Write protect tabs, the original DRM

Remember tape? You know, that cutting edge media format that played music? Come on you know, before we became entrenched in the land of handheld gigabyte warehouses? Tapes were the beginning of piracy. We all remember the awful VHS piracy warnings on rental videos, but it was the audio cassette that really started it all. As a child every piece of music I owned was pirated, from my brother or my father or a friend; it was “taped” from the original vinyl or taped from another tape. We didn’t burn a copy we taped one, it was all very innocent, in fact I had no idea that what I was doing was in fact a nefarious and illegal activity.

I may be teetering on the edge of glibness with my loaded statements regarding the triviality of piracy; certainly the prevalence of piracy has skyrocketed in tandem with the ease at which digital data is copied. I got my first PC right on the lip of a breaking wave caused by the Doom (the 1993 one) revolution. I was given a copy of the game, freshly zipped onto six 1.44 inch floppies, from a friend; without a second thought I installed it and started playing, and it was great. That was the first of many games that were copied, installed and played without even considering that what I was doing was wrong, or even illegal. The idea that data could be stolen through duplication was so foreign to me because just like music, data is intangible and therefore in a very real sense it doesn’t exist, at least not in a “holding in my hand” sort of way that a thirteen year old understands.

(more…)

Are you a bad enough dude to battle the Flood?

The past twenty years has seen video games and the oft referred “geek culture” rise to a prominence that back in 1992 would never have been imagined, not even by the most fanatical zealot of electronic entertainment. Humble were the formative years of my gaming fascination, playing Super Mario Bros. at my friend’s house, whose parents spoiled him like milk in the sun. And then there were the many Sunday afternoons endlessly slaving over the greasy NES controller battling awful controls and hideous game mechanics for a measly 8 bit food pellet at the games completion. I’m sure I’m not the only one with fond memories of wasted weekends in willing servitude of these simple plastic game machines, and I bet none of us would change a thing. I can still remember playing Streets Of Rage 2 well into the night on my friends Megadrive, then swapping it over for my Super Nintendo to play the centipede boss in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; all the while munching on popcorn and coffee beans (yes, we were strange).

I remember the magical awe I felt after we spent way too much money hiring a Japanese copy of Street Fighter 2 for SNES, playing against Balrog… or was it Vega? Who can remember, with the names being arbitrarily changed for the western market? Back in my hometown of Perth there was a store called Discount Video Games; I remember it was run by a middle aged super nerd in the front room of his house. The retailer specialised in imports, and rare and expensive games and consoles (Neo Geo anyone?). There was a demand from the obsessive; an unending desire for parity between arcade and the home console arena. Neo Geo was SNK’s answer; game cartridges the size of an ancient tome of knowledge with large digits identifying the (by the standards of the time) massive amount of memory in the plastic case, which as we all know reflects with pristine clarity the quality of the game. The carts were absurdly priced, as if by a madman with the crazy idea that there was a dollar per megabit system in place. (more…)