How the Sony PlayStation PS1 Security was defeated | MVG

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

A few friends and I had a modded Playstation back in the day, however, If you had a CD burner, you were king of the playground as the official supplier of games.

[@The2808erik]

PC Master Race just used bleem.

[@freedustin]

TheMoonCloud bleemcast too.

[@kjrchannel1480]

I think it would be well deserved for pirates to have their consoles and hardware confiscated. Along with a time behind bars, or community service.

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@kjrchannel1480 You wanna put 10 year olds in jail?

[@elshrapnel]

Here in Russia weren't unmodded ps1's. Every single unit was modded. So all games were cheap pirate versions, usually with crappy translation to russian :)

[@brantwedel]

The irony about the burner price dropping is that it was probably partially due to laser and chip suppliers ramping up production to scale for the PS1 that made the prices drop.

[@arduinoguru7233]

I totally agree that time I never consider buying CD burner at all first thing come to my mind was PlayStation CD's

[@akaDL]

Hardly it was just PS1. Many stuff were happening on CD, like CD Audio and Video CD.

[@GoldSrc_]

Nope, cd burners and PS1 used different technologies, you just can't use the PS1 laser to burn discs. That, and Sony laser pick-ups used in the PS1 had crappy designs, those things would just fail inside cd burners.

[@fake12396]

PSX was one thing but CD drives were blowing up in the mid 90s, you couldn't go to a computer store without seeing the words 'multimedia' or 'CD-ROM' at least once. everyone was rushing to get their shovelware full of gloriously crappy 90s-style FMVs out, it was crazy. also by the end of the decade the PC tech explosion was well underway, pretty much everything dropped in price.

[@georgen9838]

They didn't scale production for the PS1 -- they didn't need to. Audio CDs and CD players had been around since the 80s, and were the standard by 1990. By the time the PSX came out even CD-ROMs (non-writable, of course) had been standard on computers for years. Perhaps more importantly: CD-R writers didn't use the same laser hardware as CD-ROMs. In fact, the technology difference in how a CD-R is made compared to a pressed CD-ROM was so large that some CD readers actually were physically unable to read CD-Rs; some were fixed by firmware upgrades adjusting the laser power, IIRC, but the majority of the drives that couldn't read them just became defunct. And considering that most CD-R writers still couldn't write the most popular PSX CDs (due to LibCrypt), the actual bump in effective demand from people wanting to burn PSX discs was really quite low. (I had one of these drives -- I would know! They were *tremendously* expensive compared to the standard drives of the day.)

[@singletona082]

The Spyro anti-crack protection was absolutely brilliant. Hands down, no quantifiers, it was brilliant and deeply amusing in how frustrating it could be.

[@devilmikey00]

Honestly if it wasn't for the message giving it away you'd be pulling your hair out wondering wtf you did wrong. Go wasting CD's trying to reburn it because maybe you did it wrong ;p

[@jamesprynne1422]

I had a chipped version of spyro as a kid, in fact 90% of around 200 games were chipped.

[@artstrutzenberg7197]

I remember reading about Spyro 3....and apparently the group also ended up giving all sorts of mad props and respect to the developers who came up with such a fiendish copy prevention mechanism

[@MrMario2011]

The balls these release groups had to put phone numbers on their intros 😂

[@joeblow5214]

Part of me wants to call them and see if they still work.

[@firstsurname9893]

Not really. In my experience (as a lame courier) those phone numbers were usually for a single BBS (one of many operated by the group) and intended as an initial point of contact only. As well as the number you generally needed a new user password and someone who already had an account to vouch for you. Someone who just got the number from an intro, nfo or archive banner couldn't really use it for anything.

[@johnsimon8457]

Scene Rules, bro. gotta have a pr0p3r release

[@melan5611]

Mario I need Playstation vita can you buy one for me?

[@xy-en1ky]

@@melan5611 Why do you need it?

[@johnnychang4233]

Can Modern Vintage Gamer release a video talking about the history of Action Replay?

[@joeblow5214]

A video on "game enhancers" would be cool. I still have a NES Game Genie in the basement.

[@superrayman3]

Why stop with just the Action Replay? Why not do a history of game enhancers as a whole?

[@soreyJr]

superrayman3 Game Shark was my shit

[@johnnychang4233]

@@superrayman3 Because they are the only one still in business even nowadays 😉

[@harlandmountain7998]

@@johnnychang4233 Yeah but to really do the subject justice you need to start in the Beginning, which was Game Genie unless there is something that came out earlier that I'm missing.

[@Movie_Games]

I remember going to a card store near me called Dragon's Den. They sold me an action replay, a spring to stick in the cdrom, and print-out instructions on how to do the swap.

[@robertbouchard6661]

Your talking about dragons den on riverdale rd in springfield? I used to but my pokemon cards there in 1999 2000 lol. Better times

[@kamranahmed5940]

I had that thing! I bought it from a market in London and it had a little spring with a red string and full instructions!

[@surfsidezawaz]

I'm pretty sure an old friend of mine gave me one of these that was given to him by his dad. No instructions though just a quick explanation of how to do it The dad may or may not have worked for what ever playstation magazine was around at the time. I have no idea how true what my friend said at the time was as you know what it's like when your 12 and want to impress people

[@Movie_Games]

@@robertbouchard6661 Naw. This one was in Yonkers, NY. I'm sure there are tons of Dragons Dens, heh.

[@voca-chan7953]

Yay, I love these security cracking video

[@autobotstarscream765]

Ayaya?

[@THE8-BITROAD]

I love gaming nowadays, but sometimes I miss those old days when you were really excited to get somehow a certain game, and spent the next days/weeks with one game. Today you have such easy access to so many games that you are not sure what to play next.

[@lucasmoreirar]

And way, WAY less time. :(

[@harmleyten4]

Both of you are so right

[@MeepChangeling]

@@lucasmoreirar Lol, sounds like you should have been born with a disabity. I have all of my time :D buuuuut basically no money. Not sure who started the idea of welfare queens but, uh... if someone can get me a how-to manual on that, please do!

[@MeepChangeling]

Sounds like that's not a problem with the times, but a problem with your lack of self control and discipline.

[@lucasmoreirar]

@@MeepChangeling Work and family take most of my time, but it ends up making those short gaming sessions that more special. No big deal.

[@jizquierdo89]

The ol' switcharoo is how me and my brother played 90% of the games we had. Good memories.

[@HeroesLeftInMan]

Who would win? Sony a huge company and their inventive security? or One thin piece of plastic wedge and a kid who isn't afraid of grabbing a spinning disc?

[@Azazel010101]

Of course, the winner is..

[@zsin128]

me

[@Nicolas-zo6rg]

Lmao good meme

[@andree1991]

Nintenbros, we got too cocky...

[@vasili1207]

A chip... Only bums used the swop trick ... Especially when modding was done for £15

[@PadPoet]

Spyro the Dragon hackers: "Ok, we've cracked this" Sony through Zoe: "We are now officially trolling you. Enjoy your hacked copy"

[@PadPoet]

João Maverick It doesn’t really matter who’s got the last laugh. The crack took some time to get out there and Sony just like MVG mentioned, made enough sales in the first 2-3 months of it’s lifetime. That’s when you make the bulk of your sales, especially with single player games. So it was cracked apparently but Sony was not that concerned about it, it had made enough money from Spyro.

[@frogz]

@João Maverick i to this day, enjoy the badly cracked copy lol

[@steelbear2063]

*Laughs in Russian*

[@theowinters6314]

"Everyone had a mod-chip" I think that might be area specific, where I lived no one had mod-chips, and I've yet to find one in the wild in a PS1 on the second hand market.

[@MindBlowerWTF]

Where did You live then? In Central Europe You would just pack Your console and go to Your electronics market on the weekend and there would be few dudes that would mod it while You wait. Same for Xbox360, not sure about PS3 at the time. Now we don't have electronics markets on the weekend :(

[@theowinters6314]

@@MindBlowerWTF West Coast of the USA.

[@rompevuevitos222]

When it came to Latin America (Argentina/Uruguay mostly), it already was modded lol, only VERY few legit consoles came over here, most of the ones that became available as years passed where consoles bought and chipped by other people, as a result, the main way to get them was to buy them on ebay's equivalent sites, trough newspaper ads or similar, seeing one in a legit store was pretty damn rare, specially at launch Seems like Sony took note of this as well, the PS3 and PS4 came in VERY few numbers at launch date, the PS3 sold VERY poorly specially when compared to the Xbox360 and the PS4 came in batches of 4-6, 1 month after release and only to very few stores at TWICE the price that it had on the US (that's indeed 1000 dollars,for wathever reason) Needless to say, it didn't sell almost anything until they fixed the price

[@KatalistProductionsKozzySasha]

@@theowinters6314 Westcoast here to and I knew many people who had modded playstation 1's lol

[@MrSleepProductionsInc]

I’m with you, I’m from mid america and I never heard of a mod chip back then. If you wanted another game you just had to wait for Christmas! 😔

[@Diotialate]

1:56 "100+ hour RPG" I don't know how I beat Suikoden with all 108 stars/men as a kid, all I know is that it's not happening again.

[@redsmeg74]

I remember Medievil ons ps1 detected a mod and wouldnt allow you to pass a certain part early on... I defeated myself by hiring a copy and making save just after that point...

[@Azazel010101]

Mistake (buying the retail copy) wasn't made!

[@GuitarAnthony]

Nothing will ever be funnier than Sony's 'crack=proof' audio cd protection beaten with a 99 cents marker.

[@firstsurname9893]

I'm pretty sure you're referring to Cactus Data Shield, developed by Midbar Technologies. I don't recall Sony ever using CDS, however they're a big company so it's possible that it may have been used by a subsidiary.

[@filanfyretracker]

or turning off autoplay. lots of audio CD DRM depended on Windows autoplaying the disc as the OS would auto run the data sector. Of course if AP was turned off or temp disabled(holding shift I think it was in 95 and 98SE) it could not sneak the malware in. And Audio CD DRM is what we would call today as Malware.

[@me0262]

See this, is why I use Linux and cdparanoia.

[@vyor8837]

@@filanfyretracker that's not... No.

[@severeerror52]

Music DRM is the dumbest shit like if someone wants to pirate it just record the thing with audacity

[@7sep85]

I remember renting games from my local video van and ripping them on a Friday, making 20 copies over the weekend and selling them all at school for £5 on Monday. Good times.

[@anembersarc]

*STONKS*

[@steelbear2063]

Capitalism

[@revolvement]

Love these videos. You really know your stuff, and better yet, you know how to present it in an engaging fashion

[@AltimaNEO]

1:45 I remember the commercials for one of the WipeOut games advertising the soundtrack provided by the Crystal Method. That was their big selling point. But man, so many games had great soundtracks. Twisted Metal 2 was my favorite.

[@mifiamigahna]

3:44 That is probably my favorite 'hack' now. It's so beautifully simple, yet so out-of the-box that the developers never would have never thought of this.

[@TrimeshSZ]

The original SCPH-1000 Japanese launch model had a really easy disc swap that didn't require any precise timing at all - just turn the console on with the drive door open, go to the CD player and put a valid game disc in then operate the door switch - after the drive loaded the TOC, you could just swap the disc and then exit from the CD player, at which point the game would boot.

[@dom1310df]

"20-something year old with disposable income..." Oh how times have changed!

[@meetrasurrik6982]

Dubious I'd rather go to the club and play on the PS1 with the boys

[@neoasura]

If you eat Avocado, shop at Trader Joes or go to Starbucks, or pay $1000 for a smartphone, you have disposable income. And I see plenty of 20 somethings that do.

[@WannabeMarysue]

@@neoasura Ok Boomer

[@Adioownz1]

referral madness same lol broke afaf

[@SevenCompleted]

lmao its because our generation just has to have the best of everything if its not organic free range gluten free chicken then it's not good enough, can't just have a toast with butter need to have avacado toast. Yes previous generations had it better but they also made sacrifices in the short term to achieve long term goals something most of the younger people arent willing to do, they have to have the best just because thats what their parents gave them ignoring the sacrifices their parents made to get them to that position.

[@DragRedSim]

Our family had a modded PSOne (the rounded edges, smaller body version). It was one of the first things we got done after moving to a country in South-East Asia, having bought it before moving. The only official games we had for it were one each we picked up in duty free on the way out, and for some reason I recall being warned that not all copies would necessarily work with the modchip. Knowing what I do now, having looked at some of the code out there for an open-source PS1 modchip, I don’t see how that could have been the case, apart from talking about games like Spyro 3 here. Copies were so easy to get where we were, that pretty much any trip to a shopping mall would include picking up multiple games. We still have two disc binders full of them. Speaking of Spyro 3, me and my brother played the cracked copy through to - and past - the save wipe. It had some more… interesting side effects later in the game; the one that always stuck out to me was that we couldn’t actually regain health in the game. Down to one hit to death? Get a butterfly, and Sparx reappeared in his green glory. Get another - and he disappeared again. Back to square one. The bottled butterflies were treasured, as that and skill points were the only way to actually return to full health. In the end, we didn’t know about the available “fixed” version; we ended up tracking down an original version a couple of years later!

[@FeeLtheHertZ]

*Whenever I listen to Dubstep, I'm always on the listen for: The Wobble Groove.*

[@zanmaru139]

"Because the algorithm is fast, there is no slowdown or disc access to perform the check." If only modern devs/publishers cared about this when implementing DRM...

[@iamlucidess]

Sounds like youtube in a nutshell

[@superamario6464]

Retro Hour with Dan and Ravi was great this week. Thank you for guesting on it :)

[@HAA.0]

The best part of cracked games is the intro the music brings you to a diffrent world Keep up the good work

[@lucidByte]

Another good video, thanks mate (AUS)

[@shiroranmori5009]

Now I finally understand behind the reason I can't beat the first Spyro Games 15 year ago. I thought my console broke back then

[@melody_florum]

Sony: “we have developed an advanced method to encode region data into disks that consumers can’t replicate” Consumers: “haha diskswap go brrr”

[@8bitwiz_]

Sony's actual first mistake was making the region lock be an artifact of the copy protection. If region bypass was as easy as it was on the Saturn (bascally just solder a switch to the board), many fewer people would have cared about playing pirated copies.

[@straightupanarg6226]

That's actually what it sounded like.

[@doctasandwich]

Dude your videos are completely engrossing! Seriously good stuff 👍☺️☺️☺️

[@alhuno1]

MVG makes my Monday mornings at work more enjoyable with his content. Thank you!

[@MrMegaManFan]

I love these cracking and hacking breakdowns you do. I’d love to see them for even more obscure systems like Neo Geo CD or a handheld like Bandai WonderSwan. I’m sure they had copy protection, region locking, anti piracy and encryption keys too.

[@jeinnerabdel]

Sir, your channel is like the video version of Encarta but for gamers. Everything is so well presented that you could literally be used as reference! Well done, kind Sir.

[@me0262]

Great video! I remember reading this article (and especially the inlining of the check). This antipiracy also affected the real copies of the game if you had a modded Playstation. My uncle actually came up with an ingenious trick, install a switch to turn it off and on.

[@sotris99]

When i see a video about defeating security issues, i know that mistakes were made

[@alessandroluvoni1096]

Best video series on yt. Looking forward to next awesome episode.

[@TommyCrosby]

When I was a kid and didn't have internet, I believed that the modchips were made to allow reading non black CDs.

[@rompevuevitos222]

@Samuel Giam Region locking is BS, luckily there's not even a need for that anymore

[@steelbear2063]

@@rompevuevitos222 Don't know about no need, but region locking is alive and well

[@rompevuevitos222]

@@steelbear2063 I mean, they can try, but bypassing it is real easy, unless you live in an authoritarian dystopia, like China or North Korea

[@williamwinborne3253]

These videos are really some of the best I've ever seen on KZbin. Awesome job.

[@TheTeeTwo]

Splendid, some good stuff to watch for lunch!

[@lorddude]

So awesome you showed a clip of Suikoden. Thanks for showing that series some love. :)

[@TAGMedia7]

I'd be super interested in a follow-up to this video that covers the Plextor drives and firmware!

[@nexxusty]

Absolutely. I don't understand why this wasn't more widely done.

[@leemathewbrooks]

Been waiting for this entry in the series for so long! Excellent job as always :)

[@svcross-do]

This is so damn interesting! I love this series!

[@dodgykebaab]

Instant like for all MVG videos

[@AcornElectron]

I remember guys who sold ‘backups’ on cd. I remember it was £3 a disc so forget buying final fantasy for a bargain 😁😂😂

[@smartl4d]

Retro Jeegee £3 each or 2 for £5 lol those were the days

[@okmmko09]

Awesome video as always!

[@KingKarrit]

Thank you for not calling it the “PSX” at any point. There’s this weird phenomenon where certain people call it by the prototype name and not it’s proper name.

[@AlexCheerNZ]

ikr, i only ever remember calling it the ps1, no one i know calls it PSX in real life, only online

[@ButcherGrindslam]

Yes. Channels like Jenovi call it "psx".

[@kiyoshi_the_devil]

@@NB-1 Here in Germany? Okay... I know only that it's called PS1, no matter where I am. PSX is actually new for me.

[@HeroesLeftInMan]

Just curious, but what do you think people called it before there was a PS2?

[@freedustin]

HeroesLeftInMan just play station.

[@BeerBellyDK]

Man, watching this video, i realized that i actually miss some of those patched version of games, they always had the most psychadelic colors, and awesome music. Sadly, once i started collecting, i got rid of all my old pirated games from my childhood, because i eventually got genuine copies. I actually think i had a few of those paradox versions of games. :) Anyway, this was a very neat video, and it brought back a lot of memories. Though i already knew about the wobble groove, i still learned a lot. As a PS1 collector, this video, and especially the one you made on the net yaroze, is greatly appreciated. It's so obvious that you put an immense amount of work into your videos, and i just wanted to thank you for that. :)

[@TheXev]

I never moded my PlayStation, instead I became pretty lucky. I managed to get the VERY first run of the CD GameShark. Using the original CD GameShark, you could perform swap trick without risk of damaging the disc involved. I tapped a cut off pencil eraser into the eject function, like talked about in this video, then started the system with the GameShark CD. After the GameShark had loaded, you can swap in a CD-R and start the game. Later versions of the CD- GameShark removed this "feature" after it was discovered, forcing the system to detect an eject signal before allowing you to start a game. I am pretty sure the hardware GameSharks and ActionReplays could also use this method. I used this method to play a pirated copy of the unreleased Thrill Kill and to play a legitimate copy of Tales of Phantasia for the PlayStation I had imported from Japan. I even played around with a SNES emulator for the original PlayStation, which ran surprisingly well.

[@jaymzx2587]

Love your vids man, great use of intro music as well!

[@jordonpollock1550]

Hey MVG, at 5:28 you showed an intro of Gran Turismo 2000, known to be an early demo of Gran Turismo 3 based on Gran Turismo 2's engine. But it clearly says "PS2 TO PSX PORT" as if they rewrote it to run on older hardware? How is this possible, is there any gameplay, or is it just a hoax?

[@cerveraoliver]

I would love to know more.

[@failbob2000]

It doesn't happen to work, if you were wondering. It wasn't rewritten and it was more than likely just shown as an option to give cheap bragging rights.

[@TheMadhatter2561]

Jordon Pollock GT2000 was supposed to be a quick remake of GT2 but on PS2. This was cancelled and GT3 was then released. Not sure why it was cancelled but I speculate it was music licensing and vehicle licensing issue polyphony digital could not overcome.

[@jordonpollock1550]

@@TheMadhatter2561 I'm well aware, even spent hours finding a rom for it to play it. Shame it died off, would've been really interesting to see GT2s engine on PS2 in its full glory. Even though what we got in GT3 was objectively much better.

[@retropuffer2986]

Another awesome video. Hope your channel hits 1 Million. It deserves it.

[@faustianblur1798]

I got my PS1 modded when I was a student. There were two or three shops within walking distance that modded consoles and sold pirated games from a list kept under the counter, you'd make a selection and then pick them up complete with box and artwork. Being a cash strapped student I instead availed myself of the Uni's T1 connection and CD burners in the library, and spent the money saved down the student union.

[@CubemasterXD]

this channel is full of high quality documentaries about security, you deserve way more attention / viewers

[@adrenalinex4]

i had a bootdisc that came with a lil spring called ps-x-change. when i learned it played backups i started rentin games n burning them like crazy lol.

[@drd5455]

I had this aswell haha

[@AnonymousGamer50]

i remember that.

[@BirthFromFire]

Thank you once again for the wonderful security explanation video!

[@PhantomHarlock78]

Technology Connections has a great video about the PS1 security. Did you also think that Sony tested the idead of making the CD discs bigger?

[@lahma69]

Ya, the Technology Connections video on this topic was an excellent watch as well.

[@nthgth]

One of the top comments on that video suggests the space was that big just to make it easier to put in and remove discs. Seems like a pretty good reason to me, but who knows.

[@neyoid]

Probably didn't do that because it would've negated the entire "cd-roms are cheaper and easier" bit

[@ZeranZeran]

Holy crap, I was very young when the PS1 came out so most of my memory is Spyro and Crash Bandicoot. The cutscenes graphics are blowing me away. I always wondered why the graphics weren't much different than the N64, but now I can see it. Great video

[@rgarciaf071]

I find interesting how in some way this security issues helped the console sales specially in countries where the game pricing is really costly

[@CorneliusTalmadge]

This kind of content is why you are my favourite creator on KZbin. Thank you for making it.

[@ArpeggioPegasus]

Plugged my own good ol' PlayStation yesterday back in the CRT. Feels so good to play Dead or Alive, Tekken 3 and Spyro 2 again.

[@simsluver]

Awesome! Keep doing these great technical documentation videos!

[@madfinntech]

Mistakes were made in the thumbnail and Sony PlayStation is my favorite console of all time = instant click!

[@michaeljosephmercado6522]

Me too my Friends, im agree the sony Playstation is the best Consoles at all time,😄

[@toptorque9344]

always quality content, enjoy every video keep up the good work MVG

[@djarum00]

I am VERY interested in knowing more about the ability to burn the wobble groove that was kind of glossed over. I have never heard anything about this before and I would like to know more.

[@granite_planet]

Search for Technology Connections' video about it. It's great.

[@rompevuevitos222]

I think that it was only possible trough special machinery wich only Sony had access to

[@DemiGodX]

he lie. there's no such burner

[@mottzilla4858]

I've never seen any proof of any burned CD-R being able to pass the authentication check. There has always been talk about some special firmware with some mysterious cd burner that could do it but it's never materialized. It is probably safe to say that no CD-R and writer combination is capable of reproducing a disc with the protection intact. If it were possible then we would most likely have heard about it by now. Someone would be busy using one burning copies of high priced games and trying to sell them on ebay. Sony's engineers knew how CD-Rs worked and would certainly have chosen a security mechanism that could not be replicated by a CD-R.

[@Pierogo]

Damn, the Paradox "perfect crack" music at the end gave me the chills

[@PaulMeranda]

*MISTAKES WERE MADE* - my favorite thumbnail caption

[@stathissim]

Enjoyed the episode!! Also enjoyed your appearance on the retro hour podcast! Cheers from GR!!

[@anothga]

5:31 Trainers. Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

[@CathrineMacNiel]

I always wondered why those cheat programs were called like that. Then it hit me, those programs are made by training them on certain memory addresses that contains values for lifes ammo and such.

[@krisofdeath01]

Trainers are very much still a thing on PC.

[@dmoehling]

R3… Rent, Rip, and Return! My local shop didn’t charge me for game rentals as I was renting and returning PS1 titles multiple times a weekend. As long as I only had them out for a few hours, there was no additional charge for the new games to be taken out. They essentially let me borrow them for a few hours. 😊 ❤

[@midievalcat7770]

1:10 Oh, the nostalgia of that music style

[@TheCoolDave]

always interesting, I used a lot of these mods back in the day but, love to hear how they were done. Thanks as always !

[@JavierGarcia-iq7qv]

You forgot to talk about that parallel port that you could plug a cheat device that also enabled you to run copies like the Sega saturn action replay. Then that port was removed from the PlayStation in the next revisions.

[@zachberg4675]

I don't understand why he doesn't have more subs because you are amazing

[@HouseOfFunQM]

I fix up old PlayStations for... I dunno, fun. I have seen only 1 _without_ a modchip...

[@PrettyBlueThings]

Very interesting! Thank you MVG

[@mattb9664]

“If you mess with the best...You will die like the rest!”...

[@kneehighspy]

excellent vid as usual mvg, also good to see you yesterday during amigabill’s stream.

[@suc6795]

ahh 15 good minutes to spend today

[@_DanielPrieto]

I really liked that you mentioned hacker groups and showed cracktros. I still find that so awesome

[@shibotto]

"Everyone had a modchip installed in their PS1" Except me ._.

[@frogz]

....i have 2 working playstation 1s that are still, to this day, unmodded... but there is hope, i just bought a bunch of arduinos and have psnee burned to a nano 328p board already :D

[@RWL2012]

and me

[@Bjorick]

i never pirated on the sony psx (at least, not that i'm aware of). emulators, however.....that's a different story :P

[@dextrodemon]

I had one but it played NTSC in black and white (and later a fully functional one), ty god for having a mum in IT

[@morganrussman]

I have a ps1 that I got 2nd hand for free, and, I don't think that it is modded.

[@bad.sector]

Congrats for pushing so many high quality videos in such a short period of time from a fellow programmer ;)

[@LambdaCalculus379]

I remember having to change the modchip in my old 1001 model PS1 several times. The first came from when I imported JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which implemented the modchip check.

[@artstrutzenberg7197]

I remember trying to solder one into mine, and accidentally bricking it (instead of doing the smart thing and finding somebody who was good at soldering)......THEN saw the pro action replay swap device and was like "YES"

[@androxilogin]

Perfectly explained, even with the infamous Spyro 3 protection. I've had people countlessly tell me the copy protection was the way the disc wabbled rather than a lead in track. Finally a little clarity to this, decades later.

[@Damien_Bathory]

Lets be honest we need the pirate era again as it used to be with so many microtransactions and crappy games and demos not being made into discs or not available at all its the only way to know if a game is worth buying

[@Azazel010101]

Yes.

[@KaitouKaiju]

You think pirating has slowed down? 😂

[@Azazel010101]

@@KaitouKaiju Xbox One. DENUVO.

[@victorchorques4893]

Very high quality video! Great job, you always manage to get into the detail programmers like me want to see. Many thanks for your effort. Keep on doing this amazing videos.

[@zephaone]

Excellent video. Have you seen the Technology Connections video where he theorises that the playstation was intended to run oversized disks as extra protection? What do think of this idea?

[@bowlsnapper6206]

I love these mwm videos. All are so interesting. You have a knack for this!

[@itsPrintNameHere]

in a way the playstation being so easy to mod and everyone knowing about it was a selling point for many to get a one instead of an N64

[@TechnicalGamerTube]

Great video !! Love the Into / Outro Music 🎶

[@nitrax8629]

Insane the contrast between how easily the PS1 was broken, and how the Saturn held strong for much, much longer - especially in regards to drive replacements!

[@omegarugal9283]

no one gave a flying shit about the saturn, the ps1 was the console to crack...

[@ddopeyy]

@@omegarugal9283 It's a shame as well, the Saturn rocks.

[@SHUJINCELL]

@@omegarugal9283 Trick please. Saturn running circles around the Playstation. Sony just had a strong reputation with electronics in the 90s. Also invested more in marketing, and was cheaper than the Saturn.

[@damiank9443]

@@SHUJINCELL where?

[@TrimeshSZ]

The Saturn was pretty thoroughly hacked early on - the swap trick was worked out within a few days of the console's release (you had to open it to disable the door switch though). You could get arbitrary code execution from the cartridge port, although that doesn't really even qualify as a hack since there was no security whatsoever (all you needed was valid executable header at address 0 in the ROM and the console would run it on power up). The first modchips came out about 6 months after the release of the console in Japan - they just connected into the CD drive cable and monitored the command stream the CD block sent to the drive checking for the "Seek to security track" command - once it was received, the board switched over the status and read data from the drive and sent fake data that matched a real disc. Once the disc was authenticated, the chip detected the seek back to the data track and started forwarding real data again. One interesting thing about the Saturn was that the regional lock and the media authentication were completely separate - so if (like me) you wanted to be able to play imported games but didn't care about copies you didn't need a modchip and could either use an Action Replay or install a region switch. So you can't really say it wasn't hacked, because it was, thoroughly - it is true to say that nobody ever managed to hack the CD block until recently, but that's because other methods already existed that allowed the use of out-of-region discs and bootleg games. And yes, the CD block hack is a superb piece of reverse engineering - but all it provides is another way of doing things that were already possible.

[@piecaruso97]

When it says "mistakes were made" on the thumbnail you know it's going to be a good one

[@alexjohnward]

While pirates cost a lot in lost revenue for Sony, the fact that you could buy a plethora of cheap games at any market made the PlayStation a great alternative to the N64, no such thing as a cheap N64 game.

[@devilmikey00]

Eh, tons of lost revenue is a stretch. All the popular games still sold millions and millions of copies which are the ones most likely to be pirated. Despite how it sounds most folks didn't have mod chips. It was still the 90's and online commerce wasn't really a thing. You needed to know a guy locally who could source the chips and hopefully install them correctly. It was still a tiny minority of PS1 owners. Also, corporations are fairly notorious for exaggerating the effects of piracy.

[@MosoKaiser]

And not even due to piracy, even legit PS games were less expensive than N64 games because of CDs being far simpler and cheaper to manufacture than cartridges.

[@neoasura]

Back then piracy probably didn't even cost Sony 1%. Information on modding during the PS1 era was sketchy, and modchips practically required a degree in electrical engineering to install, not to mention the higher costs of CD burners. So your average Joe gamer wasn't modding as much.

[@_DSch]

@@neoasura You don´t need a degreee in electrical engineering to install a modchip. You just need to know how to solder a couple of wires (on pads that are reasonably big) and you are done with the modchip installation. Also there were diagrams that showed where which wire needs to go... so that even idiots could do that easily.

[@rompevuevitos222]

@@devilmikey00 The modchips had a BIG upside however, it made the console viable for poorer countries (i should know lol) It came to the point where there were 2 consoles per store at any given time wich where RARELY sold, but there where a bunch of modded PS1s going around, in fact, the only way to sell a PS1 reliably was to sell it already modded since when someone would buy one, they would factor how expensive it would be to mod it, as it would be impossible to afford the games otherwise This got even "worse" when the PS2 came around, since even legit stores sold it already modded (not kidding, they all had the Matrix chip) All of this was mostly due to Sony increasing the prices of the console and it's games by up to 100% (like they did with the PS4 within the first month of launch)

[@Cissamannen]

These episodes are among the best! So informative, and shows how much I didnt get while growing up in these eras.

[@aceofhearts573]

0:14 are those lcd monitors in 1994????

[@mikehensley78]

Great video! I love these historic tales of vintage video games. Can't wait til the next MVG video.

[@MriCEQB]

Where did you find the information about the CD burners with custom firmwares, that could replicate the wobble data? That's the first time I hear about that and I somehow can't believe it.

[@Azazel010101]

FBI, please.

[@MriCEQB]

@@Azazel010101 I wish

[@YouareDEDnotbigSurprise]

Yeah same, that sounds like an urban legend to me.

[@arghpee]

Wasn't alive back then. But good to see piracy was well and alive back then. Great vid.

[@6581punk]

I remember early PS1s had a bug where you could use the CD player app to do the swap trick.

[@omegarugal9283]

IIRC only worked on early consoles

[@steamedauroraborealis8208]

@@omegarugal9283 Well, he did say early ps1's :p

[@omegarugal9283]

yep, and i meant very early ones, those that had the rca outputs, the 2nd revision still had the bug but it was harder to pull off, you had to quickly insert the music cd, allow the ps to recognized it as cd music, press back and quicky swap the copy and press run, if you did it correctly the ps will skip the checks and boot...

[@6581punk]

@@omegarugal9283 I have one with the audio outs and video out. The so called "audiophile" version. Also the parallel port which you need for that SD card loader.

[@omegarugal9283]

@@6581punk you have a rare console then

[@creativesamurai8372]

Love you uploads :) keep it up :)