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This sounds awfully familiar to the protection used on the playstation emulator "Bleem".
Fair enough it took them a while to hack, but they did!

I think what these copy protection people are forgetting, whilst spending these millions of dollars in research on anti piracy techniques is that at the end of the day, the data STILL NEEDS TO BE READ in order for it to be of any use to anybody.
They arent stopping the professional pirate. They will just annoy the mediocre pirate and frustrate consumers.

Too bad bleem! is out of buisness.

For some shameless karmawhoring, I made a mirror of the Bleem! homepage without all the javascript, so it is visible with any browser.

Don't expect too much from it!

Argh... the SlashCode still doesn't recognize URL-encoded text fields submitted by Mozilla, which is why I'm reposting this.

For those who don't have IE and want to see the picture, try this link for it without all the javascript.

This sounds oh so familiar to the case against bleem! software, and especially bleem!cast. These products in effect replaced the console that sony sells at a loss and encourages endusers to buy more software which causes a profit for sony. They didn't care about this, they just wanted control of the market, which may seem strange to many of us, but is a common japanese mindset from what i understand.

just my two sense.

DCEmulation.com

Plus, the Dreamcast can already boot from a CD-R, something the PS2 can't do natively. And they're $80 these days.

Also, Bleem [bleem.com] has made the most of the independent DC scene. Randy (of Bleem) reverse engineered all his own tools and they finally released BleemDC for GT2, the first commercial software based emulator for one console based on another. They're about to unveil one for Metal Gear Solid that makes that game look even better than the PC port. If you hit the Bleem!Cast Forum [dcemulation.com] and ask real nice, Rand will probably even answer questions for you (he's pretty cool like that).

As for porting non-emulators, a guy on the DCEmulation page going by crt0 ported Doom to the console, the first game to be ported to it (and the first "straight" port of Doom), so you might want to give him a shout on the boards.

Schnapple

see subject. http://www.bleem.com

From the looks of the Xbox developer kit, I imagine that even if MS doesn't sanction use of Xbox games on "regular PC's", that somebody will figure out how to do it sooner or later.

From the developer's point of view, Xbox is good because it uses Win32 API's right? Can anyone say "bleem"???

A bleem-like for Xbox should be a piece of cake to produce, right?

I haven't read post mentioning Clone CD yet ? This software actually does'nt care about the format of the CD, he just read plain data, put an image file with subchannels. Therefore, your burner must support raw mode.

In my standard CD player the CD worked without any problems. What's most interesting, if you look at the CD itself, there are visible gaps between the tracks (like on vinyl LPs)!

Just like Bleem CD ? It has the gaps you're talking about, hard to make a back-up, but possible with clone cd.

To be on topic, I would not be surprised that clone cd could enable you to make copies of the new protected audio cd, problem is that you'll still be unable to listen to your back-up cd through the computer.

Then why bother with a PS?

PS To PC USB Adapter

PS Emulator or countless other places

TV Out Adapter

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Capt' Trips

The first thing that I'd do is install Bleem.

-Waldo

sadly, most console companies are only looking to allow for this kind of cross-console usability when they have completely control over it.

take a look at the war Sony has launch over the Bleem, hauling them into court on three separate occasions, and finally going after the retailers to prevent distribution of a product that let's you play PS games on a PC or Dreamcast.

yes, it's cool that you can play against other consoles, but these companies need to loosen the reigns a bit.

_f

That is to say, after losing in court three times, Sony has been pressuring retailers not to stock Bleemcast--and that could drive Bleem right out of business. This is something Slashdot people need to know--it affects your freedom to play the games you want how you want.

The above link includes contact information for most major retailers. Happy Slashdot-effecting.
--

I'm pretty sure the emulators themselves are legal (roms are another thing). Didn't Bleem! (www.bleem.com, PlayStation emulator) win over Sony when Sony tried to sue them for emulating the PSX?

For me, the killer app would be a Sony Playstation I emulator

bleem! is a PlayStation console emulator for Windows and Dreamcast.

If it can do that, I'll consider it over a PS2...

Compatible games look better on bleem! than on PS2.

Until the X-Box can do that,

The PC hardware used for PC bleem! is similar to the PC hardware used in Xbox. The Windows and Direct3D software that bleem! uses is similar to the Windows and Direct3D software that Xbox games use. Therefore, porting bleem! to Xbox should be a breeze.

There are a few PSX emulation companies that are legitimate. However, I am sure that Sony will use the power of this legal precendence to take stakes in other such businesses and effort. They will definitely not ignore people like Bleem!. I imagine they have a definite interest in milking the prospect of PSX games everywhere (including the Dreamcast, in Bleam's case). Hopefully, groups that do it for free can get permission to be left alone to they're endeavors. I don't think Sony will see them as financial threats, because they further the demand for older PSX games.

Sony once dropped one of its suits (which was already truncated to only 2 of the 9 original charges), only to bring a new one the next day. Of course, they only brought that suit after an appeals court decided to reverse the first ruling and declare VGS "fair use". Now they've lost in the last piece of litigation against Connectix. Is it finally over?! Maybe they'll just file yet another suit with a slight difference to continue to harass Connectix. And what about that other company Sony sued? How does this affect them?

Very good point. Too bad whoever keeps making up these rumors about Micro$0ft and Sega didn't think about.

Don't forget Netbsd, DreamSNES and Bleem for DC.

It's a damn good thing console gaming companies make most of their profit on the games. I would suspect Sony is actually taking a small loss on the PS2, as the hardware is insanely expensive. It makes sense that you'd sell them the first hit cheap, and take profit after they're addicted. This probably explains why Bleem is still around.

The rumor is only made more plausable because of this, but, all the same, I think I'll /ignore anything more anyone but Sega has to say about their system. My heart has stopped twice over the past week, already, upon notification that I might not be able to pick up any more great games like Jet Grind Radio.

Eh.. bleem's website also says that bleemcast (playstation emulation for dreamcast) will be released in summer of 2000.... wait, that was 4 months ago and it still isn't out. not too reliable.

-gerbik

Eh.. bleem's website also says that bleemcast (playstation emulation for dreamcast) will be released in summer of 2000.... wait, that was 4 months ago and it still isn't out. not too reliable.

-gerbik

Make an interface to use the Playstation / Dreamcast controllers.

After all, Bleem is out for the Dreamcast to play Playstation 1 games on it. Why not make a 2600, Colecovision, Intellivision, 7800, 5200, NES, SNES, Genesis, SMS emulator disk?

I have a bunch of old Playstation games, but frankly the flickery, crappy low-rez vector rendering of those give me a headache when I play them on the aging Playstation. I hope BLEEM for DC will be out soon! That should add a bunch of vintage titles to the currently not very impressive catalog of Dreamcast compatible software.

How ironic that the PS2 itself didn't include better rendering and performance for the old games. :)

As a close follower of the emulation scene at the time, Bleem! PC did NOT deliver. It cost $10 when it came out, and when you got your CD, you didn't even have the program! You had to go to Bleem! to download it. First, Randy's anti-piracy method would NOT work on all CD-ROM readers. So, there came a flurry of revisions to get it to work. Then, another flurry of revisions to get Direct3D working. There has not been an update since at least the middle of March 2000. [sarcasm] Keep up the good work, Randy! [/sarcasm]

Sure, call me cynical, but I really don't see why people are so obsessed over a gaming console. For some reason, they seem to have forgotten that any PC purchased within the last, say, 3 months, probably out-powers the PSX2 in both processor speed and video power. And, if you want to play PSX/PSX2 games, there is always bleem!

Note, I'm not trying to troll here, I am simply expressing an opinion. I never really understood the alure of a gaming console.. does anybody have any comments?


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CitizenC

Yes, there are ways and means of burning a CDR which will boot code on most Dreamcasts (there are rumours of some new models coming out which are not amenable to this method). I suspect this method was reverse-engineered from the commercial Datel product "action replay CDX", which itself is not endorsed by Sega.

Bleem!'s Dreamcast port is also, by all accounts, not sanctioned by Sega. We live in interesting times...

Ah so many choices: X, SDL, SVGAlib, GGI, ClanLib, ngine...
--

Don't forget, this isn't the only PlayStation emulator out there -- bleem! has been around for a while.. wasn't Sony suing them as well? Or was that just to prevent it's release?

Therefore, I'm guessing it will run great in Dreamcast Bleem! The great thing about this, of course, is that the whole Rockman Complete series is available from importers. Sigh, I feel sorry for modern gamers, they don't even get to play decent sprite based games when they come out in Japan... Um... if you want them, you'd better hurry, when I checked Rockman2 was _sold_out_!!! @.@

Hooray for Bleem! for Dreamcast!

Most games don't even come close to PC qualitity if you look at the resolution. However, if you compare what they get done in their lower resolution (Gran Turismo II looks great in crappy resolution).

But the games graphics quality is not that important compared with actual gameplay.

Can these "emulators" render the graphics any better?

The PSX emulator Bleem! can display the games in higher resolution and they look slightly better (this is in large letters on the box in fact, www.bleem.com), but the graphics source it is based on is not made for these higher resolutions so don't expect miracles.

Patience will pay off with Bleem! though, one day I'm sure they'll have 100% compatibility on their test system, of course that will be less certain on consumer PCs due to configuration issues, hardware differences, etc, but it will probably be close to 100%.

I'm glad to hear this news, here I was thinking that Sony had the law on their side in the Virtual Game Station case, if not the morality. I'm glad they lost, nice when law and morality go hand in hand.

Now we need a native Linux Playstation Emulator, unless there is already one out there. I wonder who out their is up to the task... heh, some one should suggest it to MoRE, it'd be a good way to legally spit in Sony's eye.

So, even before the DVD thing came up I was going to boycott Playstation2 (and Dreamcast for similar abuses.)

So, basically, I say if you plan to boycott content controls, remember Sony may be the driving force behind the whole thing! Did you know it is illegal to sell used tapes or video games in Japan? Who do you think is behind that? Sony helped rob the Japanese people of ownership of their own property (the right to sell things you own is part of that), and now they are in cahoots with people who want to do something similar here!

Playstation predates DVD, Playstation paved the way for DVD CCA. Boycott Sony if you plan on boycotting the MPAA and DVD CCA.

Check out bleem!. I almost tried, didn't. I have one real playstation game Final Fantasy VII (why I bought it, dang credit cards), which if you missed it is right up the best of Wizardry and Ultima for Ultimate Roleplaying Adventure game, tons of kick ass CGI too.

Emulators are perfectly legal. Sony recently tried and failed to obtain an injuction to block the shipment of the Bleem! Playstation emulator.

But of course, the amount of justice you get is directly proportional to the amount of money you have and are willing to spend. Nintendo knows full well that the people behind snes9x are very likely to just going stop developing the emulator rather than fight a costly legal battle with Nintendo -- ordinary people can't be fighting legal battles with mega-corporations; see the bleem page for how much it cost those guys just to fight Sony.

here.

If the PSX2 does end up running on a modified Linux kernel, does that mean we'll see industrious hackers plugging keyboards and hard drives into the USB & Firewire ports and running Linux shell on their PSX2?

Will industrious hackers be able to hack the code for the GPL'd PSX2 simulator to make GPL'd PSX1 simulators (which, needing much less processor power than PSX2, should run on today's machines just fine), thus making Connectix or Bleem!'s commercial efforts irrelevant?

Can GPL'd development tools legally be used to develop commercial games? Doesn't code written using that code have to be GPL'd too? Or am I missing something?

1. 
   If anyone can fill me in (or make good guesses) I'd like to hear them...