Vita! Counting on you developers to make it happen and I’ll be here to report on it!

Until next time and happy gaming!