if you're a long time PC games pirate, I'd like to divert your attention to an area you probably haven't looked at (I know I haven't) - Playstation 3.
you're free to look up its history, but in short, it's tech that premiered in 2006, so def on the old side. nevertheless, it's still in active use with game development reaching into 2017.
the kicker here is - it's almost flawlessly jailbreakable, allowing you to play anything that was produced for it, including games for PS1 and PS2! two caveats: a) I haven't registered nor used a PSN account, as I see no value in it so no idea if network play works and b) I only tried 15 or so games.
they can be had in the $30-50 range, the older models (fat and earlier slim) being preferable because they support the persistent hack, while later slims and superslims are less so, but still hackable with a non-persistent hack (you need to patch it every time it powers on).
the hack is super easy and straightforward and involves no hardware mods of any kind - it wouldn't hurt to clean and repaste a 20 year old device, though. the new hack with the custom firmware (CFW) is persistent, so it's there forever unless you decide to flash the original firmware (OFW).
because it's such an old platform there isn't super active resistance from sony towards the hack scene, so you should be good on that front for many, many moons. in contrast, the rare PS4 hacks are quickly patched and rendered useless, even though it's pretty ancient tech from 2012.
I stumbled onto one by chance, found a broken device sans Blu-Ray drive, seemingly useless for normies. thanks to the super-active community at psx-place, I was able to resurrect it, flash the latest 4.91 CFW with a noBD patch, got me a fake sixaxis game pad and an old 500 GB drive and everything works beautifully!
you can get games from dedicated "ROM" sites as well as torrents; I'm not overly familiar with the malware situation but I doubt it's a serious concern. the games can be transferred over the network using plain ol' FTP, copied from USB drives or even played directly from those. although it was the primary method of game distribution, I haven't needed the BD once. there are mods with store-like interfaces that allow you to directly download games from the internet and install them to the disk. also, DLNA is supported, I managed to play movies from my Jellyfin server!
although it won't hurt it, SSD are probably overkill. the SATA1 interface it has is congruent with transfer speeds of mechanical drives, so you're fine with repurposing one of those, as they can be had for next to nothing; max size is 1.5TB.
I've gotten a cheap sixaxis clone; cost me $10 NiB and it works. I don't know if I suck at playing dynamic games because it's shit or because I plain suck (never played with a gamepad before), that remains to be seen. I'm def not buying an original because they cost like $50+, and I'm not getting them used because yuck - who knows who sweated on them and what else they did with it.
a word of warning - you shouldn't spend a ton of money on them because it's decade+ old tech that's on the uptick part of a bathtub curve. the graphics chips they had, especially the early models, are prone to die and repair isn't viable.
it took me a while to piece together all the info as I've never had any interactions with consoles of any kind, let alone the hack aspects of it. if you're similarly challenged, ask away here or on ps3piracy and I'll try to help!
Why not RPCS3? Can almost run it on phones nowadays and a lot less of a hassle to tinker with
sure, that's also viable. I just never had the console experience, so was inclined to share.
come to think of it, I tried it a few months back but it was pretty slow (tried RDR1 on a R5 5600/RX 570 with Fedora 40 KDE). supposedly it's way better now
rpcs3 is very CPU hungry. The most demanding games will make any mid budget chip sweat.
In regard to controllers, Japan auctions are an excellent source of real-deal OEM controllers in great shape. I've been burned so many times by fake controllers in the US, that I just buy lots of them off of buyee.jp now if I need them.
It's also near impossible to get real controllers here in the UK.
PS3 controllers still remain my favourite but had to switch to using a PS4 pad after getting scammed at multiple places.
I have so many fake PS3 controllers with discolored plastic and fucked up disintegrated thumb sticks just sitting in a sad pile of e-waste at home.
Your post inspired me to pull my old PS3 Slim off the shelf and give it a shot. Fortunately it is one of the ones capable of custom firmware. I successfully jailbroke it and am now running custom firmware, next I just have to figure out how to do anything useful with it, lol.
awesome! now onwards to romsfun, 1337x, etc. and figure out how to install, transfer, archive, etc. then you get to upgrade the disk and so on, barrels of fun await!
It was also a neat gateway to try homebrew development; I have ported 2048 to it as a side project, it was quite different working on it.
Time to undust my PS3 😂✌🏻wiiU and 3ds are similar awesome piracy devices
I modded several PS3s back in 2019-2020 and flipped a few on eBay before they cracked down. I really enjoyed taking them apart, cleaning, putting new thermal paste on, etc. Never successfully delidded one, that was always the ultimate challenge in my mind. The last one I did was a gift for my son-in-law back in 2022 ish. I had always loaded games the standard ftp routes, etc. but the one i prepped for him, I experimented with the app linked below - on the playstation 3 itself and it was phenomenal... direct download and install directly from the PS3 itself. Including games, addons, etc.
https://github.com/bucanero/pkgi-ps3
also, NoPayStation https://nopaystation.com/
it's almost flawlessly jailbreakable, allowing you to play anything that was produced for it, including games for PS1 and PS2!
Do all models support PS2 emulation? Unlike with official firmware, where only a few models have that support.
looks like you can indeed repackage any PS2 game to run on any PS3 running HEN firmware, per this post.
the way I understood it is CFW allows all models to play PS2 games. I tried God of War and some Tekken, forgot which, started up without issues. I also have some settings to upscale PS2 games, don't know if that's a CFW thing or if that's standard.
also, some fat models have real PS2 hardware in them, so no need for emulation.
I have a hacked ps3,Wii and xbox original. I would only consider a hacked console going forward. The experience is just way better. But these days I just use steam with the steamdeck to support Linux and play my roms in emudeck.
Related question. Anybody got a good source for replacement controllers? Lost mine years ago and the one replacement I did buy is very no good (battery doa).
There are shitty Chinese knock off controllers ofc, but the battery dying in a PS3 controller is super easy to rectify. I would recommend replacing the battery before trying a knockoff.
it would be perfect if the downloadable PSN catalogue was complete, but there are so many games that are available disc only or can't be downloaded directly from the PS3 itself, so you need to bring games from your pc to your ps3.