GameFace! with Ben Heckendorn
- May 15, 2007 00:00 AM PST
A one-handed 360 controller? A portable NES? A Wii Laptop? PS360 controller? If you can dream it, he can probably hack it. GamePro interviews Ben Heckendorn, the man behind all of these (and more) crazy concoctions!
GamePro: What made you decide to start console modding?
Ben Heckendorn: Actually, I was watching the Green Mile with some friend in the theatre--this was winter 1999--and I was bored stiff; thought it was overly wrought super-mushy garbage compared to the books. And anyway I thought, "Damn. Wish I had my Gameboy, could be playing that" then realized it would be too dark in the theatre, back when they weren't backlit. So I thought about making my own portable, and I was getting into Atari cartridge collecting at the time, so I decided to give the Atari 2600 a shot and see if it could be made portable, since I'd heard it was a simple system inside.
GP: How many mods have you done, approximately?
BH: Different systems or different units? Because sometimes I'll do a good number of copies of one design. Systems I've worked on would be: Atari 2600, Colecovision, Original Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Atari 800 computer, Atari Jaguar, Sega Genesis, PS1, PS2, Nintendo 64, Xbox, Xbox 360. [The] shorter answer is things I haven't done (or finished) mods on yet, which include Gamecube, Dreamcast, Sega Saturn and the Intellivision. Including copies of the same design (such as the VCSp rev 5 or the Atari phoenix), I'd estimate I've probably done over 100 different portable units since 2000.
GP: Wow. Of the systems you've done so far or are working on, which have been the most difficult?
BH: Xbox 360 was a pain. Colecovision was also kind of a mess. Oh, I've got it; the worst was the N64. That system will break if you look at it wrong--very easy to ruin whilst hacking. I killed 2 trying to make a portable out of it. Never again!
The Wii Laptop
GP: With the Wii's motion sensitivity and the PS3's bulk, do you think those systems can be adequately modded?
BH: Well I've done a Wii laptop (or tabletop) already. The Wii is pretty easy (not much too it, which is why I can't understand the shortages) but yeah, no way to build in the controller!
The PS3, on the other hand, is like a tank; without going into too much detail, modding it looks to be quite difficult. It's easily the best constructed of the new consoles, which is also why it would be hard to mod.
GP: Most of your mods make normally stationary consoles portable. What do you think could be done to current portables from a mod perspective?
BH: Well, the PSP needs another analog stick. I've seen hacks where people map the square, x circle and triangle buttons to an analog stick, which--along with the "attach a Dual Shock analog stick" hack I came up with--can make the PSP more playable for FPS games and such.
The DS is pretty good, not much room for improvement. Too bad someone can't put a hard drive in the PSP; I know it has memory cards, but they're still kinda small.
GP: What's the worst and best official console redesigns you've seen?
BH: You mean like how they redid the Super Nintendo or the PSOne?
GP: Yeah, stuff of this ilk.
BH: Hm. A lot of people like the 1993 model NES they did; it has a more reliable top-loading slot, but the design is pretty weird, like a piece of earth that's lopsided from an earthquake. I think the PSOne from 2000 was pretty good--a slimmed down version of the original--but still the same style. The new PS2 though, not so sure about that one. It just looks like a PS2 that was left in the car with the windows up in summer, then run over with a steamroller. I'd say the PSOne and the 1997 model Super Nintendo were my favorite redesigns, [but] maybe I'm biased because they're also much better for hacking than their predecessors.
