Reviving the PS Vita

The PS Vita has always been a console that had great potential but was an utter disappointment when it came to the number of first party games in comparison to the Nintendo 3DS which completely overshadowed it with its IPs. I still remember how much I enjoyed my PSP and cherish all the memories I had with it and yet I do not recollect any such memories with my Vita.

For a while now, I have exclusively gamed on a PC and a Playstation 4 and haven't touched any handhelds, but since Sony had officially announced the closure of the play station store for the Vita last year and with the release of the Valve’s Steam Deck, my interest towards handhelds is revived. Even though Sony gave up on the Vita, the community on the other hand has not. I plan on restoring my Vita to its maximum potential 😎. This begins with enabling homebrew support on the Vita.

What is homebrew?

Homebrew (In a Vita) usually refers to software that was not officially authorized by Sony. These could be games that did not make it to the play station store, tools that change how the Vita behaves such as those that take backups of games (That you own 😉) or even emulators to play classic console games (such as the nes/Game Boys/PSPs with backups you own 😊) and much more.

On it’s own, the PS Vita cannot run such homebrew tools, but in order to do so we would need to run exploits on the Vita found by the community that takes advantage of an underlying vulnerability to tweak the Vita’s behavior.

What “exploit” are we going to use?

We are going to use h-encore. h-encore lets one install homebrew apps as LiveArea applications in the Vita. These application are packaged as .vpk files. This post specifically aims at achieving this very goal.

What will you need?

1. A PS Vita that is fully upgraded with the latest official firmware (3.74 at the time of writing this) and logged in with a PSN account.
2. An official memory card in-case you own the first gen console
3. The original USB cable (For the first gen consoles)
4. A computer (This should work with any platform but this post uses a Windows based PC)
5. Download QcmaDriver for the Vita here
6. Download the FinalHE_vx.xx_win32.7z from here. FinalHE is a tool that pushes the h-encore exploit from a PC.
7. Download VitaDeploy-FHE.zip from here. VitaDeploy is a toolbox that makes a lot of homebrewing tasks so much more easier.

Let’s prepare your Vita

A NOTE TO THE READER

There is always a risk when it comes to hacking a Vita. There is always the possibility (Although it is rare) of bricking your Vita. You have been warned

• Extract the contents of the FinalHE_vx.xx_win32.7zto a folder using 7-Zip.
• Place the VitaDeploy .zip file inside the extracted folder
• Install the QcmaDriver.
• Open the Content Manager on the Vita and Connect it to the PC
• Launch FinalHE on your computer.
• On the FinalHE application select “Trim h-encore to ~7mb” and also select the small arrow on the right part of the window to choose VitaDeploy.

• Click “Let’s Go!”.
• Once the progress bar completes, select “Copy Content” on the Vita.
• Select PC, and then Choose PC ->PS Vita System.

• Tap on Applications -> PS Vita.

Applications -> PS Vita

• Select h-encore and VitaDeploy and top on Copy -> OK.
• After this is complete close the content manager on the Vita and exit FinalHE on the PC.

Running the exploit

• Once the Vita is prepared we should see the h-encore application on the Live area. Launch this application while holding down on the R button.(Make sure to keep holding on to the R button even when choosing Yes to the message prompted regarding trophies).
• This should show the bootstrap menu. (If it does not then just restart the device and try step 1 again).

The h-encore bootstrap menu

• Use the D pad to navigate to Install HENkaku and click on x
• Once that is installed Download VitaShell by navigating to the respective entry and clicking on x.
• Once this is done exit the application.

Configuring your Vita post exploit

1. Launch the Settings app and navigate to the Henkaku Settings.
2. Enable the Unsafe Homebrew.
3. Close the application.

Congratulations, you now have a Vita that is running a custom firmware and is capable of running homebrew applications. The one catch to this, is that the hack is not persistent in the latest Vita firmware (3.74 at the time of this writing). If the Vita were to reboot, the hack will be lost and we would have to rerun the exploit again. In order to make sure this is not the case, we would need to downgrade the firmware from version 3.74 to 3.65 and rerun the exploit. Thankfully this step can be done in a single click using the VitaDeploy application that we had installed earlier.

Open VitaDeploy and navigate to Install a different OS -> Quick 3.65 install. Make sure that you check the option to install enso. Once this process is complete you should have a Vita with 3.65 Custom firmware with a persisting hack.

If you want to use online features make sure you enable PSN spoofing in the HENkaku settings and choose the Spoofed Version to be the latest one (3.74 at the time of writing this post).

And that pretty much is what I had planned on covering today in this article. Do have a lookout for other cool things here at Just Another Geeky Blog 😎.