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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.
on slashdot, because the feds will see it and immediatedly shut it down. way to ruin our fun /.!
I write code.
Cmdr Taco, the NY Times has hacked your site!
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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! :)
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
The same thing happened to xbox, the games were ripped for a while and then finally the modchips were made. Look where the xbox is now.
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)
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Not quite. Rather than writing data to the discs normally from the inside to the outside of the disc, Nintendo does it vice-versa and write the data to the disks from the outside in. Therefore the data is written to (and read from) the disk backwards. But the disk itself spins the normal way around.
To play a burned disc, you'd have to either heavily modify your computer or your 'Cube, and in the end it would be cheaper to just buy the game rather than pirate it.
I'm no expert on chipping, but I would assume that you'd just need to chip your GC and then write the games ISO out differently than you would normally (specialised software?). But even if this thing cost £200, you'd still be saving money after your 5th game.
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I loved Nintendo when i was a kid, and i still think they release some of the best games on the market. But when it comes to shooting themselves in the foot, they never learn.
They released the N64 as a cartridge based system to prevent piracy; but in doing so alienated their 3rd party developers and customers. Not only where the games far more expensive to produce, they could not support the wealth of Video and Music easily contained on a CD.
With the GameCube, they decided -again- not to go for the mainstream option and instead use small psuedo-DVD's -and for what? The only thing the have been successfull in achieving is eliminating any wavering interest in the gamecube as a competitor to the "home-entertainment style" PS2, whilst at the same time, retaining the piracy that they went to so much effort to prevent.
Steve
There is no real N64 emulator (only high-level ones which don't really work on most games).
:) 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
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
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
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I'm pretty sure they don't spin backwards. I even went and popped open the lid while the system was reading. I'm not sure why this rumor keeps popping up though. I've heard it so many times.
Whatever protection they have on there is damn good since (barring this story) I haven't heard of anyone successfully reading a disc.
I usually don't bitch about what the Slashdot editors run, be it duplicate stories or typos--we're all human, we all make mistakes.
/all the time/ in the console world these days--coupled with the write-up that got posted, it seems like a 1337 plug for the ISOs.
/act/ like pirates, the big content companies will /treat/ us like pirates.
But I have to wonder what the hell was going through Hemos's mind when he decided to post this story. It seems like he posted a story about illegal copies of an unreleased game.
What was the point? Are you trying to get Slashdot shut down? Piss off the readers? Game developers? It's stuff like this that makes all computer geeks look like skeezy software pirates, and it's on the front page, no less. This stuff makes everyone here look like hypocrites and asshats when we preach about fair use and how the content publishers and distributors should treat us as their customers.
So this story didn't link to an illegal ISO. It didn't give a BitTorrent link. But with no real reason why it should have been posted--this stuff happens
If we
Or did I miss something at 9:00 in the morning?
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Not going to tell you where to get these ISOs, other than they are floating around the usual warez spots, particularily on IRC.
However you can see what has been ripped so far at:
http://www.nforce.nl/nfos/index.php?do=1&s=20
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
I find it funny how this article is on so many different sites, yet there is no proof of anything.
So what? Therea are a few cd dumps of the Wind Waker. The only way possible to get them on an actual system would be to totally replace the drive with one that doesnt just read Nintendo's pseudo-DVDs. It's just like those DVD players that ONLY read dvds, they dont have the physical capability of even reading anything but the GameCube Disc, no audio-cd, video dvd, nothing.
Someone said that GameCube piracy would be much like the Dreamcast, but they forgot that the Dreamcast has the built-in ability to read any kind of disc, the GameCube's laser can ONLY read Nintendo's custom DVD-like discs. So, without a GameCube SDK it's not possible.
Other people are comparing it to the Xbox, with ISOs being released and modchips later. There's an issue with this as well. Every other system has legit, somewhat legal reasons for using modchips: importing games from other regions. It just so happened that those modchips had an alternative "feature" of letting the system read burned discs as if they were real games. The Nintendo has the ability to play other regions built-in, just a little jumper change on the inside and you have a Japanese Cube, change it back and you have a US cube. There is no legal reason for a company to make modchips and therefore anyone mass producing them can be shutdown by Nintendo in a second.
Let's say for a second that these ISOs do exist, and that some moron figures out how to play them on the Cube. It will be more expensive to mod the system, burn the game (10 bucks for a normal sized blank DVD, not sure how much mini-dvds are or if they even exist yet), etc than it would be just to buy the damn thing.
Frozen Insanity
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There is the question of whether it is worth discussing the issues you put forth, if they are the opinions you hold. What's wrong with that? /. isn't condoning it or condemning it in the article, just making people aware of this.
Not only is it an interesting topic of discussion, but for geeks, it is interesting to discuss and explore the possibilities of emulation - being able to create something that can not only play the games of a console, with completely different hardware, at a playable rate.
But as people have pointed out, it's not even really an issue at the moment given the computing power it would take to do so with this gen of consoles. So we have the questions of modifiying the consoles themselves, also interesting.
It's not wrong to make people aware of the changes in technology and what people are capable of doing. If you are worried about the illegality of the act itself, don't partake of it, but you can't preach that we don't mention it somewhere where the majority of readers would find it at least interesting to hear.
- Gamecube discs spin clockwise, just like almost every other drive. Try opening the lid while a game is being read so you can see for yourself.
- The small (8cm) physical size of the Gamecube discs has nothing to do with copy protection; Nintendo just liked small discs. 8cm discs are not new, and writable discs of this size are not hard to acquire. 8cm DVD-RAM discs are popular for digital recording applications, although that may be 100% irrelevant if the GCN's laser doesn't read that type of medium in the first place...
- The copying of Gamecube disc images is NOT done by just popping the disc in a computer's drive and reading it. If this is even feasible or practical, it is NOT how dumping is being done right now. Dumping is being done by tricking the only networked Gamecube game (PSO) into reading the disc's contents and sending it out over the network.
- This still leaves MANY mysteries as to the precise format of the disc:
- So far as I know, it's still not confirmed whether the tracks spiral differently on Gamecube discs
- It's not known how well the dumps reflect what's really on the disc at the low level - when the system reads the disc, it might be decrypting, as well, or ignoring other information that the BIOS will strictly require to ensure the disc is legit. IOW, perhaps the dumps are hopelessly different from the format a GCN disc needs to be in
- 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.
And just to reinforce the point, since many people won't understand it - this DUMPING does NOT allow anyone to play pirated games. It is not even clear what steps are necessary to get to that point. It's rather impressive, really - the PSX, Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox were all cracked by the time they'd been out this long, yet the Gamecube remains a mystery. A good thing, IMO.--
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I'm almost 99% sure that the discs don't spin backwards, but Iâ(TM)d have to have a friend of mine bring his GC over so that I could test it. The reason Iâ(TM)m _guessing_ it doesnâ(TM)t spin backwards, is because of the plain and simple fact that console hardware developers don't like to get into _really_ proprietary stuff because of the high-cost of the Devkit that would be required by the hardware. And the more the developer has to pay for the Devkit, the less likely they are to get it if they are a smaller company who can't afford the multi-million dollar expenses... which translates into less games. And we all know how less games--that very well may be high quality games--turns out... All I gotta say is Playstation, and you know what Iâ(TM)m talking about.
;)
What they _probably_ did was take some 'special' 8cm DVD disks (look here for more info and a picture of one in a case--how hard would it be to get it out of there if your the "Big N"?) and encode it in such a way that only a specially modified firmware would read the discs.
Just like the dreamcast (which did use some special hardware... and the price of the Devkit was high... No games (in USA)... pattern?) did. Its all a matter of TRICKING the GC into thinking whatever disc you put in there was supposed to be there, and then either making it read the discs as normal, or formatting your discs to use the same layout as the real discs.
And anyone with a oscilloscope (and a fair bit of skill with it) can see what lines are being pulled high/low to see what the disc is reading at a given time. How do you think these 'mod chips' actually work? All they do is feed the processor/DSP a code of 'This disc is ok--just play the game' and then the processor does what itâ(TM)s been designed to do.
Its like cracking a videogame on the computer--all we do is make the 'Disc bad/not present--no play' instruction jump to the 'Disc present--play' instead. Its so elegantly simple, and its mind-boggling how stupid game developers think that anything they make will never be cracked, just because they have some 'proprietary' disc/code/hardware.
Let me make this as clear as possible to game hardware developers out there:
So long as your processor supports the jump assembly command, or your hardware uses standard CMOS/TTL voltages/IC's, your program/game can be hacked. I said 'can', because its all a matter of who wants to put the effort into it and not just the plain and simple fact that they can do it. Ok... maybe thereâ(TM)s a little of that in there too.
Why is it that people don't consider pirating stealing?
Because it's not. It's copyright infingement. It's still a crime, but it's not stealing. Theft deprives the original owner of the property use of said property.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Piracy on Nintendo systems has always been a fickle topic. Back in the day Nintendo dropped the CD and stuck with the cartridge right up through the N64. Their choice to stick with proprietary optical media on the cube is obviously because they want to have the ultimate defense against piracy.
This seems pretty good for Nintendo. Nintendo makes more profit per unit on games and systems than either MS or Sony. This is how they stay in business despite not being number one. However, I think one of the reasons they aren't number one is because you can't pirate their games.
I know lots of people with Playstation 1's and 2's. It's hard not to. Almost all of these people have modded a system for various reasons, import games, piracy, etc. However, they all have one thing in common. They bought the hardware legitimately, and they all have at least a few legitimate games. Everyone who owns a gamecube has had to buy all of their games and hardware legitimately. People who can't afford to do so, don't buy a cube.
I'm not advocating piracy. I think that if you want to have the privalege of playing all the great cube games you should have to pay for it, like I do. However, I think piracy does increase market share a great deal. By having pirateable games your system becomes prevalent in low income countries and households. Outside of US, Europe, Japan and Australia getting video games is difficult. Often the only option is to get a PS1, which is easily acquireable and pirate games which are un-affordable.
By switching to a pirateable media format like CD or DVD Nintendo will lose some money to decreased software sales to suburban kids and college students. But they will make that money back by selling hardware to low income households who will pirate all their software.
In summary. No piracy causes lower market share, but higher software sales figures. 2 million copies of Zelda as opposed to 1.5 million otherwise. Pirating allows higher market share through more hardware sales, but causes fewer software sales.
The other reason is that Nintendo makes a lot of first party titles. Piracy would cause direct loss of dough to Nintendo. The other systems thrive mostly on third party software. So piracy doesn't hurt Sony or Microsoft as much as it hurts Capcom or EA.
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I have no actual proof to back this up, so it's heresay, but interesting nonetheless. I've read from a number of sources that the disc doesn't spin backwards, but is structured in a backwards fashion, with the lead-out on the inside of the disc, and the lead-in on the outside. Additionally (this part is confirmed by myself and others), the information identifying it as a legitimate disc is a barcode around the center of the disc just past the data area, making it extremely hard to fool the system without a hardware mod, since the barcode is nigh on impossible to duplicate at home (unless you live in a professional mastering plant). Both of these phenomena can be observed if you hold in the switch that tells the Cube the drive is open, it goes to the inside of the disc beyond the data region to the barcode, then travels to the outside of the disc before it starts loading. Confirming that the barcode is necessary to load the game is quite simple: take a small piece of tape, or use a dry erase marker, and cover it up. The Gamecube laser will travel to the inside of the disc and then refuse to load. Finally, the Gamecube will not read CDs. If you try obstructing the barcode like I mentioned earlier, the Gamecube will still spin up the disc and attempt to read it. However, if you put a CD in, it will stop spinning immediately. The implications of this in relation to Gamecube piracy are these: First of all, unmodified Gamecubes will have no way of reading copied discs, as it's not a simple matter of disc structuring like the Dreamcast. Secondly, I'm not sure how easy it will be to get a DVD burner to write a disc in such a fashion, as they're geared towards making standards compliant DVDs. Finally, even the smallest games will have to be burned to DVD, meaning the vast majority of would-be pirates will be left out in the cold, as they're too cheap to buy DVD burners.