HENkaku turns 6 months old! – A look at what’s been achieved

Aurora

I'm a girl that's liked technology from day 1. Mostly interested in the PSVita/PSP scene but I've always modded my stuff when it's possible, that is :) Contact me via DM at @KawaiiAuroraA on Twitter if you have any questions/concerns about my articles or if you have any article requests.

46 Responses

  1. BoBKiD says:

    Henkaku made me buy a PS TV since PS Vitas are hard to find in greek stores these days. I already had a PS Vita but I upgraded it to 3.61 when henkaku came out but I enjoy my emus on PS TV.

    If there was one thing I’d like to see in Henkaku is USB mass storage access on the PS TV. Nothing sounds better than an external hard drive full of emus, roms and movies!

  2. warfaren says:

    I had the Vita since it came out back in 2012… Still stuck on 3.18
    Will upgrade to 3.60 the day we get an 1:1 replacement for TN-X, as it’s the only thing currently holding me back.

    • sloppycrap says:

      ^This. I had stayed on 3.18 forever because of TN-X, and decided that everyone saying how great RetroArch was for PS1 made me upgrade. Now I can install most of my NA PS1 Classics natively, but none of my JP Classics, and RetroArch, while pretty good for everything else, *sucks* for PS1 games. I’m not mad at RA, it’s just not acceptable for playing PS1 games on a Vita.

      Stick with 3.18/TN-X if you care about PS1 Classics; I wish I had.

    • Predator0808 says:

      THIS! Same here, only difference, that I’m still on 3.36 and have it for The Flow’s PSOne Loader. Can’t wait for perfect PS1 emu on Henkaku, including sound – just like Adrenaline, but for PS1 games.

    • GOAT says:

      Same here! TN-X or bust;-)

    • Ethan Weegee says:

      Just use RetroArch’s own PS1 core. Works fine.

  3. Ker says:

    I did buy a psvita 2000 to keep it up to date and let my psvita 1000 on the golden firmware.

  4. drasglaf says:

    Happy half-birthday to Henkaku-
    It started slowly, but look at all they’ve achieved!

  5. Dany-69 says:

    Without the support of a decent storage method, all this gorgeous things are quite useless …..
    You can’t do a lot with a 8/16gb Memory card, the only available at affordable price…

    • Ecchijin says:

      We could play backup, psp games, homebrew and that was a lot, yet you said those are quite useles? Wow……

      • Dany-69 says:

        And where, sir, do you intend to put “backups, PSP games” ecc ecc ?
        In 8 GB of memory, forcing you to spend you “gaming life” connected to a PC/ FTP ?

        • Ecchijin says:

          That’s subjective. I had 16gb, and I only put games that I intend to complete, around 2-3 games at a time. Heck, even if I had 8gb and only could place one game, compared to money I had to spend to buy the games for me it means a lot, not useless.

        • Jesse says:

          Says the guy carrying around a system with game CARTRIDGES as it’s primary game loader. Carrying around extra memory cards is no different than carrying around extra cartridge games.

          • Dany-69 says:

            @jesse you’re so genius as not being able to understand that, if I have to buy a memory card for every single game i want to carry with me, i prefer to spend those money for buying retail games, not surely wasting time and money to load images through an hack.
            A decent storage method is needed for proper and easyusage of this hack, fulstop.

        • SkyGrey88 says:

          Yeah the memory price is a pain in the ***. In all fairness a 16gb card is going to get you quite a bit of content. Many vita games are under 1GB and same with PSP. So I have a 16gb card in one unit that has about 20 or so game on it. I also have a 32gb and it is quite loaded.

          What I really wish for is a USB hack for PSTV that lets you redirect vx0: to the usb port.. That would be soooooo awesome as I could then use a cheap 64/128gb thumb drive and not even have to use their damned memory. No defending the pricing and strategy with $ony and Vita memory…..its one of the big reasons the system failed.

    • Ethan Weegee says:

      Exactly! 8 GB is very small, and the price is still absurd compared to, say, an SD card.

    • mixedfish says:

      Stop being a cheap *** *** and just buy a 64gb memory card. All your *** moping and groveling at the prices when you intend to steal games anyway, it’s the least you can do. Now with USB image support there is no excuse to dump and load only the games you want.

  6. nightwishfan1 says:

    I can’t quite a say a lot has been achieved personally. I look at it and think “well ok henkaku/taihenkaku works on vita and pstv, but people only want the vita handheld busted open the most, and developers seem to be only pursuing that”, and by that I mean stuff like usb mass storage being only to the vita handheld with an excuse that it’s not possible from what I’ve read when the thing has a free usb port, custom theme installer app, among a few other things that just are not universal to both vita and pstv. Or is the gpu API thing only gonna be useable to the handheld or both sides of the vita which was never addressed in the release. So to me it’s like henkaku is great, but mainly for one crowd of the vita scene at the moment

  7. AvatarAang says:

    I’m still dead on 3.63

  8. cynder2011 says:

    You should add that one of the best important features unlocked with henkaku and theFlow was USB TRANSFER using explorer and vitashell 1.51+ 😀 no need for FTP anymore.

    and you can backup just saves for say vita games???? im assuming that is the save folder for each game right?

  9. Rodpin says:

    You forgot to mention that now we can access the Memory Card with USB without CMA (thx thefl0w!)! I think this is an awesome achievement!

  10. Eric says:

    I had my vita shelved. I kept it updated cause i kinda gave up on there ever being a hack. When henkaku was just released i wasn’t sure what to expect. But now it’s pretty great.

  11. megumihan says:

    i hope we can move on to N64/Dreamcast or gamecube because this emulators are pretty dead and ever since then it’s always PSX/PSP im totally done with it maybe this developers making a progress but still stuck at old era i hope we can totally move on

    • Jack Attack says:

      The N64 is a stretch and the other two won’t ever happen in any real way on the Vita. They’re barely getting anywhere on Android. (Though to be fair, Android’s crappy graphic subsystem is holding it back more than anything)

      • megumihan says:

        well what about the other post that they say dreamcast will happen n64 tsk its a *** emu i prefer NDS and i believe PSV can handle Dreamcast graphics why because what we have on PSV is to able to run PS2 games but it was rewritten i mean remake games made for PSV Like FFX-FFX2 if only someone a genius how to remake or rewrite to be compatible at PSV it would be great right

      • megumihan says:

        it says here maybe dreamcast to and more it means it has chance that this thing would happen http://wololo.net/2017/01/22/dark-days-vita-homebrew-gpu-usage-homebrew/ this is what i called improvement

      • megumihan says:

        BTW N64 is *** emu i would prefer for Dreamcast

      • warfaren says:

        What are you talking about? I’ve run Dreamcast emus on an old Galaxy S2 with perfect speed, sound and everything. Maybe the games I were playing were just an exception?

        Besides, the N64 was a stretch on the PSP. This console is the successor to the PSP…

        But Gamecube? Yeah, we’ll see about that.

  12. FreeMyVita says:

    It’s almost Feb! Time To welcome back the Flow! (GPU Access in the works) Thank You I can’t wait!

  13. Vitaling says:

    What about access to vita thru USB just drag and drop files .. that’s huge!! No love in this article about it.. everything else is good tho.

  14. FreeMyVita says:

    Well since we are discussing our wish list how about a SIM Card unlock for all of us with 3G models and unlock system settings for example Disable Shuttler Sound when taking a picture. Give us access to the camera for AR Homebrew.

  15. ME says:

    “The PSVita’s homebrew scene was always overshadowed by the PSP thanks to SONY’s ridiculous security measures”

    Yes, how dare Sony try to protect their investment! They should’ve just left the door wide open for filthy pirates like you to come in!

    Hardware sales mean nothing without the correspondent software sales. PSP never reached the software potential sales it deserved thanks to the lowlifers around the world….

    At least, the way it is there’s room for a healthy market in Japan. That is a good thing.

    Oh, and btw, no major western publisher (including a great deal of Sony’s 1st party, of course) gives a s**t about handhelds.
    PC, console and mobile are the way to go for them and that’s a perfectly legitimate business choice.

  16. SkyGrey88 says:

    Hey lets not forget we also got USB copying in the latest Shell 1.5x. That has been a huge boon as it makes it much faster/easier to install content and backup content. Really all I wish for now is the ability of the PSTV to use its USB slot to read/write data. Even if we could just use it to store installs, roms, media that would be awesome. Would love to see a quality media player that would let me play .mkv and other formats.

  17. noob says:

    i installed regular henkaku on my ps tv when it came. What advantages does taihen bring me ? should i update?

  18. Zeke says:

    Yep the HENkaku project has been pretty special. What I’m really looking forward to is TheFloW taking another look at Adrenaline and getting it to support the PS1 side of the pspemu, plus GPU support in RetroArch to smooth over the other emulator issues (for example gPSP and VBA still skip/slowdown on Mario Kart: Super Circuit, something a little more power would probably solve) and I’d be very happy with the Vita.

  19. Aramaru says:

    I’m glad hacking/homebrew scene moved on from psp something new. At the abbyss of homebrew, when rejuvenate was almost dead I was really upset with everything Vita related. This however gave unexpected boost to Vita scene. On the other hand, one thing that’s kinda double edged is piracy, I knew it would happen and actually… I’m not really that much against it as it is sign of healthy ecosystem and, under certain conditions doesn’t prevent companies from profiting – hence PC where some of certain frenchises fans would even donate money to kickstart something and companies that treat customers honestly get their profit. However, it should have happened a bit later, at least after more homebrew got released. That would keep scene hyped and maybe more productive…

    but w/e. I like what did homebrew scene help Vita evolve into – meaningfull peace of hardware with even more possibilities of use, not entirely dependent on sony and it’s indies. The only thing I still crave for is better browser… deffault one is stuckfest. And also dink smallwood game…

  20. ANU815 says:

    This article is severely lacking the two top items:
    1) Vita Backups
    2) USB transfer

  21. “Ability to use cheats and translations for retail games”

    If this is meant for legitimate games, I keep looking for methods to do this. Does this mean using mr. gas’ near decryption method?

  22. Ismail Ghedamsi says:

    We need a browser hombrew.