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Emulators Running Purchased Disk-Based Games

I

Imbarkus

As Sartre noted in his contemplation on Hell in No Exit, the true horror is other members.
I've messed around with emulators in the past and had some fun but have never bothered with them in the current, disk-media age. But I think I'd like to start.

I am not interested in trawling the internet looking to download something I already own. My understanding is that the DMCA prevents me from intentionally circumventing DRM technology even for "backup copy" purposes. The implications of that are a discussion that could possibly be had in this thread, but I'm probably not going to risk it, myself (except to say I'm on either Mac or PC, I miss emulation.net as a guide for the Mac world, and MacMAME was best MAME).

That said I am curious which game disks can be read by a standard PC DVD-ROM drive, in such a way that the emulators can play directly from the disk? Some of the screenshots I am seeing for PS2/Gamecube/XBox emulation seem fantastic!

I guess lock if this is somehow off limits too. But I bought those gaems! Surely they're not trying to make it so emulation is illegal unless you are re-buying in the form of a digital download, right? Right?
 
All PS2 discs and from what I understand all Xbox discs should always work. PS1 discs are just CDs, so they'd generally work too. Dreamcast is a proprietary format.

Edit: I can't guarantee that Xbox emulators generally work that way.
 
I remember trying out Bleem! when I was in high school and it required the PS1 disc in the drive. My friend and I tried out FF7 on it, but the emulation was so buggy and so bad that my friend went out and bought a PS1 the next day to play FF7 the way it was meant to be played.

I just decided to play the (bad) PC port for FF7, since I never had a PS1.
 
Glix said:
Really? It works fine
Click to expand...

It can work fine. It can also causes issues. Really depends on the game and your drive.

And I wouldn't worry too much about the DMCA. There are exceptions in it for that reason, and several threads here on PCSX2 and Dolphin would have been closed by now if it was an issue. =P
 
Just rip the disc. Even on piracy-hating GAF it's traditionally ok to utilize methods where you rip your own games (PSP, Wii, PS2 etc)
 
There's ps1 and ps2 emulators that let you play off the drive. You can also buy a retrode that lets you play carts from old systems on pc emulators directly.
 
Anything of the past ten years that isn't a PlayStation has a proprietary format in one way or another, so you can't just stick the games into a garden variety drive and expect them to work. Xbox games are "basically" DVDs but cloak the actual game files with a "put this in an Xbox" video.
 
Imbarkus said:
I've messed around with emulators in the past and had some fun but have never bothered with them in the current, disk-media age. But I think I'd like to start.

I am not interested in trawling the internet looking to download something I already own. My understanding is that the DMCA prevents me from intentionally circumventing DRM technology even for "backup copy" purposes. The implications of that are a discussion that could possibly be had in this thread, but I'm probably not going to risk it, myself (except to say I'm on either Mac or PC, I miss emulation.net as a guide for the Mac world, and MacMAME was best MAME).

That said I am curious which game disks can be read by a standard PC DVD-ROM drive, in such a way that the emulators can play directly from the disk? Some of the screenshots I am seeing for PS2/Gamecube/XBox emulation seem fantastic!

I guess lock if this is somehow off limits too. But I bought those gaems! Surely they're not trying to make it so emulation is illegal unless you are re-buying in the form of a digital download, right? Right?
Click to expand...

Just a friendly legal tip:

Fuck the DMCA. Do what you want with the games you own.
 
xbox has some fucked up x86 instructions and gpu register sets that make it difficult to emulate without proper documentation. hello nv2a, you unwieldy turd. i've been thinking about taking a crack at it for ninja gaiden and enclave. maybe after school.

dem nv2x pixel shaders.
 
antitrop said:
I remember trying out Bleem! when I was in high school and it required the PS1 disc in the drive. My friend and I tried out FF7 on it, but the emulation was so buggy and so bad that my friend went out and bought a PS1 the next day to play FF7 the way it was meant to be played.

I just decided to play the (bad) PC port for FF7, since I never had a PS1.
Click to expand...

It was Connectix Virtual Game Station for me. Yes I had a gumdrop iMac, which was what was required as I recall. Amazingly the emulation was spot-on. But of course it wasn't long for Connectix to get sued to oblivion because I think they backwards engineered something they weren't supposed to.

redlemon said:
There's ps1 and ps2 emulators that let you play off the drive. You can also buy a retrode that lets you play carts from old systems on pc emulators directly.
Click to expand...

Yeah I heard about that on that episode of the Bombcast.

Thing is, I still have those old systems, and emulation for them isn't actually going to be ableto add picture clarity, like a 3D system pumping polygons through the emulator at a higher res...

...come to think of itI bet it's only worth the effort for PS2, Gamecube, and XBox games. I'm trying to imagine how an uprezzed PS1 game would look... O-o

jooey said:
Anything of the past ten years that isn't a PlayStation has a proprietary format in one way or another, so you can't just stick the games into a garden variety drive and expect them to work. Xbox games are "basically" DVDs but cloak the actual game files with a "put this in an Xbox" video.
Click to expand...

I'm confused by this. Is there some kind of weird partitioning? I mean, the data should still be on the disk, right?

Tesseract said:
xbox has some fucked up x86 instructions and gpu register sets that make it difficult to emulate without proper documentation. hello nv2a, you unwieldy turd. i've been thinking about taking a crack at it for ninja gaiden and enclave. maybe after school.

dem nv2x pixel shaders.
Click to expand...

This is sad news indeed. Ironic that the console that so many people cracked open and modded to play emulators cannot, itself, be emulated...

...my anyone but Microsoft, apparently. And then, very poorly.

So... to sum up:

Disks DVD-ROMS can read:
PS2
PS1
Gamecube (? please confirm)
Saturn
Sega-CD
Neo Geo CD
TurboGrafx CD
Jaguar CD

Disks DVD-ROMS can NOT read:
Dreamcast
XBox
XBox 360
Wii

Is this right? Why does emulating Dreamcast have to be the big pain in the ass? Are people even able to play their purchased Dreamcast games on emulator? Do they make GD-ROM drives anymore?

Thanks guys
 
Ignore provisions of the law that you feel make no sense based on your understanding of what acceptable or unacceptable behaviour are. No one is going to legally punish you for buying something, circumventing DRM to use it, and doing so privately and without sharing with others.
 
Imbarkus said:
So... to sum up:

Disks DVD-ROMS can read:
PS2
PS1
Gamecube (? please confirm)
Saturn
Sega-CD
XBox (? Please confirm)
XBox 360

Disks DVD-ROMS can NOT read:
Dreamcast

Is this right? Why does emulating Dreamcast have to be the big pain in the ass? Are people even able to play their purchased Dreamcast games on emulator? Do they make GD-ROM drives anymore?

Thanks guys
Click to expand...
I believe Wii discs can only be read by a very certain brand of DVD drives, as well, due to how the data is burned on there (apparently it was burned with the disc spinning the other way or something? I don't know the details, I just know it doesn't work). Not sure if that carries over to GameCube or not.

Fortunately, with homebrew, dumping Wii/GC games is doable with only a Wii itself and an external hard-drive. I went and did that for most of my library.
 
Imbarkus said:
Disks DVD-ROMS can read:
XBox (? Please confirm)
XBox 360
Click to expand...

Both the Xbox and Xbox 360 discs cannot be read by a normal DVD drive. They both present a video partition when put into anything but a console. Modified DVD drives can be used to read Xbox 360 discs.
 
saunderez said:
Both the Xbox and Xbox 360 discs cannot be read by a normal DVD drive. They both present a video partition when put into anything but a console. Modified DVD drives can be used to read Xbox 360 discs.
Click to expand...

Revised. I laughed that I totally forgot the Wii, too. Hopefully someone can confirm about Gamecube.

Stumpokapow said:
Ignore provisions of the law that you feel make no sense based on your understanding of what acceptable or unacceptable behaviour are. No one is going to legally punish you for buying something, circumventing DRM to use it, and doing so privately and without sharing with others.
Click to expand...

Yeah just trying to be careful. Eventually emulators and rom sharing will be unavoidable as all physical media fails. I have a few old games whose save battery has died, for example...
 
Imbarkus said:
It was Connectix Virtual Game Station for me. Yes I had a gumdrop iMac, which was what was required as I recall. Amazingly the emulation was spot-on. But of course it wasn't long for Connectix to get sued to oblivion because I think they backwards engineered something they weren't supposed to.
Click to expand...
Yes, I absolutely remember all that. Good times, man. What was the PS1 emulator that came out for Windows after Bleem! that was actually good. Like before ePSXe, even. Was it a Windows version of CVGS? I can't remember that anymore.
 
Imbarkus said:
Disks DVD-ROMS can read:
PS2
PS1
Gamecube (? please confirm)
Saturn
Sega-CD

Disks DVD-ROMS can NOT read:
Dreamcast
XBox
XBox 360
Wii

Is this right? Why does emulating Dreamcast have to be the big pain in the ass? Are people even able to play their purchased Dreamcast games on emulator? Do they make GD-ROM drives anymore?
Click to expand...
Some drives can read Dreamcast discs.

Some drives can read Wii discs. I don't think all drives read GC discs, either (I have always wondered whether the spin-backwards is an urban legend, but I think the issues with GC and Wii discs in DVD readers are similar)

I hope I can say that's a pity. Each time I boot my dreamcast, I'm scared of seing it not powering up. I love playing Sakura Taisen, and even if I have the first one and the third one on PS2, the two others are still exclusive, and it's better to play them on the same machine because there's a couple of tricks with saves carried over. I hope I'll be able to find a solution to play them on PC should my DC die (I think finding a DC in great shape in 2015-2020 could be very tricky)
 
People way overstate how hard the xbox is to emulate.
The likes of the PS2's VUs and GS and Gamecubes TEV are much more foreign and less documented then the coppermine x86 CPU and a GPU that is very close to the Geforce 3 and 4.

The reason that it has not gone very far is because just about no one has worked on it.
 
antitrop said:
Yes, I absolutely remember all that. Good times, man. What was the PS1 emulator that came out for Windows after Bleem! that was actually good. Like before ePSXe, even. Was it a Windows version of CVGS? I can't remember that anymore.
Click to expand...

Wow Bleem and CVGS were the only commercial ones I knew of!

TheD said:
People way overstate how hard the xbox is to emulate.
The likes of the PS2's VUs and GS and Gamecubes TEV are much more foreign and less documented then the coppermine x86 CPU and a GPU that is very close to the Geforce 3 and 4.

The reason that it has not gone very far is because just about no one has worked on it.
Click to expand...

Well let's hope Tesseract has lots of spare time and inspiration on his hands when school is done!

Seriously, though, OG XBox is at least partially emulated by 360, so the code exists somewhere. Damn shame someone has to poke through recreating it. Maybe when the 720 comes out MS will release it open source. ;P
 
Tesseract said:
xbox has some fucked up x86 instructions and gpu register sets that make it difficult to emulate without proper documentation. hello nv2a, you unwieldy turd. i've been thinking about taking a crack at it for ninja gaiden and enclave. maybe after school.

dem nv2x pixel shaders.
Click to expand...
Nobody has tried LLE though and at this point, interest has all but died out. The 360 can also play a fair amount of XBOX games and many of them are multiplats.

Shame really because there are actually many great exclusives.
 
Imbarkus said:
I guess lock if this is somehow off limits too. But I bought those gaems! Surely they're not trying to make it so emulation is illegal unless you are re-buying in the form of a digital download, right? Right?
Click to expand...

I think the only thing that would be illegal here is if you don't dump your own BIOS.
 
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