iPhone Homebrew
In the early days of video games, such as the Atari era, it was understood that computers and video games are related, and many game systems also had an optional programming cartridge, keyboard, and other tools for interacting with the system. The manufacturers were not too restrictive about modifications to their systems.
Later systems, such as Nintendo’s, built a strong business around being a “gatekeeper” of titles, and it was difficult to create cartridges for this system without going through them. But by the 1990s, when games became epic in length, with sprawling levels, it became relatively straightforward to create new levels for games, because the border between a game engine and the data (levels) for that engine was easily distinguishable to reverse-engineers. These “mods” or modifications to games became possible through a variety of hardware tools such as GameGenie, GameShark, and a community built up around not only “cheating” games but also modifying them.
In the same fashion, people began trying to create their own entire games. In the 1990s, Sony actually embraced the idea of PlayStation hobbyist-coders and produced the Net Yaroze PlayStation—a more expensive PlayStation that included a method of connecting it to the PC and programming games, in C, on the console.
The hacking and game cloning community came up with their own workarounds that allowed independent creation of games and game hacks for these systems. Once the games could be completely emulated on a PC , the task of extending games or creating games became much easier, and homebrew games could be distributed via the Web to others with the emulator. For consoles like the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PSP , and Nintendo Game Boy Advance (GBA), convenient loading mechanisms made it straightforward to play homebrew games on the actual hardware.
A decade-strong website where you can find a lot of homebrew activity for all major mobile and gaming platforms is www.pdroms.de.
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