Zoomer here. What was game piracy like in the 90s?
you would go to some hole in the wall electronics store in some ratty mall or business and there'd be a dude that would fix CRT tv's and also install mod chips to ps1's and might sell you the burned games after.usually though every school knew some kid with a teenager/young adult brother who had a cd burner who was hustling burned copies rented from blockbuster. cheap cd burners really didnt become a thing until like the early 2000s but the bottleneck was always the modchips.god i wish i was older back then i could have made so much money
>>12185982I'm also a zoomer, but back in the early 2010s I knew a millennial who would've been born around 1990 who grew up in America with an older brother who had a CD burner by the time they had a PSX and burned every single game on the shelves of the local video stores. FWIW, they didn't have cable, so it might've just been a poorfag thing in America.
At least in my third world country all you had in circulation among kids were pirated discs for ps1 and ps2
>>12186026>god i wish i was older back then i could have made so much moneythe one i went to probably got so stinkin rich, was full all the time and started with a small sitdown mvc cabinet the first time i went and about a year later they got a full blown ddr setup and other shitit disappeared at some point later, not sure if they got in trouble or just decided to close
>>12185982I'm also a zoomer.I remember my dad buying us a Dreamcast in like 2006/7 because he knew it could play burnt CDs without any modification and some piracy site he used was either shutting down or he had a trial on their forums where the roms were hosted. Either way, he wanted to hurry up and burn a bunch of games for it quickly. I should ask him without that was about lol
>>12186046Btw to add: n64 piracy was rare and ive never seen a gamecube in person
>>12185982like that.
>>12186046>>12186059I should also mention ps1 and ps2 sold in stores were usually already modded which is kinda crazy
>>12186026>"and might sell you the burned games after.">buying burned gamesPoser, real gamers spent days downloading them over their dialup 14.4k connection using Getright or FTP while praying that the server supported resuming.
i buy every ps1 i see at thrift stores and 3/4 ive bought so far have had mod chips in them, so that goes to show how popular they were, and this is in canada
>>12185982it looked like going to chinatown and buying this
>>12186098I'm 5/7 in terms of buying PS1s and finding an unadvertised chip inside. Just a few weeks ago I bought a launch model and found an Old Crow-style chip pretty haphazardly soldered on the back of the motherboard and wrapped in tape. Still works just fine though, although it took quite some convincing for the struggling laser to actually read a burned disc. It's much better with official discs, albeit with some minor FMV skipping.
>>12185982Generally we got chipped PS1s from our uncles. However most of us didn't have access to CD burners or internet speeds fast enough to download games so we only had whatever random copied games our uncle gave us such as Megaman X5 and Army Men 3D.It wasn't until GBA and flashcarts that we were able to easily download and play any game immediately upon release.
Duringt the ps1 ps2 era here in Mexico everybody had a modded console and the flea market was inundated with ps1 ps2 burned copies, i never knew one person who bought an original game, the only originals were the ones that were bundled with the system, on a sad note, thats why down here in Mexico is so fucking hard to find original ps1 and ps2 games.Thats why Nintendo got rap3d in those gens, nobody wanted to pay 70 dollars for 1 game when you could buy playstation games for $3 dollars.
>>12186076>sold in storesyou should clarify that those stores were classic grandma and grampa stores, not typical ones like walmart or bestbuy or gamestop.
>>12185982Simple as
>>12186194>storing your ROMs on floppies with printed labelsinsanely soulful
There were literal tons of Chinese backup units back then. Pic related isn't mine. The flash cart wasn't around back then. Mostly multi games in one existed, usually in obvious bootleg cartridges. These are mostly for the SNES but the same type of hardware existed for Genesis. Once consoles went disc based, mod chips ruled the roost.
>>12186198It's not mine, just a reference picture for OP. However, I couldn't agree more. I'm sure those early wireless controllers were butt cheeks, though. However this labeling practice emanates soul.
Different version for the Sega Genesis. As referenced>>12186203>the same type of hardware existed for Genesis
>>12185982my dad had a CD burner and he burned so many copies of starcraft for my friends and my brother's friends, all with the same CD key. it was so awesome. none of us had internet so it didn't matter if we were all using the same key. a few years later my dad did it with diablo 2 and LoD too. then he moved onto burning movies and shit, we had a giant like bookshelf thing with racks specifically for DVDs/CDs and my dad bought hella cases and this like CD stamper thing where you could print the label and press it onto the cd so it would look better. my mom made endlabels for ALL of the burned DVDs my dad made. they printed so many copies for their friends and for my and my siblings' friends. man, those were good times. my parents were the shit man, they were all about piracy back in the day. they still are now, but back when people had limited access and knowledge about it, i thought my parents were so fucking cool for it. i still think they are cool. my parents are the best man.
>>12186218Based parental units. Teaching their kiddos about the correct consumer practices.
>>12185982modchip + blockbuster + cdrwin
>>12185982My friend who had a crappy job in a warehouse or something like that had a weed-smoking coworker who burned CDs as a side gig, you put your order in or went over to his car boot and looked for something you liked. It felt like a drug deal. Mainly Psx I think, maybe some Saturn or PC games. In fact I don't remember PC games, if you had a PC you were in a higher social class.
>>12185982Bootleg discs to be used with PS1 parallel port adapters were commonplace at shadier outdoor markets in the UK pre-internet. I didn't see any piracy beyond that. Most seemed to come after 2004ish and the mass adoption of broadband, since not many had internet access to torrent and burn images in private. Some were certainly waiting weeks on 56k speeds though.
You went to see the Asian kid.
>>12185982If you had a CD burner you were a serious business in high school. They werent cheap but you would make it back in no time if you had some kind of warez connection or know how. There were easy ways though to get onto isos for playstation, dreamcast games too but it involved IRC and shite, a real jam of tech. With a dialup modem you could get a complete iso over like 2 days, and if it was popular you're in business. It was just accessibility and knowledge really, a window there to be an early adopter and fork out for a burner to be the coolest nerd on the block people would pay 10 bucks a pop anytime. For instance THPS2 came out 2 weeks early on the net, that sold like fucking hotcakes. Modchips were rampant enough.
>>12186083Yes, this is what first world piracy looked like.Also binaries downloading with Usenet using Agent.
>>12185982really big in Spain (1996-2007), in magazines, stalls, some shops, sony was forced to make a TV ads at tv prime time hours to raise awareness against piracy
>>12185982It was like a lot of things. 10 years is a long time. More than half your totally 18 years of life. There were many systems commonly in use with a variety of media during that time.>>12186046>pirated discs for ps1 and ps2What an amazing third world country where you had pirated PS2 games in the decade before it was released.
>>12186827>close this dialog box when download completeskek
>>12185982A friend of mine got a mod chipped Playstation in about '99. Nobody really cared that much because the PSX was pretty much finished in our eyes and everyone already had the games they wanted; I think we pirated some random stuff that hadn't been quite good enough for anyone to have bought, like Resident Evil 3, but nobody ever finished anything pirated. We had a Dreamcast that someone bought Soul Calibur for right after launch and no other game on Dreamcast was worth playing so no one ever pirated for it. That friend group died off before mod chipped PS2s would have been a thing.
making the same thread on multiple boards should be banned
