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jyrque posted:Just got an e-mail from Rakuten. There will be another "save 5000 yen in shipping if you order for at least 10000 yen" deal coming soon, starting next Tuesday (10 AM Japan time) and it'll last until 17th May. Is that without using Tenso?
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May 9, 2013 09:51
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:Is that without using Tenso? No mention of Tenso so I guess so. I remember the Tenso deal ads specifically promoting the proxy service, too.
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May 9, 2013 12:07
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I paid $22 for EMS only international shipping from Surugaya-a-too; anyone know about how much would it have been through Tenso for about 600g-700g of a GBA game and GB Player?
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May 9, 2013 13:15
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kirbysuperstar posted:Working on, as in a translation? Because the VNDB blurb/screenshots make it seem pretty drat interesting. Yeah, on and off. He got a thread on it. http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,14644.0.html Next time I see him, I'll ask how it's coming along. Apparently, it's pretty long too. 26 endings. He's probably gonna need help with translation. He's been working on the hacking side. Here's the Opening video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wBM1kld0IU
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May 9, 2013 13:34
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The NES sized everdrive N8s are in stock. If you preordered one then you might have got a notice about it in your spam box a couple days ago. Thanks sampson for the heads up. http://shop.retrogate.com/EverDrive-N8-NES-ver-EDN8-NES.htm
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May 9, 2013 13:45
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RadicalR posted:Yeah, on and off. He got a thread on it. Most excellent, I'll keep an eye out for it. Thanks for that.
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May 9, 2013 13:58
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If I order a GB Player from rakuten will it work with an American Gamecube?
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May 9, 2013 14:44
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JumbocactuarX27 posted:If I order a GB Player from rakuten will it work with an American Gamecube? Only if you get an American disc.
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May 9, 2013 14:46
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JumbocactuarX27 posted:If I order a GB Player from rakuten will it work with an American Gamecube? The hardware itself will, but the disc won't. If you have a source on a US boot disc this will get you around with. A ton of people imported Japanese GB Players because they were offered in colors other than black (I have a platinum silver one, and other colors definitely exist like orange).
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May 9, 2013 14:48
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Is it possible to region mod a Gamecube with a switch, like the Genesis or Saturn? I'd like to play some imports but I don't have a mod chip. I know about the memory card shenanigans, though.
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May 9, 2013 15:07
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DeathBySpoon posted:Is it possible to region mod a Gamecube with a switch, like the Genesis or Saturn? I'd like to play some imports but I don't have a mod chip. I know about the memory card shenanigans, though. Yes
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May 9, 2013 15:19
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DeathBySpoon posted:Is it possible to region mod a Gamecube with a switch, like the Genesis or Saturn? I'd like to play some imports but I don't have a mod chip. I know about the memory card shenanigans, though. Yup, mine is this way. Bear in mind that you'll need a second memory card for saves, and if you have a US-formatted memory card in your system when you boot a Japanese game it'll give you a message IN JAPANESE asking if you want to format.
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May 9, 2013 15:45
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I've hired univbee to follow up all of my terse messages with fully fleshed out explanations. So far it's working out quite well.
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May 9, 2013 15:57
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Hogscraper posted:Anyone who has a GBA Player for Gamecube and is missing the boot disc should PM me. I may have a few to offload. I don't have PMs. Care to email me? MattJaySega@gmail.com
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May 9, 2013 15:59
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Silhouette posted:It's actually about 3/4 the size of a standard Gamecube box, maybe slightly bigger than a PSP UMD box. Also it has a cardboard sleeve that it fits into. It's the same as the Japanese GameCube cases.
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May 9, 2013 16:12
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So for those not aware of why you're not able to make perfect copies of games on writeable media I'll explain in further detail. This isn't a problem with the early consoles because they predate consumer-accessible disc writing to the point where they weren't even aware it was possible, let alone cost-effective. Most early CD-R drives were thousands of dollars and the discs were more expensive than any legit copy of something, and their hour-long burns would fail if a fly landed on a blade of grass on your neighbor's lawn. The Turbo Grafx CD, Sega CD, Jaguar CD, CD-I and Neo-Geo CD had no copy protection routines at all because of this. The Dreamcast is a weird outlier because Sega tried to cheap out on patent royalties for the technology I'm about to describe. The short version is that disc writers automate certain parts of the writing process and have certain other limitations, so commercially-released discs for consoles deliberately put data on their discs in a way that burned discs can't replicate. There are two ways this is achieved: method 1 is to have boot data in a part of the disc that normally isn't accessed by a disc writer, usually in the inner ring that's beyond where blank discs have writeable sectors. This data will have some basic game info, including at least the region code. Method 2, which can be combined with Method 1, is to have invalid checksum data in a specific sector of the disc. Data on fragile media like optical discs generally has checksums, similar to the last number on a bar code. It's not technically part of the barcode, it's there as a sanity check to make sure the earlier barcode was scanned correctly, and if you were missing any one of the barcode's numbers you could reconstruct it using the checksum. CDs and DVDs have this to deal with light scratches, which is why you can end up with a disc that reads slowly, but still reads (the drive is rebuilding scratched bits using checksum data). Every single commercial disc writer since they've been a thing automatically writes the checksum values based on the previous data, and it is NOT possible to con the drive into writing the wrong value. Even Chinese bootleggers haven't figured this out and the process has been used commercially for close to 20 years now. In both cases, the console has a subroutine that reads and verifies this data against what it expects internally, and only passes the success signal if the data checks out. Modchips vary in complexity, but overall they work by forcing a different routine that identifies if the disc is a valid disc at all for the console, and then sends the pass signal based on that routine instead. A few PS1 games had further software-level checks and some games even did some interesting things (IIRC one of the Spyro games had a few region checks during the story where you'd get blocked and a game character would chastise you for stealing the game). PS2 implemented deeper checks, and its ability to also play region-coded DVDs and PS1 games, as well as its Macrovision output, made its modchips more complicated, going from 4-5 wires on the Playstation 1 to 18-22 on the PS2. The swap trick that's so often touted essentially consists of letting a game boot by using a legit disc, and then changing it with a burned disc after that routine is completed and timing it so that the game doesn't error out because it figures out it's having too hard a time reading data. All of the consoles with this technology are designed to force the re-check at a hardware level any time the disc is changed (i.e. the tray is opened), which can be tricked with the right sensor blocking or using the hidden emergency release on some drives like the fat PS2's. tl:dr Other than the Dreamcast and the CD-based consoles that came out before the Saturn and PS1, all consoles that use optical media have checks that are 100% impossible to "burn" around, and you will need either a modchip or a swap trick to boot any disc that uses executable code (this includes things like a GB Player's disc).
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May 9, 2013 18:25
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This thread inspired me to pick up a High-Definition Graphics Genesis/32X/SegaCD combo or a SNES Mini/Mario All-Stars & World combo cart to replace the one that was stolen from years ago but, wow, I was not prepared for the sticker shock looking at prices on eBay/Kijiji. Are the surprisingly high prices for these systems because of nostalgia coupled with the usual eBay childhood-memories markup, or is there a small supply of everything out there? I guess patience is going to be a virtue here if I want to not pay 1994 retail prices. I think I'd be more apt to pull the trigger if almost every eBay listing didn't say "doesn't include any cables, at all!"
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May 9, 2013 18:34
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TealShark posted:This thread inspired me to pick up a High-Definition Graphics Genesis/32X/SegaCD combo or a SNES Mini/Mario All-Stars & World combo cart to replace the one that was stolen from years ago but, wow, I was not prepared for the sticker shock looking at prices on eBay/Kijiji. Are the surprisingly high prices for these systems because of nostalgia coupled with the usual eBay childhood-memories markup, or is there a small supply of everything out there? The HD Genesis' are uncommon because they're sought after by collectors and it was the first model. Some of the later model one consoles actually use a later revision of the circuit board you don't want so finding a true one is even more difficult. The SegaCD has always been moderately pricey because it wasn't manufactured in huge numbers (the model 1 even less so). The SNES mini was a really late revision and it's in the same weird spot as the NES toploader. Plus the console and the controller are highly counterfeited so watch out.
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May 9, 2013 18:46
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^^Holy poo poo, I had no idea there were bootleg SNES consoles, going to have to check mine when I get home.TealShark posted:This thread inspired me to pick up a High-Definition Graphics Genesis/32X/SegaCD combo or a SNES Mini/Mario All-Stars & World combo cart to replace the one that was stolen from years ago but, wow, I was not prepared for the sticker shock looking at prices on eBay/Kijiji. Are the surprisingly high prices for these systems because of nostalgia coupled with the usual eBay childhood-memories markup, or is there a small supply of everything out there? Shipping costs for a lot of stuff, especially heavier items like the SegaCD, don't help. SegaCDs are failure-prone so working ones command a premium, I think they pretty much start at $80 before shipping. Genesis and 32x should be acquirable for relatively cheap (max $40 each with shipping), and whatever cables you're missing can be easily had elsewhere; composite cables are a few bucks, same with the Genesis/32x link cable, and there are non-eBay stores selling official Sega AC adaptors for like $16 each (or you can wait until June and grab a Sega Trio AC Adapter). Super NES, especially the Mini, is more expensive but refurbs can be had for $60-70. An official SNES AC Adapter would probably run you $30 or even as high as $40 though. univbee fucked around with this message at 18:57 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 18:49
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univbee posted:So for those not aware of why you're not able to make perfect copies of games on writeable media I'll explain in further detail. Excellent post, thank you! I honestly had no idea how media checks/modchips worked before except voodoo magic of some kind. This was a great read, thanks. e. It's cool to me too that the burned-into-the-CD protections haven't been defeated yet, despite how long that technology's been around. That's impressive.
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May 9, 2013 18:52
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univbee posted:So for those not aware of why you're not able to make perfect copies of games on writeable media I'll explain in further detail. This was an incredible read. Thank you. Did it ever end up being true that Gamecube games were written "backwards"? I know it was false in that the drive did not spin the opposite of the way a drive typically does, but I had always heard it did read backwards as in the opposite of however discs are normally read (from inside to out or outside to inwards). Was that true? I also see what you said about the Dreamcast, but if that was the case, why did the early games require boot discs? This stuff is so interesting for some reason.  Also I found a good article about the Spyro thing: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3030/keeping_the_pirates_at_bay.php edit: still confusing though is all the talk about "cracked" PS1 games? Who was "cracking" PS1 games? Weren't they just running as-is on systems with modchips? Chumbawumba4ever97 fucked around with this message at 19:06 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 19:01
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"Cracked" versions of console games are a real thing, as numerous games had software subroutines that verified the validity of the disc or the system in some fashion, usually by querying the system in a way an unmodded system would FAIL. If it instead passed, that meant the system wasn't passed. This had the side effect of making even legit copies fail on modded systems, but you could bypass this issue with a Gameshark or equivalent; the cracked versions basically have the Gameshark code built-in. Some games got crazy-creative with this: Earthbound famously made the game super-hard and, if you nonetheless made it to the end, it would crash after you beat the 2nd to last boss and erase your save games. Their verification method was pretty fool-proof, though; if you had more memory for save data than an official cart, you were flagged. Some DS games do it, too, although it's generally only a thing on systems where modchips and piracy are plentiful. Miyamotos RGB NES posted:I also see what you said about the Dreamcast, but if that was the case, why did the early games require boot discs? This stuff is so interesting for some reason. The Dreamcast is weird; it did have region checks, so a legit wrong-region disc would fail, but their checks weren't done in a sophisticated manner, in part because they thought their GD-ROM discs were protection enough. It was mostly security through obfuscation and the whole thing came crashing down once one person managed to rip a GD-ROM disc through the serial port on the system. univbee fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 19:09
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al-azad posted:The SNES mini was a really late revision and it's in the same weird spot as the NES toploader. Plus the console and the controller are highly counterfeited so watch out. Wow, this is really good to know; I honestly would have just blindly bought one somewhere down the line. Maybe I can just scale myself back to a Genesis/32X combo for now and gradually building it up.
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May 9, 2013 19:11
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Somebody in IRC whose name rhymes with ham, son, says you guys don't know what you're talking about re: mod chips and will help you out in some arbitrary amount of days, like three, if I had to put money on it.
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May 9, 2013 19:12
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I really think alot of the cable missing situations are similar to the way folks purposely split up the GB player and the disc. I've seen official adapters sell for more than the consoles themselves, particularly the Sega AC adapters.
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May 9, 2013 19:21
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Miyamotos RGB NES posted:
The early pirate DC games came before the Utopia disc was fully understood; later ones had the boot code injected directly into the disc image so they didn't need the boot disc.
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May 9, 2013 19:25
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Anyone know of any decent gaming shops in Boston proper? I'm on town for a long weekend.
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May 9, 2013 19:34
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I've had a little sideproject on the go for a while now of trying to compile a list of Canadian variants of Sega Genesis games. I've discovered about 50 titles so far and I decided to start posting my findings to a tumblr. I figured some people here may be interested in that. http://canuckgenesis.tumblr.com/
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May 9, 2013 19:38
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univbee posted:^^Holy poo poo, I had no idea there were bootleg SNES consoles, going to have to check mine when I get home. Here's a handy guide. http://fami-complex.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-to-spot-bootleg-sns-101.html
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May 9, 2013 19:48
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It doesn't seem like the bootleg SNES Minis are a thing to really be worried about. They don't appear to be too common, and I wouldn't worry about buying one blind from Amazon since you can always return it.
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May 9, 2013 19:54
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Double checking my SNES mini when I get back from work. I think I have a real one because I remember it being the Nintendo purple. That's drat impressive how close it is. Does the bootleg have issues with some special chip games?
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May 9, 2013 19:55
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You actually see it more with CIB consoles. They copied the box, the materials inside including those little safety brochures. I'd post pictures, but the ones that previously existed got removed from photobucket. GameSX has a wiki about it with some more info plus shots of the inside. http://www.gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=counterfeit_snes quote:Q: What's the compatibility like? 8-bit Miniboss fucked around with this message at 20:04 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 20:00
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midge posted:I've had a little sideproject on the go for a while now of trying to compile a list of Canadian variants of Sega Genesis games. I've discovered about 50 titles so far and I decided to start posting my findings to a tumblr. I love these. Do you want variants for other consoles? (I have a few for NES and more recent consoles) So after an informative chat I learned a few new things; it was predominantly method 1 (the inner ring) I mentioned before that was done at a hardware level; consoles would check the inner ring for a region code that would be cross-reference with the console's region, and there'd have to be a match for the all OK signal to be sent out by the console. Method 2 (the invalid checksum technique) existed but was mostly done at a software level due to being resource-intensive. This started gaining ground along with extra software-level region checks when Sony was starting to lose serious ground to PS1 modding. Modchips had a few shortcomings, namely that they would only expect to have to work in the seconds following the system being turned on. Also, some software-level checks were designed to return a FAIL code, which the modchip was designed not to return, triggering a red flag. Eventually the modchip producers started making "stealth" chips, which were always active and could identify and deal with these software checks; prior to that, you had to use a Gameshark or Action Replay (the Playstation's equivalent to a Game Genie) to bypass the software checks. The PS2 went through an interesting history with their chips, starting with a chip that disabled the "TRAY IS OPEN" signal so you could better do the swap trick, then with basic chips that would overpower the disc's region code signal (the console would still receive it but also receive the chip's signal, which was stronger and would win out), before finally pulling off a chip that was essentially seamless. Also my "even the Chinese can't do it" thing about duplicating the discs was wrong; they can, and you in fact see their handiwork with the swap magic discs for PS2. It requires some insane calibration on really expensive equipment by people who know what they're doing, though, and the unit cost of the discs coupled with how difficult pirate game discs would be to distribute means it's not worth it. Plus game discs would likely have a high error rate which you can't really test for without actually playing through the game completely. And finally, the Dreamcast swap discs work easily because the code used by multi-disc Dreamcast games to trigger a "please insert next disc" event doesn't actually do the hardware-level re-check, so it'll straight-boot whatever Dreamcast-format disc you have in there. You can still directly burn a disc that straight-up boots but it requires DiscJuggler due to a weird disc format (a short audio track followed by data followed by the table of contents for your data).
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May 9, 2013 20:04
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I'd love to see if there's any Canadian variants for N64 games.
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May 9, 2013 20:06
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^^ Variants for all Nintendo games generally extend to the box, manual and cart label only. Some releases are  and are just the US version with a shrinkwrapped slipcase or French manual outside the game box; this was most common with games for DS, PSP and I think 3DS, especially non-Nintendo titles.There is exactly one French game available on NES (Kirby's Adventure), which I'm lucky enough to own a cart of and can take pictures of, although it's almost identical to the US one (I think the only difference is it says "Fabriqué au Japon" in the corner), and exactly one on SNES (Link to the Past), which had two different box variants; there were sealed copies of both variants of LttP Canadian French on eBay back in December but both went for crazy money, I think something like 200-250 Euros each (the guy selling them was based out of France for some reason). Every other game was identical to the US release code-wise and was English only, and I'm pretty sure this was also the case for...well, every Nintendo system from then on. The only other system to have proper Canadian French releases was the Xbox 360 for a few titles (Skyrim, Alan Wake, and I think some of the Halo games). Every other release is either English only or multilingual, although on rare occasions stores would sell European-imported versions of games if they weren't region-locked. A few DS games, especially the Pokémon games were available this way in major stores like Future Shop. That being said, even English-only games would have multilingual packaging. I have an Xbox 360 bilingual cover for "You Don't Know Jack", for example. 8-bit Miniboss posted:GameSX has a wiki about it with some more info plus shots of the inside. http://www.gamesx.com/wiki/doku.php?id=counterfeit_snes Whew! Just checked mine and it passed. Using the RF shield there's a really easy way to be sure, as it's visible through the vents in the back of the console: 
univbee fucked around with this message at 20:36 on May 9, 2013 |
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May 9, 2013 20:21
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So on Rakuten, when it says "belonging to expansion ram cartridge," that means it comes with the cart, right? Like this: http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/surugaya-a-too/item/143707-1/ There's a separate listing that just says "one piece of article," so I'm assuming that's the one that doesn't come with the pack. Same thing for Darkstalkers 3.
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May 9, 2013 21:04
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DeathBySpoon posted:So on Rakuten, when it says "belonging to expansion ram cartridge," that means it comes with the cart, right? Like this: Yeah, also the normal non-RAM cart version doesn't have the border on the right side either.
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May 9, 2013 21:05
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Keyboard Kid posted:It doesn't seem like the bootleg SNES Minis are a thing to really be worried about. They don't appear to be too common, and I wouldn't worry about buying one blind from Amazon since you can always return it. The bootleg controllers are an issue, though. If you see a controller where "Nintendo" is molded into the plastic it's supposed to be a SNES-102 controller although it's quite likely to be a bootleg. univbee posted:"Cracked" versions of console games are a real thing, as numerous games had software subroutines that verified the validity of the disc or the system in some fashion, usually by querying the system in a way an unmodded system would FAIL. If it instead passed, that meant the system wasn't passed. This had the side effect of making even legit copies fail on modded systems, but you could bypass this issue with a Gameshark or equivalent; the cracked versions basically have the Gameshark code built-in. It was either Spyro 2 or Spyro 3 that had sophisticated anti-piracy for its time. In an interview, Insomniac described successful anti-piracy as keeping people from cracking the game for at least a week. After that they don't give a poo poo, majority of the copies a game will ever sell occur in the first couple of weeks.
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May 9, 2013 21:55
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al-azad posted:The bootleg controllers are an issue, though. If you see a controller where "Nintendo" is molded into the plastic it's supposed to be a SNES-102 controller although it's quite likely to be a bootleg. Yeah, I've heard a lot about these but I haven't seen many myself. I wonder what the boards look like? DeathBySpoon posted:So on Rakuten, when it says "belonging to expansion ram cartridge," that means it comes with the cart, right? Like this: If you ever have any doubt about what the awful machine translation says, you should go to the Japanese page, and copy the title into Google Translate. This one says it comes with the RAM pack.
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May 9, 2013 22:12
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A story about gaming in Canada told via the miracle of bilingual packaging, something which achieves the impossible: gives you a video game product that's technically rarer, but less valuable because everyone except me hates it. Not sure how far back it goes, but here are three NES boxes that use it (click any pic below for huge):   Some interesting things happen if you go by the French blurbs: whoever translated "The Mushroom Princess" to French wrote it in a way that suggests her name is Champignon (Mushroom). The Dragon Warrior box went the extra mile and actually translated it gender-neutrally ("You are Erdrick's heir" became "Vous êtes l'héritier(ère) d'Erdrick", a common shorthand way to accomodate the possibility of both genders and still used in a lot of French versions of RPGs if they couldn't reprogram them to automatically do it). Back copies of two English-only games (You Don't Know Jack and Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth)  Cover and back for Warioware DIY, which I think exists in French but only in Europe (i.e. not this copy)   My favorite touch is that they actually translate the bit about Basic Reading Skills being required...but forgot to mention that you won't get very far if said reading skills aren't in English. This is a classic case of the translation being done by someone who isn't fully informed about what he's doing. Grandiose limited editions are usually the same English-only packages as in the US but there are exceptions: I'm pretty sure the giant Mortal Kombat set for the Xbox 360 with the Arcade Stick was bilingual. The only one I own is Alan Wake, whose included book is even translated:  Nintendo recently (I think it started with Dragon Quest IV on DS) started putting this logo on their products where the actual game is playable in French:  And here's the back cover. It should be noted that the French version of this is really well done, at least in Quebec (Nintendo actually does different translations in Canada versus France).  And finally, one of my favorites: if you thought the Batman Arkham City GOTY cover was busy before, hold on while we sandwich two more languages onto it: 
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May 9, 2013 22:17
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