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Maybe they were taking hints from Ubisoft: http://megagames.com/news/ubisoft-steals-reloaded-crack-fix-its-own-game

3D w/ out glasses
http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/3dtvwithoutglassesareality.shtml
http://www.hemagazine.com/node/CEATEC_Show_Coverage

Not really.. http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/hackersextractedwiisencryptionkeys.shtml . There is encryption on the chip, it's just that they managed to get the keys so that they can sign any code they want and run it on the processor. Sad that (presumably) some of the CPUs resources are being wasted on decryption.

MY POST WAS NOT OFFTOPIC! He listed a link that can't be seen and he got an extra point for that! Furthermore, here is proof that Halo II is VISTA ONLY! http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/halo2pc-vistaonly-bungieqna.shtml http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/reviews/738/Halo-2-Vista-Review But if you want to crack, that is up to you. http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6146&Itemid=2 Seriously, get it together you moderators.

> I just went to http://www.megagames.com/ [megagames.com] for the no cd patch.
> Oh this is the official no-cd patch. Well, that's a bit better.

Company removes copy protection from ancient program. People mislead themselves into thinking the company's "seen the light!"

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...move along.

> Kinda late though.

They waited for years before doing this, when the game's sales are largely over. Kinda late...for what then?

I just went to http://www.megagames.com/ for the no cd patch. Oh this is the official no-cd patch. Well, that's a bit better. Kinda late though.

While I can't view the site to check for red alert 2 as I'm at work at the moment, www.megagames.com has game fixes that crack the games which have some DRM problems as well as other fixes. I've used those a few times when I've run into problems playing games in windows that seem to crash just after starting up. It might be worth a try?

I just moved to a new city - from Stockholm, Sweden to Phoenix, Arizona, so Ive had a lot of free time on my hands and much of that has gone to looking for good, free games. I havent limited this to only flash, obviously. Beggars cant be choosers.
But here are some I found that were very addicting!

(flash)
Motherload
http://www.miniclip.com/games/motherload/en/

A game where youre a miner on a mars colony. Deeper you go, the more dangerous, but the more valuable the gems. Upgrades and planning ahead are really important. Actually takes the better part of the day to beat, and it incorporates a save function.

(flash)
Aqua Energizer
http://www.miniclip.com/games/aqua-energizer/en/

Really addicting puzzle/maze game.

I dont like straying from the subject, but usually we are limited to buggy beta-type games when the pricetag is $0.
It may be interesting for a lot of people to know that Rockstar has released Grand Theft Auto (1) to the public, free of charge
http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/ (download link). The good people at Virgin Interactive have also released Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn to the public, also free of charge: http://megagames.com/news/html/freegames/commandandconquertiberiandawn.shtml (download link).

These are some great classic titles that are all worth being played again!

You mean something like this?

http://www.megagames.com/news/show.cgi?&idtype=freegames&database=185&section=downloads&

I found it rather likable.

My brother sent this to me the other night. http://megagames.com/news/html/console/manhunt2adultsonlyps2versionleaked.shtml

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/microso ftconfessandfixrrodepidemic.shtml has gone all the way to say: [quote]Some people would believe that Microsoft have just discovered the issue and fixed it, as expected from a reputable multinational company. But when asked, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division for a "little over first year" the "set of issues wasn't visible at all," but during the last couple of months the company has seen "significant increases, significant call volume, and significant attention" to the problem. During those "couple of months" Microsoft actively denied the problem several times. [/quote]

I hope this is not considered spamming, but MegaGames have the full story covered from all aspects. (BBFC's and Rockstar's opinions as well as related incidents).

BS. I have used these no CD cracks.

Ever play Operation Flashback? Among other features, it had a campaign where you played as an insurgent against Russian occupying forces. It was a great game for its time.

Third time's the charm, right?

Unfair comparision. The PSP has sold in the 100k range, yet there will be 6 MILLION PS3's out by next March.

You might want to doublecheck those sales figures. The PSP hit 10 million units LAST OCTOBER ( http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/pspsale sfiguresreleased.shtml ). It is a perfectly fair comparison.

So what you are saying is that you will need to compress and degrade the signal more on HD-DVD.

Stop putting words in my mouth. I'm saying that, unless you consider DVD video "degraded", that you don't need 25gb of space to store a movie using a next gen codec. If you're using mpeg2 for all your release titles (see current shipping bluray titles) you actually need 24-36gb of storage space (you may also note many reviews complaining about poor quality of the encode and lack of extras on those discs).

You'll find that the bitrate of the encoded video will be large enough to fill the entire disc, regardless of capacity. With bluray, you're going to see mostly single layer discs holding 25gb of data, with hd-dvd you're going to see mostly dual layer discs holding 30gb of data.

In short Blue Ray can hold at min 5GB more on single layer.

Good grief, can you get any facts straight? It's a 10gb difference per layer.

HD-DVD currently has a 5gb advantage over bluray as they still haven't figured out how to punch out dual layer bluray discs in large quantities.

As far as Microsoft goes. Again, as the parent poster mentioned it all comes down to Java. They don't and will never control Java. They hate that. We can argue all day about how much money they get on HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, but they get control of one format and that isn't Blu-Ray. Not to mention that Blu-Ray gets Java in the living room. That has to scare the crap out of Microsoft.

So your counter to a reasoned well thought out arguement is "Microsoft is teh evil no likey Java". The bozo hat is coming out in a minute here. Microsoft couldn't give a shit about Java on bluray. Java is, for all intensive purposes, dead on Windows, which is the only place it was ever a threat to them. Get over it.

Yeah and the less than 100k people that bought a HD-DVD player didn't have a DVD player also? This is a very small issue. However, your statement is incorrect. There is already a DVD,BluRay burner out there. So this "advantage" isn't there.

Were you born stupid or were you dropped on your head as a child? I, as a person currently owning a DVD player, and as a person NOT owning an HD-DVD player, like the thought of buying HD-DVD discs NOW, and playing them in my DVD player NOW. In 4 years, I'd like to be able to take those VERY SAME DISCS, stick them in an HD-DVD player, and watch them in their hi-def glory.

And wtf does this have to do with a combo dvd/bluray burner?

Then again it could be. More storage means less compression. Less compression most of the time means better quality.

You need exponentially more storage to achieve noticable quality improvements. A 10kb jpeg looks noticably better than a 1kb jpg. A 100kb jpeb looks noticably better than a 10kb jpeg. A 1mb jpeg looks noticably better than a 100kb jpeg. Etc. In this case, you would need a 500gb disc to achieve significant quality gains. An additional 20gb isn't enough to yield noticable differences in quality, and that's assuming of course studios even put out discs in that size.

Lets change the analogy a bit. One car is expensive and it run on Disel. The other car is not going to be out for a few months later and it runs on regular gas. Unfortunately this second car is going to initially cost more than the first, but a company is going to release an SUV that also runs on gas and over 100X the people that would buy either car will buy the SUV over the next two years. The market will see this and support gas over disel.

Your analogy doesn

Have you played Geometry Wars on the 360 ?

Your opinion is just so generally wrong =)

Perhaps there are only FPS games WHERE YOU LOOK.

This lot are even free :

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/freegames/freeg ames.shtml

If they wait too long, the PS3 will begin looming on the horizon, causing even devout early adopters to question the intelligence of buying a stand-alone Blu-Ray unit.

OK this is just sad. This is, perhaps, the main reason Microsoft fails in this market. They do something and declare it's the best ever: and they believe their own propaganda. That's just sad. It would be one thing if it was, "well, we had fairly strong launch, and we have a lot of games lined up in the future". But no, this sheer stubborn arrogance.

Let's look at a few things: The PSP sold 500k units in 2 days and many people consider it to have had a weak launch. (Possibly because it didn't entirely sell out.) It also had a more diverse launch title list Exclude Ren Goku and Smart Bomb as they weren't available for a couple weeks (and sucked anyway). The remaining games were solid titles available the day of launch.

And again, many people consider this a weak launch.

The PS2 had a more sizeable list at launch than the X360---also more diverse. (Yeah, so the graphics weren't good; gee, it was 2000. Compare it to the PSX or N64.)

The N64 launched with Mario64, which is widely considered to be one of the best games ever. The SNES was launched with Super Mario World; the NES with Super Mario Bros. All of these are AAA titles, and a single AAA title outweighs any number of B titles.

So in conclusion: Microsoft's claim is laughable at best---but mostly, sad and pathetic.

I've downloaded 50+ demos in the last few months and I've never not been able to find a download that's on a queued site on some other site with reasonable bandwidth.

www.download.com's usually ok, megagames lists lots of alternitive download sites (and it also has no-cd patches too)

The game that got all the Blizz fanboys in a frenzy when it was announced to be console only, something like 3 years ago. Remember this outstanding press release: in order to meet our goals and deliver the outstanding gameplay experience our customers have come to expect from Blizzard products, we have decided to extend our StarCraft: Ghost development schedule through the end of 2003. The Ghost development team however, remains hard at work, and will deliver the tactical-action console game in 2004.

Still not out, still projected to be for the GC, PS2 and Xbox; despite having a release date in 2006 (when all the new systems will be out). Backward compatibility saves the day...

Anyone know what's going on with Blizzard these days? Blizz North lost most (all?) of their senior developers and has been silent for years. the Arena.net people are already releasing their first game, so I can only assume that Blizz North has been shuttered? The RTS team at the Irvine office hasn't announced anything since finishing WC3X. Really, all that Blizz has going now is WoW (since Ghost technically wasn't under their direct control until recently).

"Theres a major lackage of a physics processor right now. Given the nice placement of GPU cards... on a high bandwidth bus of the northbridge, I'd say put the physics chip on the video card. Otherwise on a PCIX card."

Someone is developing something like this, it will be a seperate add-in card, but sounds interesting

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/hardware/physic sdedicatedhardwaresoon.shtml

Although this article is a bit old, not sure if it is still in the works or not...

"I have a geforce4ti, and wonder why will I need more GPU power anyway. HL2 and doom3 run fine, "

My old rig had the same card (very good card btw) then i upgraded to a 6800 (non ultra or GT even) and it really made a difference in both of those games, on the order of 2x the frame rate (and I really seem to notice changes in frame rates up to 85+)

Yes, I have not seen any system admins playing Quark to back up my production data (yet). Ofcourse if they were using something like this, then it might be a whole other matter.

Kazza Most Downloaded Program

Don't know how viable to source is but I did find this on a Google search right on the first page.

According to the friendly article, his life is not one big homage to "Star Wars," he says, and he has plenty of other interests, including classical music, modern dance, fine dining, dive bars, working out and reading about contemporary art.

Here's a workaround for Non-MIL-CD Dreamcast units. Which DC versions couldn't boot any audio/data or data/data CD-R discs?

2 minutes to find a no steam crack.

2 minutes to download the crack.

2 minutes to install.

Total time saved from not using steam. 3 hrs. 52 minutes.

You feel better whether you bought it or not.

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/gtasanandrea spcconfirmed.shtml

Mega games has CD cracks for pretty much everything. Please not that I only use this for games I own, and I expect others to follow my example. CD cracks mean I don't need to spend a stack of drive space on ISOs, and find that they don't work (in the case of GTA: VC).

For some reason the href tag got cut out of my above post. Here is MegaGames (though I'm sure you could've figured out the URL on your own).

Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales.

Most people asked "Why XBOX, Bill?" when Microsoft got into the console market.

IMHO, it's not to establish a new monopoly as much as it is to protect the one they already have. I mean, what's stopping the PS2 console from becoming a nice workstation?

Soko

The CPU speed race between Intel and AMD in recent years has been fueled tremendously by gaming. Once processor speeds caught up finally with the code bloat of business apps like MS Office, most business users really didn't *need* more speed. But PC games constantly push the hardware envelope, and as AMD provided faster chips and the gamer market bought them, Intel was forced to keep up.

While phones are definitely adapting more features and becoming more powerful, more people are using PCs and game consoles as the center of their home entertainment. Even without digital music, digital video manipulation and playback, and other uses for PCs, the PC gaming market is huge:

"Overall, 2003 U.S. sales of console games totaled USD 5.8 billion (186.4 million units) while computer games accounted for USD 1.2 billion (52.8 million units) in sales. Total game software sales in 2002 were USD 6.9 billion, with console games bringing in USD 5.5 billion in sales and computer games accounting for USD 1.4 billion. (Note: The numbers released by the ESA today do not include sales of game hardware or accessories.)"

The PC is continuing to evolve. I remember years ago when my dad told me he couldn't understand why he should buy a computer, aside from using it for accounting and occasional letter-writing. Now he uses it daily to run his business, communicate with other people, listen to music, find information, and so on.

A proliferation of other computing devices doesn't mean that the PC is going away any time soon.

Most of these articles are from 6 months ago, the last time MS released information on how its Xbox division was doing. But I would be very surprised if these unspecified manufacturing process improvements have made up for the estimated $100 per console hit MS was taking in May.

Look, there's no reason to resort to ad-hominem attacks. The Xbox is losing money. MS is buying a share of the gaming market. That's not an indictment of the product, or even the business plan. But it's a fact.

i guess you havn't seen it, if you got a cable modem i highly suggest you download the 600 meg video demo. Gaming will never be the same. get it here, gamespy free

check out megagames.com they have no-cd patches and some of them work over the network. if a game checks online for only a cd key you should be able to play it online

As underdog, hippo and happypenguin were already listed i though i'd anyway give a list of w32 freeware games links:

Gamedev.net -- good ressources for game developers and lists current projects... some good free games.
Download Net -- a great source for freeware and classic pc games (mostly windows)
MegaGames -- A good freeware section here.
RareWare -- This site is dedicated to all kind of games that have two things in common: they are small in size (max. 10mb) and are great to play.

have fun!

To get back on-topic I also consult Megagames regularly for all my patches needs and related add-on software.

Is that the daedalus version, I haven't tried it out yet. Is it any good?

How about DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball?... A beach volleyball game that reeeaally quite isn't about beach volleyball... ;) Check out the movie! (go to download.)

http://www.megagames.com/news/html/console/ps2linu xkitnowavailable.shtml

> I can wander and get the no-cd 'fix' for the game, but you end up looking for a fresh crack every time the game does a service pack.

Why not use Daemon-Tools ? Rip the CD to an .ISO, mount the game image, and you're all set. You never have to worry about cracks or no-cd fixes again :)

I use it for D2 and it works great. Most no-cd fixes don't work as the code does a CRC on the executables. Every patch breaks the latest no-cd fix.

And before you start complaing about taking up 640 Megs of diskspace per game ... Answer this, first: How many different games do you usually play in a week? 2 or 3 ? That's only 2 - 3 Gigs of drive space your sacrificing for ease of use !

Cheers

I found a copy of the core game - speed is pretty good (for now!).

There's several hacks available to make it play DVD's from anywhere. There's one built into the hardware of some of them as illustrated here, or you can buy a disc to do it like this.

- Freed

a game i've become addicted to recently is Day of Defeat, a Half-Life mod. i've stopped playing Counterstrike entirely, because of this game. each player would need different cd keys to play on the net, but not for a lan game, i think. it is about a 100mb download, tho, and is in beta.

i've never tried it at an actual lan party, but since you mentioned starcraft, try age of empires 2. cd cracks are readily available, even if you don't have the excellent expansion.

a game i've become addicted to recently is Day of Defeat, a Half-Life mod. i've stopped playing Counterstrike entirely, because of this game. each player would need different cd keys to play on the net, but not for a lan game, i think. it is about a 100mb download, tho, and is in beta.

i've never tried it at an actual lan party, but since you mentioned starcraft, try age of empires 2. cd cracks are readily available, even if you don't have the excellent expansion.

The bioses in US dreamcasts manufactured after November 2000 will not boot audio/data multi-session cds. This was done because major piracy groups (Echelon mainly) were using this as their primary self-booting game format. The workaround is to convert the audio/data cd to a data/data cd.

6.1. Newer Non-CDR DCs and workaround Thanks to DJ Motion from isonews, jc, OEM, and Xeal on dcwarez.

The new DCs have their BIOS programmed to prevent booting CD(R)s which have audio (audio boot data in this case) before the game data (formally known as the MIL-CD format). Not nice. Especially considering nearly all previous games - including ECHELON rips - work like this. When buying a Dreamcast, look for Dreamcast units manufactured BEFORE November 2000. There have been some units manufactured in Nov. 2000 with the new BIOS revision that will not work with CDR's. Note that retail box type (regular or Smash Pack) does not matter, only the manufacture date of the unit, which should be visible through a small window on the Dreamcast retail box. Also identified as not working with CDR's are the Sakura Taisen and Hello Kitty special edition Dreamcasts available in Japan.

So it looks like data only CDRs should work, just not audio _before_ data.

lnical

Are you crazy? Computers can't be exported to Iraq, that why they were buying lots of dreamcats and play stations so they can modify them and use with unmanned airplanes.

From http://www.megagames.com/news/html/pc/iraqsbuyingu pplaystation2s.shtml:

current United Nations sanctions prohibit the sale or transfer of virtually all types of computer hardware and technology to Iraq. However, computer-based video game systems -- like the PlayStation 2 -- are not included in the ban.

I don't know how the MPAA is going to win this lawsuit. Look at game cracks - game industry did somewhat the same almost 7 years ago, but against game cracks - they lost it. The program itself is not illegal, it is the usage of it.
For all you game cracks go to megagames

When you download the prog, it does not mean you are going to use it. I downloaded it, took a look at the sources, and kept it. I never ran any binary form of the prog(don't have a DVD device:).

Now I just need a DVD drive and I can start copying DVD's :)