Only 20 years to go and Denuvo is done for.
Intel SGX worries me much more than Denuvo.
Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
131–140 of 232 posts
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#132I'm so so glad he mentions archiving in this video - I don't think enough thought has been given to the impact of DRM on museum collections in 10-50 years.
I'm going through this as a relatively new PS Vita owner. Sony decided to go with proprietary game cartridges, proprietary memory cards, and DRM'd digital distribution. Despite the quality of the games and hardware, the system didn't do well commercially and it appears Sony has lost interest in the system and it's sibling PS TV/Vita TV. There are a lot of great games (including PS1 and PSP games) for the system, but…
If you care, dont support Sony. I have stopped buying consoles because of DRM abuse.
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#133He mentions archival as a motivation but can we trust the rest of the hardware to last more than a few decades? Isn't emulation the real archival solution?
Yes. In general there are two real paths to long-term archival of games: emulation and reproduction. Emulation is the best possible path IMHO since it enables the games to be played (and experienced) on pretty much any hardware. I think this work may do quite a bit to help in that area, there's really no reason the Saturn isn't nearly perfectly emulated these days. Reproduction is the next best and much harder than E…
Emulation is far from perfect even for older systems. Amiga emulation is still being worked on. Less popular systems have poor standars of emulation too.
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't see how "I didn't steal anything; I just broke open the safe and told others how to get the money" would get you of the hook.
There's an active hobbyist lockpicking community out there with plenty of instructional videos. One could nefariously apply these skills, doesn't make the video producers liable.
To add to this, there's a professional penetration testing industry & similarly their methods could be employed in a malicious nature
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You certainly didnt know the history of Sega or the Dreamcast if you think it died because of piracy. ...with that thinking then the Saturn would of been an ultra success.
I knew a lot of people who owned a Dreamcast and no games. No modchip required, no soldering, broadband penetration on the rise, filesharing was now a thing. I completely understand the Saturn's botched launch and limited number of retail outlets, but the Dreamcast had the best launch of all time up to that point and broke sales records. I'm not convinced piracy is not in fact the cause of the Dreamcast's demise. I r…
I believe Sega also had some institutional issues. There was a documentary a while back, can't quite remember the name. Something about the corporate structure a lot of the business was based in the US while the technical knowledge was based in Japan and thru some skulduggery they ended up torpedoing themselves ...
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew a lot of people who owned a Dreamcast and no games. No modchip required, no soldering, broadband penetration on the rise, filesharing was now a thing. I completely understand the Saturn's botched launch and limited number of retail outlets, but the Dreamcast had the best launch of all time up to that point and broke sales records. I'm not convinced piracy is not in fact the cause of the Dreamcast's demise. I r…
No EA Games, when Madden was huge; no DVD player, and the PS2 hype cycle was perfectly timed and had an even better launch. Wikipedia sales numbers for the PS2 and Dreamcast say the PS2 sold 10.6M by March 31, 2001, whereas the Dreamcast was dead by then and only sold 9.13M. Sega also had troubled finances as a result of the Saturn.
the 2K Sports series negated the need for EA and sold so well that EA sought out an exclusivity contract with the NFL so that 2K would be killed?
The DVD drive after the ps2 was released probably would be a huge factor though, if the dreamcast wasn't in fact already dead which it was.
I'm sure some business school guys have written papers on this, I should find them. Would be interesting to read all the opinions on Sega's near death and exiting the hardware business.
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#137This is amazing. The video avoids too technical language, and basically explains the whole process of reverse engineering. I think this is the best explanation of reverse engineering I've seen in a long time.
Micah Scott's toastermelt videos are another great example of reverse engineering workflow/techniques. More technical and detailed but still very accessible.
I tried looking for those videos but haven't found them yet, do you have a link?
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Micah Scott's toastermelt videos are another great example of reverse engineering workflow/techniques. More technical and detailed but still very accessible.
I tried looking for those videos but haven't found them yet, do you have a link?
Poster meant 'Coastermelt': http://www.misc.name/coastermelt/
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. In general there are two real paths to long-term archival of games: emulation and reproduction. Emulation is the best possible path IMHO since it enables the games to be played (and experienced) on pretty much any hardware. I think this work may do quite a bit to help in that area, there's really no reason the Saturn isn't nearly perfectly emulated these days. Reproduction is the next best and much harder than E…
Emulation is far from perfect even for older systems. Amiga emulation is still being worked on. Less popular systems have poor standars of emulation too.
Yeah of course. But there's a lot of distracting work that's being done to try to keep old, rapidly failing and limited quantity systems alive (for various definitions of alive).
In a hundred years, the only practical way to experience classic software like this will be via emulation and I believe that's where resources should be put.
There's a weird kind of snobbery in classic gaming that, unless you're playing original games on original hardware, you're doing it entirely wrong and emulation stuff is basically just dirty piracy. Fast forward to today and the talk of the community is that old game and hardware prices are getting sky high, and in the case of some systems (like the 5200) finding working equipment is getting to be impossible. No duh, sucking all of the inventory for a product that's not going to be manufactured in anymore and allowing the prices to slip into normal supply-demand areas means that's what's going to happen -- even worse, the new audience who can be exposed to this material shrinks even smaller every day.
For almost all practical purposes, systems like the Amiga or the SNES or similar vintage are pretty much complete in terms of emulation -- the entire known software libraries are basically completable. In many ways, emulators like UAE offer better software compatibility than real hardware!
Re: Sega Saturn CD Cracked after 20 Years
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
In case it helps, there is actually a very low tech solution to booting copied games on Saturn hardware that works with the vast majority of games released (especially expensive/rare/hard to find games like the Treasure releases). Tape/wedge the drive lid sensor down, power up with a real game in (you don't need to close the lid as the sensor believes the lid is always shut) and allow it do the initial copy protectio…
Why not just cut the wobble edge of a real CD off and attach it to a burned CD? Maybe you can shave the back of the shimmed wobble edge down, so that it won't stick out as much on the burned CD. This shimmed wobble can be your key for all the burned CDs you have. Maybe double sided tape can keep the wobble shim attached to your burned CD while still allowing it to be removable for other CDs. I've never had a Saturn,…
You're not getting very technical responses to this, so I'll bite.
> Why not just cut the wobble edge of a real CD off and attach it to a burned CD?
This would have a very low success rate, as the precision required to accurately cut off the wobbled edge on an original disc (and the target area on a CD-R) would a lot of upfront engineering as well as cost-prohibitive tools. Optical discs require more precise measurements than most people who favor the scrapbooking "cut-n-glue" solution can provide.
This is just as long as we're pretending it's possible. Opitcal discs lose a lot of structural integrity the moment you start breaking/cutting them. The reflective portion where the data resides is on a thin film substrate at the back of the CD. Cutting that without outright destroying the disc or (at least reducing the operating life) would take significant effort, as would precisely healing the new gap from combining two separate materials without destroying the alignment of all those microscopic ones and zeroes.
Not to mention that any adhesives you might apply to combine the two pieces would make that level of accuracy impossible, if not highly improbable. And then you have to hope the whole thing holds up while spinning. Even assuming you could get the two pieces to combine seamlessly, there's always the chance that you've done something that destroys the balance of the disc, which could have a number of unfortunate effects in spinning media. I don't think the Saturn drive spins fast enough for it to sling off and demolish your hardware, but it could cause data inaccuracies at the very least.
I mean a company could attempt to do it for you, but it'd be cheaper and more reliable to engineer Saturn-compatible CD-Rs (or offer a disc-pressing service) at that rate. Considering the only use is to defeat old copy protection, it's not going to have a market large enough to sustain it. So you're going to have high prices, and low enough product sales that it would probably not be worth inviting the legal trouble. Even after all that, CD-Rs can have all sorts of QA issues that can affect their shelf life. And then you still have the problem mentioned in the video where the drive hardware fails.
Replacing it with flash data is just a better long-term solution.