23 replies to this topic

[4ever2600]

I know the 2600 had pirate carts, and some copy cart / kiosks repros but which systems were pretty much piracy free?

Please correct me if I'm wrong on this, but here are the major systems I think had little or no issues with piracy:

5200
7800
Colecovision
Intellivision
Lynx
Jaguar
Odyssey 1 and 2
Turbografx
Channel F

I think NES/SNES/Gameboys/Genesis/SMS all had a decent amount of pirate carts, plus hardware options to dump to floppy etc.

Did I miss anything?

[MagitekAngel]

So looking at your list, the determining factor in vulnerability to piracy was simply whether or not the console was popular enough to make piracy a financially attractive venture.

[4ever2600]

I can agree with that. That makes sense. I'm also wondering if things like encryption had a good hand in it. Like the Lynx and Jag. Didn't they use an encryption on their games to discourage piracy? None the less it was just a pain in the a$$ to just make reproductions of certain carts?

[Koopa64]

I thought Jaguar CD games were encrypted.

As for the topic at hand, it's kind of one-sided. There is no such thing as a popular system with little to no piracy. Therefore, basically any system that didn't sell well, had limited market exposure or wasn't commercially viable for very long qualifies for the list. The list then, would be pretty darn long. It would certainly be easier to make a list of consoles WITH piracy, than ones without.

Also, 4ever2600, encryption means nothing to pirates. The only example of this you need is in the Neo-Geo MVS (arcade system). Even though late era games had encryption, the system still had severely rampant piracy. From what I've read, it's one of the reasons SNK went belly up.

[A_Locomotive]

I'd imagine the TG16 would be pretty free of it due to the very unique format and small size of the HuCards. I'd imagine it would be hard for pirates(in its day) to replicate.

[SeaGtGruff]

4ever2600, on Fri Apr 22, 2011 11:52 PM, said:

I'm also wondering if things like encryption had a good hand in it.

I would think that any dedicated and persistent pirates would have broken the encryption-- sometimes just to prove that they could! But I guess the media used to store the game might be a factor. I know that piracy was a major problem with computer games sold on diskettes. I remember how pissed I was when I read that many game companies weren't going to be releasing games for the Atari 8-bit computers any more, citing lost revenue due to piracy as the reason. The Commodore 64 was one of the worst systems around as far as piracy, yet the game companies didn't hesitate to keep putting out new games for it.

Michael

[Videogamecollector123]

You can add Vectrex to that list, outside of homebrews there are no non-GCE games. Though depends on the definition of piracy, as your using unlicensed games on your list, then yes it's just going to be any system that wasn't on the market long enough to make the whole process of tooling a new cartridge plastic and figuring out how to program for the system viable. For copying games and selling those, then obviously that's one of cartridges main upsides too expensive to copy a game and then sell it. But there are plenty of copied games on floppies, cassettes, and cds and pretty much any other inexpensive writable media.

[jferio]

SeaGtGruff, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 5:11 AM, said:

I would think that any dedicated and persistent pirates would have broken the encryption-- sometimes just to prove that they could! But I guess the media used to store the game might be a factor. I know that piracy was a major problem with computer games sold on diskettes. I remember how pissed I was when I read that many game companies weren't going to be releasing games for the Atari 8-bit computers any more, citing lost revenue due to piracy as the reason. The Commodore 64 was one of the worst systems around as far as piracy, yet the game companies didn't hesitate to keep putting out new games for it.

Michael

I know there was something of a war going on during the days of the Commodore 64, where the publishers would try to come up with new methods to keep people from copying the games, and then the pirates would defeat that. It was practically an arms race, and there was a period of time after that, that it seemed that the publishers just settled on keeping the casual copier from making copies, acknowledging that piracy was going to happen, and one should just account for it.

This is what amuses me about the whole Sony versus Hackers war that's basically going on right now. It's literally just a game of whack a mole that Sony's playing, especially now that the keys have gotten out.

Back to the original topic, pretty much any system will see piracy once it gets up to a certain level of distribution. It isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when, if it does something other than play shelfwarmer, even if only just. One might actually be surprised at the systems that do have pirated games out there. We likely just don't see them because they're overseas.

[PsychedelicShaman]

A_Locomotive, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 1:57 AM, said:

I'd imagine the TG16 would be pretty free of it due to the very unique format and small size of the HuCards. I'd imagine it would be hard for pirates(in its day) to replicate.

Actually the Bung Multi Game Doctor 1 + 2 had interfaces for the pc-engine which i'd imagine can work on TG16. Here's an example: MGD 1

The MGD 2 even had an interface for the NEO GEO, pretty rare: NEO GEO h4x

Love the old stuff, it's just a little impractical these days...

Also I'd imagine most of these systems had EEPROM piracy but that's pretty much a DIY way of piracy.

Edited by PsychedelicShaman, Sat Apr 23, 2011 10:14 AM.

[SoulBlazer]

I have to admit that due to being a kid and limited means, I was terrible with piracy when it came to the Commodore 64.

Was the Saturn, N64, and Jaquar pirated much?

[remowilliams]

Quote

...Before the world of emulation and flash carts / multicarts

So emulation = piracy now does it?

4ever2600, on Fri Apr 22, 2011 11:52 PM, said:

Like the Lynx and Jag. Didn't they use an encryption on their games to discourage piracy?

No. They had binary encryption to prevent unauthorized development.

[4ever2600]

remowilliams, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:20 PM, said:

Quote

...Before the world of emulation and flash carts / multicarts

So emulation = piracy now does it?

4ever2600, on Fri Apr 22, 2011 11:52 PM, said:

Like the Lynx and Jag. Didn't they use an encryption on their games to discourage piracy?

No. They had binary encryption to prevent unauthorized development.

No Remo, I simply wanted to know what company's cart based gaming systems (not computers) didn't have to worry about piracy. Meaning back in the 80's. Mainstream emulation didn't come around until early 90s after the systems listed above already had stopped making software for them.

[remowilliams]

4ever2600, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:33 PM, said:

Mainstream emulation didn't come around until early 90s after the systems listed above already had stopped making software for them.

Yes, which was why I was wondering why you had concatenated emulation on the end of the question.

[4ever2600]

So is it reasonable to say that these systems didn't have major issues with piracy (for what ever the reason may be)?

5200
7800
Colecovision
Intellivision
Lynx
Jaguar
Odyssey 1 and 2
Turbografx
Channel F
Vectrex

I just don't recall anyone making pirate carts of the above systems during the commercial lifespan of the system itself.

[4ever2600]

remowilliams, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:36 PM, said:

4ever2600, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:33 PM, said:

Mainstream emulation didn't come around until early 90s after the systems listed above already had stopped making software for them.

Yes, which was why I was wondering why you had concatenated emulation on the end of the question.

Just saying that I never said emulation = piracy.

[Animan]

Sega Saturn's were, and still are, tough to beat. It's because the (official) game CD's had a "security ring" burned onto it that required special equipment to burn (read: Sega had to burn it for you). So far, no one has been known to recreate the security ring. There have been no successful attempts at getting a home-burned CD to work without some work around (Action Replay, Modchip, etc.)

[STICH666]

Virtual Boy needs to be added to this list as well. As far as I know only a handfull of games were released anyway.

[Smatchmo]

4ever2600, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:33 PM, said:

I simply wanted to know what company's cart based gaming systems (not computers) didn't have to worry about piracy. Meaning back in the 80's. Mainstream emulation didn't come around until early 90s after the systems listed above already had stopped making software for them.

I'm not sure if piracy was really all that big of a concern for video game systems in the 80s, simply because it was the 80s and we were a stupider people back then.

[Reaperman]

SoulBlazer, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:09 PM, said:

Was the Saturn, N64, and Jaquar pirated much?

Saturn was heavily pirated, at least somewhere. I have dozens of decent looking, commercially-made pirate games for it. They're some flavor of asian, so I don't know if they'll play on a stock system or not (they don't play on a stock US system).

N64 had some exotic attachments for piracy, but I don't think that use of them were terribly widespread.

Not really sure about jag piracy. Never really heard of it, but that might be due to a forum rule in that space.

[jferio]

Right now, I generally assume that a console has pirate games available... but that if we never see them, it's because they never leave their country of origin, whether in Asia, South America, or Europe.

Usually if we see them here, it's because the console they were produced for has a critical enough mass that someone decided to get a system, then go the 'cheap route' by importing pirated games for it, even if it requires a modchip.

I actually ran across a batch of pirated PS1 games at one of the thrifts last year, the first time I'd ever seen them for that system personally, I didn't nibble because I didn't want to go through the trouble of making them work.

[godslabrat]

Reaperman, on Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:14 AM, said:

N64 had some exotic attachments for piracy, but I don't think that use of them were terribly widespread.

Not widespread, but I'd say a large percentage of gamers were aware of things like the Dr. V64. At the time it seemed like nearly every Nintendo forum had at least one guy bragging about how he had every N64 game ever made, on one Zip disk. The price of the unit was pretty hefty, so you really had to pirate a lot for it to be worthwhile.

[remowilliams]

Reaperman, on Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:14 AM, said:

Not really sure about jag piracy.

People actually had to buy the system back then for that to happen...

[Rex Dart]

4ever2600, on Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:36 PM, said:

So is it reasonable to say that these systems didn't have major issues with piracy (for what ever the reason may be)?

5200
7800
Colecovision
Intellivision
Lynx
Jaguar
Odyssey 1 and 2
Turbografx
Channel F
Vectrex

I just don't recall anyone making pirate carts of the above systems during the commercial lifespan of the system itself.

Well, the 7800 had piracy lock-out features, so while it didn't have problems with flash carts, it caused problems for flash carts. Games were encrypted somehow & I don't think that it was until the 2000's that the encryption was broken by way of dumpster diving for documents. Feel free to correct me, anybody.

Edited by Rex Dart, Mon Apr 25, 2011 3:07 PM.

[GroovyBee]

Rex Dart, on Mon Apr 25, 2011 3:07 PM, said:

Well, the 7800 had piracy lock-out features, so while it didn't have problems with flash carts, it caused problems for flash carts. Games were encrypted somehow & I don't think that it was until the 2000's that the encryption was broken by way of dumpster diving for documents. Feel free to correct me, anybody.

Not quite true. The 7800's encryption only prevented unauthorised NTSC game development. If you wanted to develop for it back in the day your binary image had to be "signed" by Atari for it to work on consumer hardware.

If you duplicated any bank switching hardware, RAM configuration and/or POKEY and then copied the original back catalogue game's ROM image exactly to your cart's EPROM/Flast etc. the console wouldn't know the difference and it would play just fine.