Well, hackers haven't ceased to amaze us when it comes to the Playstation Vita. The handheld's been out for less than a month in Japan, and here it is. Playing Sonic & Knuckles.

In the video above, the Vita is running the PicoDrive Emulator, orignally made for the PSP. While the poster of the video has said that Sony will be updating the firmware, and the allowance of such a program will end soon. They added that the program running at all is a "ray of hope." The poster, frwololo, said that the video is a follow-up to the "Hello World," which appeared online days ago. If you don't like paying for your video games, then yeah, this is a very hopeful alternative. Chances are good that this method of homebrew will have a lot of its' kinks worked out by the time the Playstation Vita reaches American retailers this February.

Personally, I've modded my PS1 and PS2 to play burned games, and I never really took advantage of it. I was never really hurting for money so bad that I had to play them like that, though I know many who did. Aside from that, I'll always buy games as long as there's people out there pouring their hearts into making them.

That said, homebrew and console hacking is a really interesting sector of videogame culture, as it highlights a growing desire for players to craft their own worlds and ways of playing them. Illegal it may be, but it shows a constant back-and forth between the buyer and supplier of goods, one that keeps both sides on their toes. It's something that the game industry will never be without.