A few days ago we announced the name of the game that is being used for Neur0n’s port of VHBL for firmware 1.80: Monster hunter Freedom Unite. As I type this, Sony started removing the game from their stores, although some of the exploitable games for this release are still available in some locales, which is the first time this has happened in VHBL’s short history. Grab them while you can, and for us it is now time to release VHBL for this exploit!

Credits go of course to Neur0n for the exploit discovery, as well as for porting VHBL to it. Many thanks, as usual, to the people who initially created HBL, in particular m0skit0 and JJS. Thanks also go to dimy93 for beta testing, to the mods at /talk for their awesome help throughout the Ninja release, and to our brilliant community for making this Ninja release work, once again (this includes other websites on the scene who have done a brilliant work at mitigating leaks). I’m sure I’m forgetting people to credit here, but you’ll have to forgive me, this release has been pretty long and exhausting. To quote neur0n: “It’s a relief to see this exploit being released, after 2 years” 🙂

Donations?

Lots of work has been put into this release, from a technical point of view as well as an organizational one, and some people have been contacting me recently because they want to donate for the cause. Actually, Neur0n cannot accept donations for his work due to legal Paypal constraints in Japan, and I myself do not accept donations these days for my work on HBL.

That being said, If you feel like donating as a way of thanking us, please consider donating to a charitable organization of your choice, and feel free to let us know (note: this is not something I discussed with neur0n, but I am assuming he will be ok with the idea). I personally suggest the Red Cross, a well known non governmental organization which goal is to “prevent and alleviate human suffering in the face of emergencies”. They also happen to accept paypal donations in many countries, for those who wonder. You can find their donation pages here:

American Red Cross

Japanese Red Cross (this is the English page for donations to the victims of last year’s tsunami. Unfortunately, they only accept direct bank transfers which is a major pain if you live outside of Japan. Alternatively if you want to donate for this specific cause, you can donate to your country’s Red Cross – see link below for a list of Red Cross all over the world – and give the precision that you want to help with the Japanese tsunami relief)

French Red Cross

Find your national Red Cross society

…or just google for them.

I also invite other scene websites who will post an article about the VHBL release to mention this donation drive. Thanks in advance for your support!

Download

Download on the VHBL page, as usual.

Please note that VHBL has been extensively tested on Monster hunter Freedom Unite, but much less on Monster Hunter 3rd and Monster hunter Freedom 2.

How to install and use

Everything’s explained in the readme and on the download page, but copying/installing homebrews on the Vita is kind of a pain given the copy restrictions on the device, so if you are running into issues, feel free to ask question on /talk, I’m sure our active community will be delighted to help.

In particular, if you are looking for homebrews that will work “out of the box”, check out this thread which has many download links 🙂

Enjoy, and please report success/failure! Youtube videos showcasing VHBL would be awesome too, spread the word people 🙂