GameCube ISOs Released?

Mister.de writes "An online piracy group called "StarCube" has made ISO's of games like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker available for download on the net. They are not publicly available to everyone, but are said to be hosted on private warez FTP sites. As of yet (6/14/2003) there is no way to actually play the games after burning to a mini-disc, but reliable sources say that there will be a hack for the GameCube released soon so that these illegal copies can be played. Also rumors do have it that the copied games can be played on the Panasonic GameCube, but that is unconfirmed. " The story came from Console-Gods originally.

Comments

Re:Hard to do

[James_Duncan8181]

I am not entirely sure that the spins backwards thing is true (as that would mean that the normal GC discs wouldn't play on the Panasonic model) but assuming that it is, why not just make a program that modifies the ISO before burning?

Surely this is the simpler method...

Done before on Dreamcast

[Chris_Jefferson]

Opinion on IRC seems to be this was done in the same way as the Dreamcast, ie someone produces some method of getting code onto the gamecube which reads the disk and sends it out. Getting code onto the gamecube without Nintendo's permission has been previously shown to be possible by a number of cheat and "region avoiding" cheats. Therefore this part isn't too hard and to be honest it was only a matter of time. The much more serious problem is getting a disc of reasonable size that a gamecube can read to burn the games onto. Obviously it can be done but perhaps only on a large scale. I wouldn't hold my breath to the point where we are all burning gamecube games to be honest. Of course, in 4 or 5 years we'll all be playing gamecube emulators and then these rips will be in hard demand! Start hoarding now! :)

emulator?

[gTsiros]

Isn't it funny that there is still no emulator for the gamecube? I mean, it must be the only console without an emulator (and ps2?)...

writting emulators has become increasingly difficult over the years.

Gameboy emulators are a breeze (mostly due to the rather generic hardware). NES/SNES more difficult. N64 is very challenging.

Has anyone heard of even plans for a GC emulator?
I'm itching to play Metroid:Prime @1024x768 :DD

Re:emulator?

[Chris_Jefferson]

There is no real N64 emulator (only high-level ones which don't really work on most games).

The Saturn has only just recently got emulators that work well enough to play the games and modern computers are (almost) fast enough to play them.

Screen shots of DC are getting quite far along but the emulator isn't released or anywhere near playable speed.

There is no PS2 or X-box emulator that does much beyond display a title screen or two (this is still a major accomplishment, but not really good enough to play games)

So to be honest the fact there is no GC emulator isn't that suprising :) Now that there are isos floating around and espically if people can put their own programs on the GC (which REALLY helps in emulating machines) then we may see them start. I'll be very suprised if you can play GC games on your PC within 3 year tho

Re:Hard to do

[Chris_Jefferson]

There have already been multiple people who have made unoffical discs, like Datel's action replay and freeloader (disc for allowing the playing of games from a different region) so clearly it isn't too hard (or they don't really spin backwards)

Re:Hmmm...

[muffen]

Dude, seriously, you're wondering how to get these?

So far, rumor has it :) that you can find it of IRC, DirectConnect, Kazaa (even though most is crap and not the real thing) and private warez sites.

I haven't downloaded this myself, as I couldn't really care less, but I don't really agree with piracy on the GC.

I like the Nintendo games, and Nintendo is one of the gaming companies I would not like to see die. Seriously, who doesn't remember the original SMB?
Just thinking about ice climber, SMB, Zelda, Metroid, not to mention super bomber man on the SNES, makes me remember how good games used to be in regards to gameplay.

Coming to think about it, Nintendo owes me a lot of mis-spent time :)

Anyways, guess I should stop typing now :)

os X freezing up

[eskimo232]

Well i don't want to play devils advocate and start this up again, but I admit that os X has frozen on me once....it's when I put in a gamecube disc, the cd-rom drive just kept spinning for like 10 minutes and i couldn't do anything, like forcequit or relaunch the finder, so...I had to reboot....ruining my months and months of hard work building up my uptime stat......it ended at 3 months and 8 days......:-( stupid friend who suggested i put it in........ (on a side note, windoze freezes to, so don't get all hyped up you microsoft brown-nosers. Even billy gates can't crack the gamecubes superdisc......I'm curious as to how this release group ripped the data, they must have some some connection between the gamecube and their pc, because i don't know of any normal dvd-roms that can read these things, does anyone else?

What they probably did

[msgmonkey]

Was analyse the signals going to/from the GameCube and the read head/head motor control.

Once you have figured out how the raw bits are stored you can actually build your own controller to read off the information ready for transfer to CD/Hard disk/etc.

I suspect the problem they will have is getting a gamecube to read the data off some other medium. The GC is very integerated and you can't intercept the commands to the drive controller (eg read sector number xxxxx) because those signals are inside a chip and not tracks on the board.

You would have to build something that connected directly to the read head/head motor control pcb tracks and attempt to calculate where on the disc it wanted the bits to stream in from. It's not impossible but it is far from trival.

Re:Yeah...right...whatever.

[jbarket]

Just to let you know, you can buy normal blank DVDs for around 1$/ea if you buy in bulk. And even if you buy just a couple, it's definately not 10$/ea. I've seen those mini-DVDs around for under 10$/ea. The purpose of the modchip or running unauthorized code would be game development. This is /. after all, open source is a pretty big thing here.

Perhaps not undesirable developments after all

[winston_pr]

Let's face it. The GameCube is losing behind PS2 and XBOX. Both PS2 and XBOX are "piratable" or "backupable" whatever you like to call it. I doubt the XBOX would have taken off so fast if it would not have been for all the moddings made available for it. I doubt the PS(1) would have overtaken the others so quickly if it wouldn't have been for chipping. Allowing a core of hard-core (otaku) to release and trade GC games would definately lead to more Base-systems being sold. More base systems lead to a better market share, which in turn makes more developers interested. Then after 1 year of this *BAM!* a new copy protection. Nintendo sits with double the installed base of base-units they did before the copying, and a whole community running around the console. Perhaps not such a bad outlook after all.

Re:Yeah...right...whatever.

[Frac]

Best Buy - Fuji 10-Pack 2.4x DVD-R Discs with Jewel Cases - $24.99

I hate it when people won't admit they're wrong... The price of DVD-R media has gone down from $10/DVD-R for a LONG TIME now.

Re:Misconceptions

[b1t r0t]

5. One of the important (and well-known) copyright mechanisms is a barcode-like section of the far innermost track of GCN discs (look closely at a game and you can see it - no, not that one, further to the inside). It is probably just not possible to replicate this on any writable DVD format.

The patent for this was linked to in some article back in late March or so. I seem to recall that the barcode is an encrypted value related to the relative angular position of the start of the barcode and the start of the game data track. Sounds like some kind of Apple ][ copy protection, except using stuff that you can't record.

And of course the only way to get any of this (and Linux) to boot is probably going to be a hacked boot ROM with support for standard DVD-R discs. Time to bone up on your mad surface-mount s01d3r1ng sk177z!

Re:Hard to do

[Azureflare]

I think it's not even thought of as piracy by the pirater; Games are strange like that. Games are strange because you pay a lot of money for something that you get mindless entertainment from for a few hours, while you press little buttons and little dots on a screen move around. It really is completely pointless, and paying money for it, to some people, seems utterly ridiculus.

You also need to realize that there are some people in the world who have real addictions to video games, and seriously need to get that next videogame to have their next fix. OK, yes, they could stop and halt the endless whirlpool down that their life is probably taking, but try telling that to the big ugly monster on the screen =P

If you play games too much, it's like in all those stories where the hero gets trapped in a dream...Only the gamer doesn't want to escape. If anyone's read that (admittedly slightly childish) new book out by Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men, it has some of those elements in it. Of course it draws from ancient mythology, but the idea is what I'm getting at here.

It's really like modern drugs. Hey, I'd rather have those pirates pirating games, then going around shoplifting and holding up banks for their next "fix."

game and not game...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no issue with taking a pirated game and playing it. If I do like it, I eventually buy it, as I want the company to be able to make more of the same or similar. When I first started playing Half-Life I had the pirated version for about 2 years before buying the CD at the store. I have since bought approximately five copies of the SAME game for various reasons.

That's just for games.

Non-game software I have no issue pirating it or aquiring a pirated version for my own personal use. As a technology consultant, these companies should be paying me to recommend their software to my clients/others.

Since they do not pay me, I will not pay them....