Buy your Gamecubes, GC piracy has begun

W

Wario64

works for Gamestop (lol)
Saw this from OA

Breaking News: Mental Cube Hacked BIOS For Viper GC
posted by malloc at 10:15 pm on 12-12-2004
We have recieved some exclusive inside info about the new third party flash BIOS for the Viper GC from a group of hackers known as Mental Cube.

The viper was already shipped in limited quantities to some developers a couple of weeks ago, it seems they were hard at work :-) A new release group, Mental Cube, have developed a hacked BIOS for Viper GC, called Cobra BIOS.The hacked BIOS will make it possible to play backups from Mini DVD-r, just by swapping with an original disc after the Cobra BIOS on screen prompt! Fun times ahead for all of us....

Still don't believe it ? Well here at Maxconsole we've managed to obtain an EXCLUSIVE screenshot of the Cobra BIOS in action....



The bios is expected to be released in the coming week , so looks like we can look to some great times ahead with the Gamecube .


131204001438cobrabiosmax.jpg



If this isn't acceptable, go ahead and lock the thread.
 
If this cuts into Nintendo's quarterly profits, I'm going to have to find a new hobby.
 
so it can definatly play games off a mini-dvdr ? I thought this was not possible as thd gamecube disks differ from too much from dvd-r
 
This wont become mainstream anyway. Probably wont hurt Nintendo.

So it took 3-4 years before someone could this for real. Nintendo sure did a good job on their hardware.
 
I want to say this is fake; the Gc laser physically reads the disks differently... I'm not sure that can strictly be altered by changing the bios.
 
tahrikmili said:
Oops for Nintendo?
Click to expand...

How is this an oops for nintendo they successfully held of piracy longer than any of the current gen consols out. I say they did a pretty good job wasnt the p2 and the xbox broken like right around the time they where released.
 
GaimeGuy said:
I want to say this is fake; the Gc laser physically reads the disks differently... I'm not sure that can strictly be altered by changing the bios.
Click to expand...

The lense lazer is controled by firmware as to how it is going to read/burn a disk heck thats why duel layered burners are so cheap because all that was done was changing the intensity of the lazer for each layer vial firmware on existing burners.
 
arter_2 said:
How is this an oops for nintendo they successfully held of piracy longer than any of the current gen consols out. I say they did a pretty good job wasnt the p2 and the xbox broken like right around the time they where released.
Click to expand...

Ooops as in they are probably making the biggest loss from console sales and they now will also probably see decreasing game sales?

Otherwise, yeah, you're right.
 
Nintendo staved it off long enough.

tahrikmili said:
Ooops as in they are probably making the biggest loss from console sales and they now will also probably see decreasing game sales?

Otherwise, yeah, you're right.
Click to expand...

They profit off of Gamecube, it's better third party support and hardware sales growth they lack. Piracy hasn't harmed Xbox or PS2 game sales. And within 6 months they will announce Revolution. So they went a full generation unscathed.
 
First time I ever hear of "Mini DVD-Rs". Interesting stuff, though. You see people, every single piece of hardware can be pirated. :P
 
Little bit late isn't it? GC pirating scene I mean. Revolution is coming out soon! But yeah!! I like those MiniDVD-rs..
 
This is a new dawn for Nintendo

When the hardware sales start too boom again 3rd party publishers will go into OMG mode and start releasing their inferior products on the platform.

At $99.99 Gamecube is an extremely lucrative piece of hardware.
 
from what i have heard about the cube, it has to be fake, but who knows...

anyway, what i heard is they could always get at the IPL, for years now...

the problem is the cube protection isnt even bios level, its deeper than that, the bios doesnt even see the protection...
the optical drive's firmware reads the barcode, which has the decryption key for the game...
then the optical drive decrypts the game data on the fly...
the bios doesnt even know the data on the disk is encrypted...

or at least that's what i've been told...
 
Dear Nintendo:

1) Covertly go about making sure everyone knows you can play pirate software on the thing...

2) One way or another - by telling them straight, or allowing them to figure it out by their own invention - let developers discover that one way they can safeguard against piracy is by including an online component - whereby valid disks can be checked / people banned.

3) Boom. You're now selling a console with reputation of easily attainable games for scum and cheapskates, just like your competitors (one less advantage they have)... only people have to actually buy legit games if they want to play online.




4) Thank Microsoft for having the ingenius idea first
 
The Faceless Master said:
from what i have heard about the cube, it has to be fake, but who knows...

anyway, what i heard is they could always get at the IPL, for years now...

the problem is the cube protection isnt even bios level, its deeper than that, the bios doesnt even see the protection...
the optical drive's firmware reads the barcode, which has the decryption key for the game...
then the optical drive decrypts the game data on the fly...
the bios doesnt even know the data on the disk is encrypted...

or at least that's what i've been told...
Click to expand...

Yeah, thats pretty close to what I've read. There's a physical unique element for every game -- you can see it on the underside of your disc towards the center. Scattered data, that looks kinda like morse code or something || || . || . | etc. From what I gather, the cube reads this first (the data AND the blank space between data), and it tells the cube the level of protection that should be used. It tests this physical attribute ( a barcode if you will ) against the matching verifiable data on the actual disk. If they don't match, it's a no go... but the idea of this viper mod-chip, is that you can run code from the chip or off RAM: for homebrew game development purposes of course :D Is it possible that once a program is running on the chip inside the cube (ie. the Cobra bios), that IT tells the drive what to do? Thus bypassing protection.. this could be how Freeloader shirks the whole region check thing.

Only with Freeloader.. Thin Ice Media sussed out the barcode mechanism and is able to manufacture their own legitimate disks. So you don't need the hardware change.
 
The Faceless Master said:
from what i have heard about the cube, it has to be fake, but who knows...

anyway, what i heard is they could always get at the IPL, for years now...

the problem is the cube protection isnt even bios level, its deeper than that, the bios doesnt even see the protection...
the optical drive's firmware reads the barcode, which has the decryption key for the game...
then the optical drive decrypts the game data on the fly...
the bios doesnt even know the data on the disk is encrypted...

or at least that's what i've been told...
Click to expand...

Why hasn't anyone else used this protection?
 
goodcow said:
Why hasn't anyone else used this protection?
Click to expand...

*Snickers*

That sounds like a 12-Year Old in a Sex Ed Class...in the early 1990s.

On topic...so? There's no concrete proof that they managed to crack it, and even if they did, the hassle that it has taken likely means that it won't be a mainstream enough hack to affect the market even as little as it has the PS2 and XBox ones.
 
I used to keep hearing that the GC discs spin in the opposite direction (anti-clockwise) than everything else (CDs, DVDs, etc), so that's why it was impossible to pirate... I never bothered to check if that's the case though, should be very easy to do, just open the fliptop while a disc is spinning :P
 
Well, whether they did or not, it took about four years since GC first launched for people to fully hack it.

That's fucking incredible.
 
Naked Snake said:
I used to keep hearing that the GC discs spin in the opposite direction (anti-clockwise) than everything else (CDs, DVDs, etc), so that's why it was impossible to pirate... I never bothered to check if that's the case though, should be very easy to do, just open the fliptop while a disc is spinning :P
Click to expand...

Nah, it's not that they spin backwards. The data is READ backwards from other forms of optical media.
 
Naked Snake said:
What does that mean?
Click to expand...

Data is read on the outside of the disc, moving inward (This allows more data to be read per revolution of the disk, which is why GC has such low loading times). Pretty much every other optical media format has data read from the center of the disk to the outside of the disk.

Oh, not to mention that each G.O.D. (Gamecube Optical Disk) also has a "junk" layer of garbage data to "layer" the game data.
 
GaimeGuy said:
Data is read on the outside of the disc, moving inward (This allows more data to be read per revolution of the disk, which is why GC has such low loading times). Pretty much every other optical media format has data read from the center of the disk to the outside of the disk.
Click to expand...

But Dreamcast did this as well.
 
Dreamcast didnt read the data backwards though. It just had dummy data to push the game data to the outside

Unless...
 
Wow, maybe a dozen tech heads will take advantage of this complicated shit. Who cares?

Anyway its alreayd been hacked, theres a way for the Cube to read burned games on a computer with Phantasy Star and other weird shit. Either way, any method is going to be a pain in the ass.
 
this one i know for a fact... neither dreamcast nor gamecube read data backwards... they both read in the same direction and angle as other cd/dvd based media/drives... in dc and cube they both physically pad the data to the edge of the disk so it's full...
 
trippingmartian said:
You say this as though modding PS2 and Xbox requires no effort.
Click to expand...

Their all pains in the ass, but this one even more so since you can't actually have the discs to play inside the system. You don't have a format to go into the system, with ps2 and xbox once its modded, you just put in burned games. You need a whole seperate drive and connection to do it on GC.
 
explodet said:
There's also the cost and availability of mini-DVDs, are they as easy to find and as affordable as DVDRs?
Click to expand...

Best Buy sells them but they are much more expensive than regular sized DVD-Rs.
 
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