How to "hack" a Playstation Vita and basically make it a pocket PC

An opportunity lost…

The PlayStation Vita is a Handheld by Sony that was released December 17th, 2011. Since the sales number never really took off for Sony so eventually they decided to discontinue the support for the handheld in 2016. Since the user base was simply too small only very few third-party developers supported the Handheld especially in the west.

But Hackers saved the day once again…

July 29, 2016 was the day when hackers first released the Henkaku Hack. All you had to do to enable the hack and essentially unlock the full power of the console(including piracy) was visiting a website from the Handheld (www.henkaku.xyz). This website then launched a protocol which automatically unlocked your console.. A vast amount of homebrew was quickly available. Nowadays there is a wealth of homebrew applications but also full games, and even emulations of PC systems like the Mac OS7.

What you need to unlock a PlayStation Vita:

PlayStation Vita Konsole with firmware 3.60 or below
Wlan internet connection

How to unlock the PlayStation:

Go to the Internet Browser of the PlayStation Vita
enter www.Henkaku.xyz and wait for the protocol to launch and wait for it to finish.
You are done! Your PS Vita is unlocked now

If the protocol doesn’t launch you have to go to settings inside the vita internet browser and clear search history+cookies—>Restart the system and it will load.

What can you do with an unlocked PlayStation Vita?

Well, a lot. First of all, it enables you to play backups of games. The next big obvious thing is the extensive list of emulators that you have at your disposal. You can also emulate PC syste3ms as I mentioned above, and this literally transforms your PS Vita into small pocket PC all with nice OLED screen and touchscreen capabilities. The next thing which comes to mind is the fact that you can un-dub and mod games. And most importantly: With an unlocked Vita, you can use normal micro SD cards to operate your vita.

To give you an idea of what you can emulate:

Second Generation Consoles (1970’s)

Atari 2600: PSP2600 (don’t like it? Try Stella PSP)
Atari 5200: PSPAtari
Magnavox Odyssey: emuODD
Colecovision: PSPColem (don’t like it? Try ColemPSP)
Vectrex: PSPVE
Intellivision: PSPInt

Third Generation Consoles (8-bit era, 1980’s)

Nintendo Entertainment System (NES, Famicon): NesterJ AoEX
Sega Master System: MasterBoy (don’t like it? Try SMS Plus)
Atari 7800: PSP7800

Fourth Generation Consoles (16-bit era, 1980’s & 1990’s)

Note: If you grew up in the 90’s and like retro gaming, you might want to check the Hyperkin RetroN 5, a 5-in-1 gaming console that supports your original cartridges for the NES, SNES, Genesis/Megadrive, Game Boy and GBA.

Super Nintendo (SNES): Snes9xTYL 0.4.2 mod (VHBL users, try version 0.4.2 here)
Sega Genesis/ Megadrive: Picodrive
Neo Geo: MVSPSP
Gameboy & Gameboy Color: Masterboy
Game Gear: Masterboy
Atari Lynx: PLynx
Pc-Engine/TurboGrafx-16: PCEP (don’t like it? Try PSPHugo)

Fifth Generation Consoles (32/64-bit era, 1990’s)

Nintendo 64 (N64): DaedalusX64
Sony Playstation (PS1, PSX): integrated on the PSP, no need for additional emulator
Neo Geo Pocket/Color: RACE! (don’t like it? Try e[mulator] or NgPSP)

Sixth Generation Consoles (128-bit era, 2000’s)