This is during the era when the N64, PS1, SNES, Dreamcast or Sega Genesis were popular. Games back then were released physically via disc or cartridge, meaning distributors or publishers would've implemented anti-piracy (like Lenslok) measures onto physical copies but some knew how to tamper with anti-piracy if they have a computer using other sources of capturing data (floppy disks).

Also, games at the time were 'simple' to torrent but with a catch (dial up was still a thing at the time meaning downloads could take a while if you have a PC). Discs were more straight forward than "torrenting" cartridges (unless you have connections with the manufacturer on smuggling circuit boards). Like with movies, games that came on discs were "torrented" through CDs by using a PC.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] rozodru@piefed.world 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

it was easier it just took longer and less common only because many people just didn't know about it or even how to to do it.

Take for example the SNES. the thing was region free. yup, you could play SNES games from Japan, Europe, etc on a US SNES quite easily. how? well there was a notch in the US SNES that you would have to cut out or sand down. that's it. that was Nintendos region lock and anti piracy measure. a plastic notch. pirating games was word of mouth type stuff. Someone knew someone or knew a place you could mail away for games etc. A friend of a friend's cousin in some random college dorm room had a t1 line and could rip the games from the internet OR had one of those special carts like for the N64 that could rip games when you plugged a cart into it. OR you'd go to a flea market and hope you got lucky that ONE dude would show up with all his warez/pirated stuff that you could score for dirt cheap.

For the PSX it was a bit harder as you had to get a mod chip and solder that into the board in order to turn your console region free and pirate stuff. So you had to find someone that sold the chips and then install it yourself. luckily for me a local comic book shop actually sold them. But it was stuff like that, in most cases word of mouth to find the stuff.

Dreamcast was a hell of a lot easier. literally download and burn to disc, that's it. but again this was '99/00 and most people were still on dialup so it took time. I'd get all my dreamcast games via IRC channels which mean a direct IP2IP connection to someone to download the stuff directly from them. So you had to ask them first if it was ok. Warez on the PC pretty much worked the same way. There were plenty of Warez sites but finding the good and honest ones took time. again a lot of asking on IRC.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

For the PSX it was a bit harder as you had to get a mod chip and solder that into the board in order to turn your console region free and pirate stuff.

Not necessarily... If you had an older model PS1 (forget the serial number), you could use a gameshark-like device that plugged into the back.

Also, I'm unsure if this was only for early models, or all PS1s, but there was a little plastic button under the CD tray that is how the system determined if the top was open or not. If you put a little twist tie or paperclip in there to keep it pressed down, you could do the disc swap trick.

You would use a real PlayStation game to load the Sony splash screens, with the top open. After that, the disc will pause for a moment, before loading the game. If you quickly swapped out the real game with the CD-R at that moment, then the CD-R would load just fine.

It was awesome.