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MAME has long lacked support for certain Konami games. Is it because of this? Could MAME now support those Konami games, in jurisdictions with no anti-circumvention laws?
This shows the Konami game running natively on windows. Mame is an emulator, correct? It seems out of scope.
Emulation is an implementation detail. It may be the best approach or it may be abstracted away.
Of course, thank you to all of those who have done this type of work over the years! You know who you are.
This stuff has been documented in private circles for over a decade now, and hasn't been made public because these games aren't available to play outside of owning a cabinet in Japan or acquiring the data via less-legit methods. While it's a fun exercise to explore, the real-world application is sadly limited to grey-market implementations that Konami frowns upon, which reinforces why the exposure has been limited.
Information wants to be free.
> On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
--Stewart Brand at the first Hackers Conference in 1984
This is the company that continues to ship new games with Windows XP Embedded (they are allowed to due to a technicality in the licensing agreement with Microsoft). No one expects them to up their security game all of a sudden - and I sure hope they don't :D Of course, thank you to all of those who have done this type of work over the years! You know who you are.
Konami changed their model for updates to their games around 2013; although most of their games use a roughly annual release model (with each new version featuring a new interface theme and branding, new content and features, etc.), they introduced a leasing system called "e-Amusement Participation" that, in most cases, supports in-place upgrades to new releases (rather than just patches to the existing version installed on the cabinet, and having to upgrade by replacing the hard drive and security dongle).
Unless the update actually requires the installation of new hardware (such as a new PC and I/O system, such as the latest beatmania IIDX release -- which, in case you're wondering, comes out on Thursday), it's pushed like a Windows 10 automatic upgrade as part of the bootstrap script. However, this doesn't update the OS, hence these older cabinets are still running the copy of XP Embedded from the last version they ran before the automatic update system was put in place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPvjhkyl048 shows Nostalgia (another Konami game) booting up into Windows Embedded Standard 7 and installing its "Forte" update. The bootstrap script is nearly identical on every Konami game, and involves quite a few console windows.
MAME has long lacked support for certain Konami games. Is it because of this? Could MAME now support those Konami games, in jurisdictions with no anti-circumvention laws?
Konami didn't start using Windows for its games until IIDX 9th style, Pop'n 15, DDR X, and Drummania V...6 i think?. Before that, it was all custom hardware, based off of the PS1, PS2, or just an in-house creation. Older IIDX for instance uses a combination of a CD drive, a DVD drive, and an IDE drive for storing all its data, not to mention ROMs soldered onto the boards. The MAME team has actually just started to ge…
The older IIDX used a hardware overlay for music videos, grabbing the video output from a DVD player controlled with a sort of serial connection. Of course, this component is prone to failure, but someone did devise some scripts that allow a Raspberry Pi to emulate this component and play the videos from rips instead.
This is the company that continues to ship new games with Windows XP Embedded (they are allowed to due to a technicality in the licensing agreement with Microsoft). No one expects them to up their security game all of a sudden - and I sure hope they don't :D Of course, thank you to all of those who have done this type of work over the years! You know who you are.