The SNES Classic release is only a day away but some people have already gotten theirs early and have started to see if Hakchi2 would work with it. So far they have already dumped the Kernel using Hakchi2 as the SNES Classic hardware is no different than the NES Classic from teardown reports via digitalfoundry. It also seems that the nands dump in the SNES isn’t that much different than the NES Classic either.
They even manage to get the SNES Classic nands dump to run the NES Classic. Reddit user SpongeFreak54 explains this experience here.
After playing a few games, I wanted to see how it would behave when thrown at Hakchi2. To my surprise (though I guess I shouldn’t have been given the hardware similarities), it CAN have its kernel dumped and re-written with it with the current version. I even threw an NES Mini kernel at it just for kicks (spoiler: nothing happens — the power light just blinks) then reverted back to the SNES kernel with no issues.
For reference, the SNES Mini’s stock kernel is 2,736,128 bytes, compared to the NES’s 2,826,240 bytes.
Though I don’t assume there’s much else that can be done with existing tools at this point, I figured people would be interested to know that the recovery mode seems to behave the same as the NES Mini’s.
UPDATE: Looks like full NAND-dumping capabilities are in working order — a European dump has already even been confirmed bootable on an NES Mini! (credit to /u/madmonkey1907)
As a nice surprise, it looks like Nintendo fully anticipated this, and left a note for tinkerers within the NAND! Hidden within the /etc directory is a file simply named “nineties”, which contains:
Enjoy this Mini, Disconnect from the present, and Go back to the nineties.
Would you do this to your NES Classic just to play the SNES Classic and Star Fox 2 😉 a few days early, let us know in the comments below..
Thanks for the tip Joonie86