Why: Over the years I've tinkered with game hacking - learning and using techniques like memory scanning and reverse engineering, and recently looking in Unity3D specific methods and tools. Unity3D is a widely used game development tool, providing loads of functionality for you to use in your game to accelerate the development process - I suspected this meant many games use similar logic, principles, and possibly flaws. Inspired by "Pwn Adventure 3: Pwnie Island" which I found out about through LiveOverflow's video series, and challenges I did recently in RACTF 20221, I decided to make my own "game hacking ctf" challenge.
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Background / Sonoff: Once upon a time I wanted the ability to know when a device plugged into an electrical socket was no longer using electricity. This lead me to get a "Sonoff POW 2" - a popular "smart" electrical switch with power monitoring capabilities. While this did what I needed it forced me to use their software (and have my plug talk to the cloud), and I wanted to do more.
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Some time back I bought a Pentium 200Mhz MMX computer in a nice 90's case with matching brand monitor and keyboard. I decided I wanted to set it to run Dos 6.22, to play my favourite Dos games, as well as Windows 98 for games like Diablo 1 and large storage + usb support. This post is mostly notes for myself about some of the pain points I encountered over many weekends of re-formatting, moving peripherals around, installing different drivers, etc.
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SANS once again ran their Holiday Hack - called Kringle Con - for the 3rd time last year. As usual it was filled with great challenges and there was plenty to learn. I was able to complete all the challenges/objectives and had intended to do a full write up, which I try and do every year, but just didn't have the time or energy this year. @leonjza has already done a great write up so I thought I'd just mention a few things I'd done differently.
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Some time ago I learned about a Nintendo NES (Famicom) cartridge called "van der Merwe en Boetie", released only in South Africa and supposedly a Super Mario Bros clone. The title is a common Afrikaans surname ("van der Merwe") followed by "and his brother" (in Afrikaans) - definitely local, and relatively close to "Mario Bros". I'd seen a few photos of the cartridge - even internationally on Twitter - and a few people in the local vintage computing group claimed to have a copy of the cartridge but either couldn't find it or weren't keen on sharing it.
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Pico-8 is "a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs". Basically an emulator, roms ("carts"), and development kit for retro-like games... for a console that never existed. It's not free but the software you buy gives you everything you need to make your own games relatively quickly and easily. I've wanted to try it out for a while and finally got a chance to.
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