Super Mario Bros has already been hacked and uses DOOM

And Nintendo Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros has already been hacked and runs DOOM. Get to know this little console better and find out how it was made.

Nintendo’s latest retro game console is a handheld game console designed to run only a few games.

Super Mario Bros Game & Watch is a modern take on the original Game & Watch line of handheld devices for a single game launched in Japan 40 years ago.

First announced in September, the new model retails for under $ 50 and was officially launched recently (although it appears to be sold out).

It has a color display and comes with Super Mario Bros preloaded, as well as two bonus games: Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels and Game & Watch: Ball.

But you’ll soon be able to load more games onto the small game system, because security researcher Thomas Roth (stacksmashing) has already found a way to bypass Game & Watch’s encryption and upload the custom code. DOOM can also be played.

Nintendo Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. has already been hacked and DOOM Wheel

DOOM doesn’t work very well at this point (stacksmashing had to remove textures, disable audio, and reduce screen resolution to make the game work), but as a proof of concept, it shows you can replace the supplied Super Mario Bros game with Game & Watch with homebrew code.

And of course, this opens the door to loading alternative games or other applications.

Before anyone asks in the comments, unfortunately, given the hardware limitations, you probably won’t be running Crysis anytime soon.

You can find more details in the stackmashing video:

For now, it looks like you will need some specific tools and skills to hack the system.

The box is held together by Y-type screws, and the stackmashing used a Minipro and SOIC8 clip to connect to the 8Mb flash memory module and download the firmware to another device so it could be examined.

As featured in a series of tweets earlier this month, stacksmashing’s Game & Watch was delivered a day ahead of schedule and it didn’t take long to find a way to hack the device. So, technically, the title of this article is incorrect: Games & Watch was hacked before day one.

Although the firmware is encrypted, the stacksmashing says that the flash validation is not strong and you can change some code and boot the system anyway.

It’s unclear if this will make it easier for people without the same level of knowledge to sideload custom code (or maybe other games as well) into Games & Watch.

But it looks like Nintendo’s latest retro console is at least somewhat hackable … just like Nintendo’s previous retro consoles.

My Nintendo Game and Watch arrived a day earlier! Take it apart and let’s see how it works and how easy it is to hack! pic.twitter.com/Pz05EEVyIO

– stacksmashing (@ghidraninja) November 12, 2020