The "General Games Chat" forum, which includes Retro Game Reviews, has been archived and is now read-only. You cannot post here or create a new thread or review on this forum.
Ah, waking up every Sunday morning at 9am, seeing the fresh air and going around the Car Boot Sales used to be the high point of my day, until recently.
I have stopped going to Car Boot Sales for 6 months now, for one reason, Piracy.
I used to be able to put up with it, with the odd Amiga floppy disc being flogged for a pretty penny, and that was just a few years ago, years after the Amgia liquified. There were a fair shair of con men out there as I should know, after buying Terminator 2 for 50p on the Amiga. When I went home and inserted the floppy into one of my 2 external disc drives, the game failed to load. At the time, I was only 7 and I boiled my eyes out, thinking that someone could be that mean to a 6 or 7 year old boy, but that's just the begginning.
Just by looking left or right at a Car Boot Sale, you would see pirated games for rediculously cheap prices. My friend brought home Worms World Party for an amazing £10, just a week after it was released full price.
Games are not the only thing. Many films are being brought in too. Once my friend went abroad and brought home Jarrassic Park and it hadn't even come out at the cinema yet. We put it into our video recorder and pressed play. To our surprise and misfortune, it was a video of someone who had taken a video camera into a cinema and zoomed in on the cinema screen. The quality was terrible and I only sat through about 10 minutes of it and waited for it to come out on video.
I have also been shown Silent Hill, months before it's release and Metal Gear Solid, 6 months before it's UK release. MGS is very different in America. When you face Psycho Mantis, you and Meryl have to pick off loads and loads of guards.
The films in boot sales have been imported from America or other contries and somehow been recorded onto either VHS, VCD or Mini Disc.
However, Mp3's are yet to be seen. Well, at least since I last went. My friend got a couple of albumns but I've never seen any pirated albumns. He found some Metallica, Nirvana and Led Zepplin albumns at a very cheap price.
I am disguested by this as it is just not the same as the original. The book, the case and the covers are all missing. Some people buy the cases and scan the covers but the covers are not of a glossy quality and the cases do not have the "Dreamcast" logo on the blue spine. Some people have ways of getting books as well but not many.
A lot of my friends have offered my pirated Dreamcast, PC and PS games but I have refused.
Nintendo have the best system with cartridges. The only way to pirate them is to use a contraption called the Z64. It makes a copy of the game onto the memory of the Z64 ( a few gig ) and then you can play the game from the Z64 memory, without having to own the original counterpart.
The Playstatition never thought of piracy at the time of PS's release. People made copies and then the problems began, until the release of Dino Crisis. This game had an error written into it so that if you tried to copy it, it would not copy. People downloaded cracks off of the internet and broke the protection. Dino Crisis is the only game to use this as it failed miserably.
Sega though that they had protection beaten when they released the Dreamcast. The games were recorded onto GD-Roms, a new type of CD, bigger than a standard 650MB 74 minute CD. It has a few more rings around the disc than a PS game. However, this was again cracked. People connected their Dreamcasts up to their PC's and uploaded the games to their computers and then used a programme called Winrar to make them into files of 19MB each, called ISO files. They then uploaded them to a server and people download them, Unrar them and burn them to a disc. It takes about 1 day to download a game.
PC gaming is almost the same, except, you download RIPS, instead of ISO's. RIPS are retail games with the intros and some FMV's removed, to save space when downloading files.
The creators of Bleem an emulator for the PC, that lets you play PS games on the PC, have the right idea. They have put a copy protection on the CD's that cannot be "cracked" or broken as of now. Why do music, cinema and games companies not use this? It cannot be too expensive as the creators of Bleem worked on a low budget.
How to identify a pirate.
All pirates are exactly the same to spot, turn the CD over and look at the back. If it has a black back, it is original, if it has a rainbow-like back, it is a pirate. It will have 2 rings, showing how much the CD has been taken up by the game. Beware though, don't think that a game is original by looking at the front and seeing the CD design because some people print them off and glue them to the front of the CD.
Piracy is a huge business and not just game companies, but the movie and music industry need to do something drastic, NOW.
I have stopped going to Car Boot Sales for 6 months now, for one reason, Piracy.
I used to be able to put up with it, with the odd Amiga floppy disc being flogged for a pretty penny, and that was just a few years ago, years after the Amgia liquified. There were a fair shair of con men out there as I should know, after buying Terminator 2 for 50p on the Amiga. When I went home and inserted the floppy into one of my 2 external disc drives, the game failed to load. At the time, I was only 7 and I boiled my eyes out, thinking that someone could be that mean to a 6 or 7 year old boy, but that's just the begginning.
Just by looking left or right at a Car Boot Sale, you would see pirated games for rediculously cheap prices. My friend brought home Worms World Party for an amazing £10, just a week after it was released full price.
Games are not the only thing. Many films are being brought in too. Once my friend went abroad and brought home Jarrassic Park and it hadn't even come out at the cinema yet. We put it into our video recorder and pressed play. To our surprise and misfortune, it was a video of someone who had taken a video camera into a cinema and zoomed in on the cinema screen. The quality was terrible and I only sat through about 10 minutes of it and waited for it to come out on video.
I have also been shown Silent Hill, months before it's release and Metal Gear Solid, 6 months before it's UK release. MGS is very different in America. When you face Psycho Mantis, you and Meryl have to pick off loads and loads of guards.
The films in boot sales have been imported from America or other contries and somehow been recorded onto either VHS, VCD or Mini Disc.
However, Mp3's are yet to be seen. Well, at least since I last went. My friend got a couple of albumns but I've never seen any pirated albumns. He found some Metallica, Nirvana and Led Zepplin albumns at a very cheap price.
I am disguested by this as it is just not the same as the original. The book, the case and the covers are all missing. Some people buy the cases and scan the covers but the covers are not of a glossy quality and the cases do not have the "Dreamcast" logo on the blue spine. Some people have ways of getting books as well but not many.
A lot of my friends have offered my pirated Dreamcast, PC and PS games but I have refused.
Nintendo have the best system with cartridges. The only way to pirate them is to use a contraption called the Z64. It makes a copy of the game onto the memory of the Z64 ( a few gig ) and then you can play the game from the Z64 memory, without having to own the original counterpart.
The Playstatition never thought of piracy at the time of PS's release. People made copies and then the problems began, until the release of Dino Crisis. This game had an error written into it so that if you tried to copy it, it would not copy. People downloaded cracks off of the internet and broke the protection. Dino Crisis is the only game to use this as it failed miserably.
Sega though that they had protection beaten when they released the Dreamcast. The games were recorded onto GD-Roms, a new type of CD, bigger than a standard 650MB 74 minute CD. It has a few more rings around the disc than a PS game. However, this was again cracked. People connected their Dreamcasts up to their PC's and uploaded the games to their computers and then used a programme called Winrar to make them into files of 19MB each, called ISO files. They then uploaded them to a server and people download them, Unrar them and burn them to a disc. It takes about 1 day to download a game.
PC gaming is almost the same, except, you download RIPS, instead of ISO's. RIPS are retail games with the intros and some FMV's removed, to save space when downloading files.
The creators of Bleem an emulator for the PC, that lets you play PS games on the PC, have the right idea. They have put a copy protection on the CD's that cannot be "cracked" or broken as of now. Why do music, cinema and games companies not use this? It cannot be too expensive as the creators of Bleem worked on a low budget.
How to identify a pirate.
All pirates are exactly the same to spot, turn the CD over and look at the back. If it has a black back, it is original, if it has a rainbow-like back, it is a pirate. It will have 2 rings, showing how much the CD has been taken up by the game. Beware though, don't think that a game is original by looking at the front and seeing the CD design because some people print them off and glue them to the front of the CD.
Piracy is a huge business and not just game companies, but the movie and music industry need to do something drastic, NOW.
Page:
Oh by the way, irrelavant to the topic but ths guy brought this ace device back from the U.S that well, have you even had a CD/DVD that skips, clicks or doesn't run as well anymore and cleaning won't do jack to it.
This thing actually scrapes the top layer of the disc off and then completly recoats it, sweet huh, even if it's scratched to high heaven as long as their not really deep it'll fix it, although i think it does turn the black PSone games silver hehe.
This thing actually scrapes the top layer of the disc off and then completly recoats it, sweet huh, even if it's scratched to high heaven as long as their not really deep it'll fix it, although i think it does turn the black PSone games silver hehe.
Wòókiee Møn§†€R wrote:
> Myst1que wrote:
> the music industry is trying
> out a new
> cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
>
> messes the cd up
Yep, apparently they're recording deliberate
> 'errors' on the CD in the form of 'white noise'.
Apparently a
> normal CD player's built-in error correction will filter this noise
> out and we won't hear it. But a CD-writer will pick up the error
> and refuse to read from it.
Of course, it's only a matter of time
> until someone writes some software to get around this, or a company
> manufactures a CD-writer that automatically overcomes the problem.
That is 100% correct, as I said in the first post.
> Myst1que wrote:
> the music industry is trying
> out a new
> cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
>
> messes the cd up
Yep, apparently they're recording deliberate
> 'errors' on the CD in the form of 'white noise'.
Apparently a
> normal CD player's built-in error correction will filter this noise
> out and we won't hear it. But a CD-writer will pick up the error
> and refuse to read from it.
Of course, it's only a matter of time
> until someone writes some software to get around this, or a company
> manufactures a CD-writer that automatically overcomes the problem.
That is 100% correct, as I said in the first post.
Indian-DudeY2K wrote:
> but to his suprise in the letter which was returned with the console
> sony said that they had chipped !! the machine as they thought that
> was what was wrong with the old one !!
I think you'll find that means that a chip in the machine had blown, and they replaced it.
Sony do NOT 'chip' their own machines in that way!
> but to his suprise in the letter which was returned with the console
> sony said that they had chipped !! the machine as they thought that
> was what was wrong with the old one !!
I think you'll find that means that a chip in the machine had blown, and they replaced it.
Sony do NOT 'chip' their own machines in that way!
<<< Res€vilfan >>> wrote:
> Myst1que wrote:
> it isnt possible to copy a vhs anymore cos
> they do something to so
> the sound doesnt record with the
> film
the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is
> impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd
> up
I don't think so, I've heard lots of things about VHS copying
> and I can do it fine even decode NTSC to PAL. As for new CD's maybe
> for computers CD-CD but they won't be able to stop music CD's to
> Minidisc.
I can encode to NTSC/PAL. I can copy VHS's fine. If someone lends me a WWF Tape, I sneakily copy it.
> Myst1que wrote:
> it isnt possible to copy a vhs anymore cos
> they do something to so
> the sound doesnt record with the
> film
the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is
> impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd
> up
I don't think so, I've heard lots of things about VHS copying
> and I can do it fine even decode NTSC to PAL. As for new CD's maybe
> for computers CD-CD but they won't be able to stop music CD's to
> Minidisc.
I can encode to NTSC/PAL. I can copy VHS's fine. If someone lends me a WWF Tape, I sneakily copy it.
New Jimmy wrote:
> Microsoft and Sony so far have been a pair of Piracy loving companys
i know thats true , when my mates playstation broke , sony replaced it after they checked it over , but to his suprise in the letter which was returned with the console sony said that they had chipped !! the machine as they thought that was what was wrong with the old one !! , Sony Chipping their own machines !!! something must be going on up at sony Headquarters , i know many of you wont believe me on this one but i am telling you here and now that sony chipped my mates playstation , maybe they are behind the whole piracy thing so infact they are making more money off of pirated games than the profits which they make from originals !! you never know in this world !
> Microsoft and Sony so far have been a pair of Piracy loving companys
i know thats true , when my mates playstation broke , sony replaced it after they checked it over , but to his suprise in the letter which was returned with the console sony said that they had chipped !! the machine as they thought that was what was wrong with the old one !! , Sony Chipping their own machines !!! something must be going on up at sony Headquarters , i know many of you wont believe me on this one but i am telling you here and now that sony chipped my mates playstation , maybe they are behind the whole piracy thing so infact they are making more money off of pirated games than the profits which they make from originals !! you never know in this world !
Myst1que wrote:
> it isnt possible to copy a vhs anymore cos they do something to so
> the sound doesnt record with the film
the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd up
EVERY security system that will ever be thought of WILL be broken.
It's like the battle between crypotographers, and crypoanalysts.
> it isnt possible to copy a vhs anymore cos they do something to so
> the sound doesnt record with the film
the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd up
EVERY security system that will ever be thought of WILL be broken.
It's like the battle between crypotographers, and crypoanalysts.
shaneo wrote:
On the other hand, I
> understand for ppl who copy games. Games are WAY too expensive. I
> think every game should be £25 brand new.
Yeah games are far too expensive, I mean I can understand the people involved in them, but if they bring down their game prices they'd sell more copies and make more profit anyway. The PS2 has the right idea with a £15 budget range on the way and hopefully a platinum range.
On the other hand, I
> understand for ppl who copy games. Games are WAY too expensive. I
> think every game should be £25 brand new.
Yeah games are far too expensive, I mean I can understand the people involved in them, but if they bring down their game prices they'd sell more copies and make more profit anyway. The PS2 has the right idea with a £15 budget range on the way and hopefully a platinum range.
Atomic_Koala wrote:
> Whatever companies do in order to stop piracy, there will always be some way of getting past it. It's not right, I know but that is the grim reality.
If they put barbed wire all around their ships and greased the sides of the things the pirates would not be able to get on board.
> Whatever companies do in order to stop piracy, there will always be some way of getting past it. It's not right, I know but that is the grim reality.
If they put barbed wire all around their ships and greased the sides of the things the pirates would not be able to get on board.
Myst1que wrote:
> the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd up
Yep, apparently they're recording deliberate 'errors' on the CD in the form of 'white noise'.
Apparently a normal CD player's built-in error correction will filter this noise out and we won't hear it. But a CD-writer will pick up the error and refuse to read from it.
Of course, it's only a matter of time until someone writes some software to get around this, or a company manufactures a CD-writer that automatically overcomes the problem.
> the music industry is trying
> out a new cd that is impossible to make copies of if you try to it
> messes the cd up
Yep, apparently they're recording deliberate 'errors' on the CD in the form of 'white noise'.
Apparently a normal CD player's built-in error correction will filter this noise out and we won't hear it. But a CD-writer will pick up the error and refuse to read from it.
Of course, it's only a matter of time until someone writes some software to get around this, or a company manufactures a CD-writer that automatically overcomes the problem.
Page: