This weekend has been pretty fruitful when it comes to homebrew releases for the PSVita and Switch as they both received some stuff worth checking out. In this article, we’ll be looking at the release of vitaQuake 4.0, Atmosphere Updater 0.4/.1, 4 new 60FPS mods for the Switch and an English translation for a Japan-only game on the Vita.

PSVita Releases: vitaQuake 4.0 and English translation for Date-A-Live Twin Edition: Rio Reincarnation

vitaQuake works marvelously on the PSVita and now, version 4.0 brings even better mod support and makes the game more customisable than ever!

vitaQuake, by Rinnegatamante, is a port of Quake I for hacked PSVitas and one of the earliest HENkaku-compatible native homebrew being ported a single day after the release of HENkaku on July 30, 2016 as it was originally created for use with the Rejuvenate hack. Ever since then, Rinnegatamante has updated it numerous times with version 2.5 being one of the most significant versions as it brought support for GPU acceleration.

Now, vitaQuake 4.0 has been released with the following features/improvements:

• Improved mod support with support for:
  • More DarkPlaces extensions
  • Custom crosshairs
  • Half Life BSP and BSP2
  • Transparent surfaces
  • EF_BLUE, EF_RED and EF_NODRAW effects
  • External textures in TGA format
• Supersampling anti-aliasing (SSAA) support
• The Options menu has been reordered and Graphics settings have their own menu
• Mods can now be used with shareware Quake files and various limits, such as that for static entities, have been removed or increased
• More QuakeC commands are supported and it’s now possible to specify custom arguments at launch time
• The code received a significant cleanup, float arithmetic operations have been sped up with the use of NEON ARM instructions and the vitaGL library has been updated to the latest commit for better performance
• Other minor improvements and fixes which can be found in the full change log
  • You can download vitaQuake 4.0 directly from your PSVita via VHBB or grab the VPK from this link
  • Rinnegatamante can be donated to on Patreon for his excellent work
    

    If Japanese visual novels are your cup of tea but you can’t be bothered to learn Japanese, then another one is available for your enjoyment on the PSVita

Other than vitaQuake 4.0, the PSVita also received an English translation for Date-A-Live Twin Edition: Rio Reincarnation by froid_san who has created numerous English translations for the PSVita. This game, which is a visual novel, was released in Japan in 2015 as a PSVita exclusive and never got translated to English until PC and PS4 ports were released earlier this year. Now, froid_san has made the PSVita version accessible to English-speaking audiences and the English patch he just released includes:

• All text and images have been translated to English
• Vocal-less videos from the PC version have been merged with the video data of the PSVita’s version

As a result, the game is fully playable on the PSVita and the only minor things that didn’t get translated are trophies (PSN wouldn’t take too kindly to unknown trophies being synced), the game’s title on its save data and the digital manual.

To download this English translation patch, check out this link and make sure you have a Windows PC at your disposal as it’s required to create modded game files.

Switch Releases: Atmosphere Updater 0.4(.1) with Hekate support & 4 new 60FPS game mods

As its name suggests, Atmosphere Updater is a homebrew utility by ‘TotalJustice’ that allows you to update Atmosphere and now Hekate directly from your hacked Nintendo Switch meaning that you needn’t have access to a PC in order to get the latest release of the CFW up and running.

Who needs a PC to update Atmosphere when you can do it on-device? 😉 (Image Source)

Furthermore, it doesn’t mess with existing configuration files unlike Kosmos which has earned it good reputation in the Switch community. Over the past few days, it received two updates with the latest version being 0.4.1 and these brought about:

• Support for updating Hekate (0.4)
  • When updating Hekate, an option to overwrite Atmosphere’s INI files has been added (0.4.1)
• The hekate payload is now copied to “/bootloader/update.bin” for better compatibility with modchips and RCM injectors (0.4.1)
• fusee-primary.bin is copied to “/bootloader/payloads” when selecting to update both Hekate and Atmosphere (0.4.1)
• A better looking UI and Switch font buttons are loaded from memory (0.4 & 0.4.1)
• Code cleanups and error messages for when things go wrong (0.4 with further improvements in 0.4.1)

To grab Atmosphere Updater 0.4.1, check out this link and download the NRO file to install on your Switch. TotalJustice can be donated to on Patreon

Crash Bandicoot is fun and all but being able to play it at a smooth 60FPS makes it even better! (Image Source)

Finally, 4 new 60FPS mods for commercial Switch games have been released during this week thanks to work by Kirby567fan and Masagrator. The titles that received 60FPS mods include:

• Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy
• Rain World
• The Caligula Effect: Overdose
• GRID Autosport

It’s important to note that these mods are intended for use in handheld mode so if you want to use them in docked mode, you have to use ReverseNX with the handheld flag enabled. Furthermore, Masagrator started a new job that will have him traveling throughout Europe on a regular basis so these mods will be released at a slower pace for now.

Conclusion

Other than these 4 releases, the last few days also saw the release of ldn_mitm 1.2.6 for the Switch and tear-downs of the Nintendo Switch Lite which might be interesting to watch.