There is no reception against scrap. How the home game consoles of the past and the present defended and hacking

PlayStation 3 could be the first game prefix in history to break the lomaches, but did not break out. But did not. At the same time, before Sony, it seems, no one cared to stop piracy on their system at the root: any console starting from the second generation with one or another success succumbed to hackers. And while the PS3 itself is still raping, Gamemia recalls how the 13 most famous home game systems were broken. And, of course, reminds that piracy is bad!

Second generation

Fairchild Channel F

1976

Fairchild Channel F (She Video Entertainment System ) It is considered to be the first cartridge console, but this is not entirely fair: there were still cartridges at Magnavox Odyssey , but were only plastic with a set of jumpers that activate certain commands of the system.

But Fairchild is the first in the sense that its cartridge contains directly the game code, https://sister-site.org/admiral-shark-casino/ that is, something that can be stealing. That is why we begin our chronicle from the second generation of prefixes: before it was, in fact, there was nothing to break.

Of course, it is VES that gives rise to such a thing as an illegal cartridge. There are no protection systems on the media or on the system itself, so theoretically make a copy of the game is easy. But practically – very laborious. Cartridge is a new and obscure thing, and it is hard to establish mass production. And those copies that are still made are painstakingly disguised as the original and sold at a similar price (and sometimes in the same stores). The first and only case in history when it is almost impossible to distinguish licensed from the pirate.

Atari 2600

1977

Atari 2600 -The first console of the second generation and the first game prefix, for which the concepts of “legally” and “illegally” are applicable to some extent.

By “illegal” (although this, of course, is said loudly), the activity is primarily meant, as they say now, the Third Party Studies, that is, those companies that produce cartridges for Atari 2600 without the knowledge of itself Atari. Only now permission to ask is completely optional. The console is perceived only as a household player of the video game and is sold above the cost. After all, no one will ask BBK now if it is possible to release a DVD with a film that will work on her video player?

Accordingly, the device for reading cartridges is not protected at all: if the code is written for specific iron and pushes on the chip, it will start. But hackers still find a lesson: having broken off Atari 2600 to the screw, they learn to launch games in general without any cartridges, equipping the prefix with internal memory. And this is done not at all fun for the sake.

Officially, Atari 2600 was launched only in the USA, then in France, Germany and (with great delay, already in the eighties) Japan. It is not possible to deliver the console for all other countries to transport the console with the gray import of the console, but the clone, Rambo , – Please! Authentic case, joysticks are more convenient than original, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Pitfall! and several dozen games of a smaller caliber (including, you will laugh, e.T.)-and no need to buy something else. From other undeniable advantages – Sylvester Stallone stares from the box at you.

Atari 5200

1982

Launch Atari 5200 accompanied by a whole series of miscalculations. Firstly, there are few starting games (and then there will be nothing interesting on the platform). Secondly, there is no reverse compatibility with Atari 2600-with the fact that the iron looks like. Thirdly, why do you need a new prefix at all, when the old one is in the juice itself?

One of these problems in Atari is eliminated: they release a special adapter that allows the 5200th model to digest cartridges of the 2600th-as well as all pirate copies and self-recorded code. And there is no own counterfeit on the new Atari, everything is for the same simple reason: the new console did not like Nerdam in the garage. The old one has not yet been taken away.

The third generation

Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom

1983

Here, of course, there should be another detailed story about the nineties, about the glorious company " Srimpler ", One famous elephant and yellow-orange bricks, but we, right, save the magazine pages: about" Dandy "You either know everything very well, or have already read in" Gambling ". Therefore, focus on other remarkable details.

Dendy, unlike some other Nintendo Entertainment System clones, is capable of reading licensed cartridges, and all regions. That is why it is in demand among collectors from the USA and Europe (ordinary Western users of NES by the end of 1992 are not enough), where it is difficult to get the original NES – but only to this day the only outstanding game Back to the Future. Dendy prefer all copies and for one more important reason: her appearance is restrained. Joysticks and a light gun completely copy the original, the case is slightly repainted.

Another clone known in the post -Soviet space, Subor , It looks exactly the same, only painted black (which is even cooler), but it loses in one important part-the controllers there for some reason are soldered directly into the case, it is impossible to replace them. And then there is a very terrible game: the unfortunate Iron NES is attached to the PS One case and the case from the PC keyboard.

However, piracy on NES does not begin with Dendy: to make copies of original cartridges in 1983, immediately after the console launch. But they use this mainly for noble purposes – to launch a self -written code and amateur ports. And it would be okay that it was endless variations Mortal Kombat , Where we felt a catch even at six years old. But do you know that the platformer Aladdin , into which everyone outplayed Dendy, never officially went out on eight -bit consoles?

And the last: from 1983, such a legal concept is introduced as “platform holder”. Pay deductions or fail!

Sega Master System

1985

Sega For the first time it enters the console market, but with restrained success: in the time of universal domination Nes, everyone perceives Master System About the same as in times PlayStation 2 They will perceive Xbox : Well, yes, a curious thing, there are good games, but why do I need it when I have my charm? In the post -Soviet space, it is not at all, as in all other developing countries.

Accordingly, the prefix, which is not interesting to the states of the “counterfeit block”, is not interesting and the pirates themselves. Now on ebay you can find unlicensed cartridges for Master System, but this is rather an exotic that appeared a few years after the prefix itself.

The fourth generation

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

1988

Piracy on Sega Genesis (for close friends – Mega Drive it is noteworthy primarily an unreasonably wide temporary pit, meanwhile, the moment when the cartridges were learned to copy on it – this happened, according to unconfirmed data, only after launch in the United States in 1989, and by the moment when counterfeit was launched into mass production, in XXXXXxx year. The console comes to the post -Soviet space just during this deaf segment, and everything is amazingly used to the license. Yes, expensive-but it is perceived as a natural fee for elitism before those who have just bought Dendy. And in the end, in the end, you can change!

At that turning point when there are more pirate cartridges on the shelves of stores than licensed, the entire so-called Core audience is already breaking on the PlayStation or PC. Yes, and piracy on Genesis is cracked: small boxes, stupid illustrations on the covers, stupid assemblies of the species “One decent game and three bad” (at the same time, the prices for them are oh-th what!), freezing are not uncommon. And most importantly – there is no authentic smell!

Nevertheless, the hacking of Mega Drive is noteworthy for at least two reasons. The first – it was on this console that the first prefix games appeared, translated by pirates into Russian. The second – the term “clear the console” originated, although the chip is needed here only to run the games of foreign regions.

The last service was extremely unpopular, because it was easier to buy a clone called Bitman (made up precisely under Genesis, that is, in the American corps), who already knew how to. Or crank up one legendary focus: insert and remove a foreign cartridge dozens or even hundreds of times. Sometimes it worked.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

1990

On one Sun Friday 1994, Sergei Suponev spoke on the game on the game on the air Donkey Kong Country : “Look at the cover! The quality of the picture that you now see on the cover of the cartridge is absolutely accurate – and these are not words now! – corresponds to the quality of the image in the game itself! Let us take a little more time with you today, in order to introduce you to the world's most popular game for Super Nintendo in the world. A team of 170 people worked on this game! It is interesting to see what they did there … ”After that, only five minutes of gameplay followed, after which each person with heart and soul began to passionately desire a cartridge with two monkeys on the label.

But the pirate base is not ready for the surpassed demand, although since the launch of the system is the fourth year: the nineties are the era of the sunset of cartridge media, and copying the obese chips are increasingly complicated and more complicated (on Nintendo 64 , The world's last console on cartridges, mass piracy was not at all). The few (especially in comparison with the NES) clones of SNES appear only after the release of the Slim version of the console, and pirate games due to the high cost of production are decent. In the CIS, in order not to get confused too much, they carry mainly legal copies, but neither they nor the console itself especially take root.

The fifth generation

PlayStation

1994

Even before the exit PlayStation Pirates rubbish their hands eagerly. Having been transported for not a few decades with cartridges, they finally fight the prefix, which works with the format, without problems replicated at least at home. Even in the middle of the nineties CD-disk is a thing that can be copied. Maybe not at home, of course, but the brother’s brother has a neighbor – for sure!

Then, however, it turns out that everything is not so simple. Original games Sony They are printed on discs made of black plastic (it is impossible to enlighten them on a home CD drive) and are encrypted with a special code unique to each region. Pirates, of course, are easy to learn to read data and even accurately copy it on pennies, but so that these same blanks are read by the console's drive, more hassles. The first chips for this appear in the first half of 1995, but only a supermaster can be sewn, and it seems more to surgery than hacker pampering: a person focuses with strange devices for several hours, and command and commanders give him tools and Smok sweat from the forehead. But then the chips become so simple that even a schoolboy can hack a console.

It is PlayStation that gives rise to that special pirate culture (if not romance), which each of us was imbued with all these underground Russian voice acting and assemblies with cut rollers in childhood. Yes, you can not buy the original CD on black plastic and make yourself a copy. But you can buy a pirate disk and rewrite it a hundred times. From other pleasant surprises: the opportunity to watch all the videos from the game without going through the level.

The sixth generation

Sega Dreamcast

1998

The last attempt Sega prove that it still stands on the console market. Dreamcast does not become at least somewhat popular-including because of difficulties with piracy. Instead of conventional CD or DVD, prefix games go to GD-ROM, a rather specific medium of 1.2 GB. There are simply no GD-RW drives in the public domain, so the games have to be fit on ordinary CDs, clinging them or cutting out part of the content. And so that the console is not indignant, you need a chip, and find the master in DreamCast is not at all the same as finding a master in PS or PS2.

In such dragon conditions, pirates even manage to make assemblies (though no more than two games on the disk), but there is a little sense in mass piracy: the console exists only for Shenmue and fighting.

PlayStation 2

2000

After a circus with expensive black plastic, Sony decides not to show off and releases games for PS2 on the most ordinary DVDs. Drive chips appear even earlier than for the first PlayStation, because they are created on their basis.

Hacking PlayStation 2 is easier, including this “merit” itself Sony : Its previous console has become so popular in many ways because available discs lay in every stall. But the quality of the chips varies: if earlier it was determined only by how long the device will work, now other criteria have appeared. Some chips, for example, can read the discs from PS, but some cannot. Somehow give only discs from Verbatim. And most have problems with two-layer DVDs: if the films still work, then God of War 2 freezes for every second.

But the case is not limited to the launch of the pirate discs. Among the Homebrew applications there are emulators, MP3 players, codecs for MPEG-4, text editors and God knows what else. By the end of the life cycle, the prefix pirates are completely impudent and train it to launch games from the hard drive (which, of course, must also be connected in a special way). True, this is possible only on the original console, in the SLIM hole dwells.

Xbox

2001

Xbox not particularly interested in pirates for the same reason as Dreamcast : The multi -platform is easier to launch on the prefix Sony , and there are so few exclusives that they can be bought.

The chips, of course, are made, but counterfeit wheels are produced with rather modest circulations, and patches for some hanging in a pirate copy of the games have not yet appeared.

And the hackers are not worried at all, but the console operating system, modernized Windows 2000. Having removed all the stiff disk sewn up into the OS (which the consoles have never had) restrictions, craftsmen turn Xbox into a real media center.

The seventh generation

Xbox 360

2005

Advertising campaign Xbox 360 It is overshadowed by a scandal: even before the official date of launching the consoles, someone abducts several girls, and for console hackers this is like a bag of diamonds. But, as it turns out later, crackers spend such a successful head starting starting heading: they concentrate in the old fashioned way on the development of a chip that use a few months, because it turns out that it is easier and safer to program the drive programmatically.

Not that the Xbox 360 is reliably protected, but with hackers in Microsoft They are fighting with all their might: the planned waves of banks in Xbox Live, new (supposedly improvised) versions of drives … Until a certain point, all this is like standard whistles around intellectual property: some protect as they can, others break as they can as they can. But then a system called under the name appears JTAG , which allows you to start self -packing applications through not too complex surgical and software manipulations. An important condition-the prefix Dashboard should not be updated since the summer of 2009 (after installing the jtag, it can still be updated, but in a special way). Turning with the settings, you can make the Xbox 360 completely universal. Launching games from a hard drive – both internal and USB. DLC, Arcades and generally any content from Live – free. Codecs, emulators – in general, any program that can be needed by the home media center. Plus a super -secret experimental opportunity to divide yourself in Live. Too cool – it's a pity it's too illegal.

Now Microsoft is making the last, desperate attempt to defend themselves-they release 1 GB of data reserved for the needs of the file structure of 1 GB of data and pack the archives differently. But there is no doubt that hackers will win: even succumbed to Xbox 360 Slim , for some time considered impregnable.

WII

2006

In the sixth generation of consoles, we did not mention Gamecube , And for a reason. The truly strange and complex console, which worked on eight-centimeter disks developed specifically for it, was hacked only with the appearance WII.

Revolutionary console Nintendo – The most unprotected prefix of our time. The prototypes of the chips for the drive appear a few days after the start of sales, and this is only a prelude for large -scale software. To launch hacker programs, no special skills and even screwdrivers are needed, there is enough copies The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess , downloaded from the Internet, special conservation and files Homebrew Channel. Later, the procedure called Twilight Hack is simplified by plowing the channel files in the ISO-image-and no “Zeldy” is needed!

Discs on WII is now absent as a class. Sample programs allow you to launch not only WII games from the external hard drive, but also the Cuban ones, which before that it was extremely difficult to copy. You can also install WIIWARE wad files, download the whole classic from Virtual Console for free, and most importantly, WII is the only prefix today that is able to reproduce video files in Matroska (MKV), the most popular pirate container today, which has come to AVI change.