Hacker Alexey Avdyukin cracks Nintendo SNES Classic Mini to enable any SNES game to be played

Buy that man a pint

The lucky few recipients of the first batch of Nintendo SNES Classic Minis can now play more than the restrictive roster of just 21 classic Nintendo console games after Russian cracker Alexey 'Cluster' Avdyukhin updated his hakchi2 crack software via Github.

The SNES Classic Mini is the popular 16-bit, retro version of the SNES but, remarkably, it has sufficient memory to be loaded up with just under 300 old Nintendo games

Avdyukhin's update to the original hakchi works on the SNES Classic Mini, miniature NES, Famicom, and Super Famicom devices, and is a relatively straightforward unpacking job.

There are a number of videos on YouTube that should serve as a guide, and they show how it is possible to add some extra games to your console. One, by a user called Skullator, offers a walkthrough but advises punters to tread carefully because, of course, you could quite easily bork your new-old console.

"In this video I show you how you can install your own custom SNES roms into the recently released Super Nintendo Classic Mini console. This is an early version of the exploit, so it's quite a few steps and a reasonably complicated process which is likely to become a bit easier in the coming few weeks," he says.

"However if you want to get started adding your own ROMs to the SNES mini today, this is the only method I am aware of which will allow for this."

We don't have the time or the console to test this, but reports and videos say that the hack can let you add anywhere between 200 and 300 games to your console, which makes Nintendo's 21 look ridiculously tight.

Naturally, the eBay scalper market has cottoned on to the opportunity and has already started trying to rinse punters with premium prices for ready-hakchi'd consoles, adding in some cases around £200 to the retail price.

The smart punters, of course, will wait until Nintendo release another batch and do it themselves.