If you recently picked up an
NES Classic Edition, you'll be happy to know it can now be jailbroken thanks to console hackers in Japan and Russia allowing you to soft-mod it and upload Nintendo Entertainment System games via USB cable with a guide below!
To quote from
ArsTechnica.com: According to the whiz kids at Reddit's
NESClassicMods community, the solution won't work until you've created a save file in Super Mario Bros' first slot. (Chances are, you've already done this just by playing the game, since creating game saves is so easy with this system.)
Once you've done that, connect your NES Classic Edition to a computer via a micro-USB cable, then boot the NES in "FEL" mode. This is done by holding down the system's reset button while pushing down the power button from a powered-off state. While you're booting, you should also run a "sunxi-FEL" interface on your computer. (An open-source version of compatible "USBBoot" software can be found
here.)
The rest of the steps (via
Pastebin) land firmly in "operate at your own risk" territory, as they require copying your NES Classic's internal data to your computer, then modifying and adding files via an application made by hackers. Doing so, by the way, includes the dubious step of supplying your own ROM files, which you may have either dumped from your own cartridges or downloaded from other Internet users.
One tool linked from that Reddit community, however, comes with two open-source NES ROMs that are in the legal free-and-clear to upload to your hardware.
Code:
1. Go here http://linux-sunxi.org/FEL/USBBoot#Using_sunxi-fel_on_Windows and install driver with zadig.
Fel mode is activated by holding down reset while switching on power button - http://linux-sunxi.org/FEL
2. Grab tool here https://github.com/madmonkey1907/hakchi/releases
Dump uboot and kernel from your nes. uboot should have md5 b13b538f6b7c86623ceea69c456d4eb5, if it's not, it might be unsafe to continue. 8ce1857653874e8f0cd3fe68abe1bb4a and 9b8046b47c947d9fa322976c038003e0 also confirmed to work.
3. Prepare...