LGR - Arcade Game Copy Protection & DRM
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
bryede
Most of the proprietary protection chips were simply to make it difficult to produce a clone board since most of the parts on early arcade boards were off-the-shelf types. This ensured that there would be a least one part that people couldn't get and they'd have to break the protection to move forward. There weren't a lot of cross-game compatible boards at first, which each game board being spec'd for the game it needed to support, but more general purpose platforms did eventually arise which meant a game swap needed to be more just the copyable ROMs. One early example was the auxiliary board needed to run Ms. Pac Man, and then the epoxy sealed box needed for Pac-Man Plus.
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Most of the proprietary protection chips were simply to make it difficult to produce a clone board since most of the parts on early arcade boards were off-the-shelf types. This ensured that there would be a least one part that people couldn't get and they'd have to break the protection to move forward. There weren't a lot of cross-game compatible boards at first, which each game board being spec'd for the game it needed to support, but more general purpose platforms did eventually arise which meant a game swap needed to be more just the copyable ROMs. One early example was the auxiliary board needed to run Ms. Pac Man, and then the epoxy sealed box needed for Pac-Man Plus.
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everybody
I use to work for a company that takes care of the games for theaters and some restaurants. I was walking into the arcade of one of the theaters and cought a guy taking the sitdown pirates game apart. He had both guns off and was working on removing the back panel when I showed up. Lol, without saying a word i grabbed one of the guns and ask for the manager. He bolted very quickly after.
Oh fun fact most modern arcade games are nothing more then dell optiplex's with a few external interface cards to help sort out the controler inputs. The DRM in most cases are small thumb drives.
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I use to work for a company that takes care of the games for theaters and some restaurants. I was walking into the arcade of one of the theaters and cought a guy taking the sitdown pirates game apart. He had both guns off and was working on removing the back panel when I showed up. Lol, without saying a word i grabbed one of the guns and ask for the manager. He bolted very quickly after.
Oh fun fact most modern arcade games are nothing more then dell optiplex's with a few external interface cards to help sort out the controler inputs. The DRM in most cases are small thumb drives.
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SumeaBizarro
Actually My second comment to this video:
The PC based arcade hardware has a LOT of some funny protections as I hear, Rhythm games have IO device checks, data integrity checks and so on beside the now quite fresh Always-on-DRM. I heard about mirror encrypted group of hard drives making the data pretty much quite hard to crack, and Japanese laws and game companies holding operators in strict rules also make attempts to rip HDD's hard.
Oh, and they are Windows based game, yes. No linux in Japan.
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Actually My second comment to this video:
The PC based arcade hardware has a LOT of some funny protections as I hear, Rhythm games have IO device checks, data integrity checks and so on beside the now quite fresh Always-on-DRM. I heard about mirror encrypted group of hard drives making the data pretty much quite hard to crack, and Japanese laws and game companies holding operators in strict rules also make attempts to rip HDD's hard.
Oh, and they are Windows based game, yes. No linux in Japan.
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SumeaBizarro
Me too, I had to get Legit copy of IIDX Empress before they ran out.
There indeed is some people running Windows based rips of it. Funny stuff as IIDX is bound to very strict FPS rates like 60. 05 or 59. 95 - anything else and the game would desync over short period of gameplay already. - So, even the HDD cracks you know of are not easy to get working right, not to talk about getting an arcade style controller, rising the allure to just play in arcade if available. For most, arcade is not though.
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Me too, I had to get Legit copy of IIDX Empress before they ran out.
There indeed is some people running Windows based rips of it. Funny stuff as IIDX is bound to very strict FPS rates like 60. 05 or 59. 95 - anything else and the game would desync over short period of gameplay already. - So, even the HDD cracks you know of are not easy to get working right, not to talk about getting an arcade style controller, rising the allure to just play in arcade if available. For most, arcade is not though.
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thumbwarriordx
In the case of Street Fighter 2 and its many revisions, I really wish arcade operators had been bootlegging the latest version to update older ones.
Your SFII experience is just a little sub par without your Turbos and your Hyper-Fighting edition.
I've only seen vanilla SFII on MAME, Every real cab I've encountered has been Champion Edition or newer, and I'm inclined to think that the conspicous vanilla SFII cab running champion edition at my local bowling alley was not entirely legitimate.
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In the case of Street Fighter 2 and its many revisions, I really wish arcade operators had been bootlegging the latest version to update older ones.
Your SFII experience is just a little sub par without your Turbos and your Hyper-Fighting edition.
I've only seen vanilla SFII on MAME, Every real cab I've encountered has been Champion Edition or newer, and I'm inclined to think that the conspicous vanilla SFII cab running champion edition at my local bowling alley was not entirely legitimate.
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spartonberry
Two SNES chips had embedded CPUs. Nintendo's SDD1 and Hudson's SPC7110. Pirates played the (few) games on a hacked console to send VRAM (post-decompression) data to a PC so emulators could swap in the ripped data, years before the actual code was figured out.
Arcade games like Capcom's were first emulated similarly (data somehow intercepted on its way through the PCB, then the pre-decrpyted data was uploaded to the Internet. I think it was the late 2000s before the actual code was figured out.
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Two SNES chips had embedded CPUs. Nintendo's SDD1 and Hudson's SPC7110. Pirates played the (few) games on a hacked console to send VRAM (post-decompression) data to a PC so emulators could swap in the ripped data, years before the actual code was figured out.
Arcade games like Capcom's were first emulated similarly (data somehow intercepted on its way through the PCB, then the pre-decrpyted data was uploaded to the Internet. I think it was the late 2000s before the actual code was figured out.
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Casey
Fun fact: Donkey Kong uses a clever bit of code to validate the characters -INTEND- from the Nintendo copyright on the title screen. The check is done at the beginning of a level, but the game does not actually crash until several seconds later, making it rather hard for programmers of the time to debug. This protection type was used to prevent re-branding or clones of the game. Crazy Kong/Congorilla are mistakenly thought as bootlegs, but are actually licensed copies with redesigned sprites by Falcon.
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Fun fact: Donkey Kong uses a clever bit of code to validate the characters -INTEND- from the Nintendo copyright on the title screen. The check is done at the beginning of a level, but the game does not actually crash until several seconds later, making it rather hard for programmers of the time to debug. This protection type was used to prevent re-branding or clones of the game. Crazy Kong/Congorilla are mistakenly thought as bootlegs, but are actually licensed copies with redesigned sprites by Falcon.
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lamelama22
Keep in mind he's talking about the late 70s to early 90s (and really primarily the late 70s and early 80s, not today, when most people didn't have video game systems or computers, and the ones that were out were nowhere near the arcade systems. The arcade cabinets then cost thousands of dollars (or even $10k adjusted w/ inflation) and newer games would bring in hundreds of $ per month more than old games. A pirate would be saving/making tens of thousands of dollars. more than -a few bucks-.
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Keep in mind he's talking about the late 70s to early 90s (and really primarily the late 70s and early 80s, not today, when most people didn't have video game systems or computers, and the ones that were out were nowhere near the arcade systems. The arcade cabinets then cost thousands of dollars (or even $10k adjusted w/ inflation) and newer games would bring in hundreds of $ per month more than old games. A pirate would be saving/making tens of thousands of dollars. more than -a few bucks-.
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meetoo594
Spinning a 2p as it dropped into an old metal, microswitched coin mech used to work well, the spin allowed the coin to pass the rejected coin slot and trigger the microswitch. -Strumming- using a bit of plastic cord to bounce the microswitch worked until operators started putting countermeasures in the mechs. Electrolighters used to work putting one terminal to the reject coin button and the other to the metal body of the mech. You could glitch the machines using the electrolighter as well.
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Spinning a 2p as it dropped into an old metal, microswitched coin mech used to work well, the spin allowed the coin to pass the rejected coin slot and trigger the microswitch. -Strumming- using a bit of plastic cord to bounce the microswitch worked until operators started putting countermeasures in the mechs. Electrolighters used to work putting one terminal to the reject coin button and the other to the metal body of the mech. You could glitch the machines using the electrolighter as well.
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TBoneTony
Copy Protection and DRM are violations against the consumer.
Even though companies don't have any real legal issues with implementing DRM and Copy Protections. It is more of a moral issue against the gamers who have wanted to play the games from old time era in gaming history only for this simple process to be made annoyingly hard for those who just want to play a game.
The DRM and Copy Protection policies of the industry have made me put off trying to buy games in the future.
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Copy Protection and DRM are violations against the consumer.
Even though companies don't have any real legal issues with implementing DRM and Copy Protections. It is more of a moral issue against the gamers who have wanted to play the games from old time era in gaming history only for this simple process to be made annoyingly hard for those who just want to play a game.
The DRM and Copy Protection policies of the industry have made me put off trying to buy games in the future.
reply
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