Burnt Games = Reduced DC Life?

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

All I've ever played on it is burned games. I've never played an actual game on it since '99. Sega made a very durable system. How did it ever fail?

Actually, and this is somewhat ironic given the topic of this thread, but myself and many others suspect it was the discovery of playing CD-R backups on an unmodded DC. Even though the internet was far from the speeds needed to really make online distribution a reality (as it is today), I think 3rd party companies heard of the exploit and just got nervous and jumped ship. I mean, from an executive's point of view, what would do if one day someone walked up to you and informed you that every Dreamcast ever made (up till that point, a weak attempt at patching it was made too late) is capable of running fully functioning copies of any DC game without any modifications to the Dreamcast? I believe that's why software is all shovelware on the PSP due to the rampant custom firmware PSPs. Some people say the DC died b/c of the impending PS2 and its DVD playback capabilities, and that probably played a role too, but IMO the DC fit a different market that catered to what the Wii caters to now, only the DC wasn't a flaming piece of gimmicky catshit, it was actually a good pick-up-and-play arcade console. In spite of all that happened, the DC is by far the best bang for the buck for someone that doesn't object to playing "backups."

[grittykitty]

i'd like to add that i played mostly backups from 2002-2007 and my gd-rom drive stopped working suddenly. this was a refurbished dreamcast i purchased in october 2001. i also stuck pretty much to major release groups (mostly echelon) and played rips from people who said they knew what they were doing on this new repack/re-rip of so-and-so game.

frankly, i think it's all a crapshoot and my dc was simply one of the unlucky ones.

[Jrecee]

All I've ever played on it is burned games. I've never played an actual game on it since '99. Sega made a very durable system. How did it ever fail?

Actually, and this is somewhat ironic given the topic of this thread, but myself and many others suspect it was the discovery of playing CD-R backups on an unmodded DC. Even though the internet was far from the speeds needed to really make online distribution a reality (as it is today), I think 3rd party companies heard of the exploit and just got nervous and jumped ship. I mean, from an executive's point of view, what would do if one day someone walked up to you and informed you that every Dreamcast ever made (up till that point, a weak attempt at patching it was made too late) is capable of running fully functioning copies of any DC game without any modifications to the Dreamcast? I believe that's why software is all shovelware on the PSP due to the rampant custom firmware PSPs. Some people say the DC died b/c of the impending PS2 and its DVD playback capabilities, and that probably played a role too, but IMO the DC fit a different market that catered to what the Wii caters to now, only the DC wasn't a flaming piece of gimmicky catshit, it was actually a good pick-up-and-play arcade console. In spite of all that happened, the DC is by far the best bang for the buck for someone that doesn't object to playing "backups."

A very well thought out and logical answer to my sarcastic comment.

[Weekend_Warrior]

Even if you DO burn your Dreamcast out from heavy cd-r usage.. the trade-off is still plenty worth it.

I mean, you can typically pick up a used DC for what.. $20-$30? Whereas a decent real copy of Ikaruga will probably run you about $60-$100. I'd say it's worth wrecking a DC over.

[17DaysOlderThanNES]

A very well thought out and logical answer to my sarcastic comment.

Well, this was recently discussed in-depth over at Sega-16 (about what caused the demise of the Dreamcast), so I was just throwing down my conclusion from that discussion. People disagree, but I just don't buy that the impending PS2 release was enough to kill the ultimate pick-up-and-play party/arcade system (not to mention a screaming value at $200).

i'd like to add that i played mostly backups from 2002-2007 and my gd-rom drive stopped working suddenly. this was a refurbished dreamcast i purchased in october 2001. i also stuck pretty much to major release groups (mostly echelon) and played rips from people who said they knew what they were doing on this new repack/re-rip of so-and-so game.

frankly, i think it's all a crapshoot and my dc was simply one of the unlucky ones.

Well...5 solid years of DC fun doesn't sound like being unlucky to me. There are tons of people with every system under the sun that have had drive failures only using official discs. With enough use, any system will eventually crap out (and improper use in many cases, like being too rough with the systems or letting them fill with dirt and grind the gears and laser sled away). Also, who's to say it's totally dead? a ribbon cable might've slipped out somewhere (happened to me on a portable DVD player), the lense might be dirty, the rubber ring around the spindle might be too dusty and therefore slipping, or one of the connectors somewhere might've gotten corroded over the years. Actually, I've never come across a DC with read errors I couldn't fix without using any spare parts.

Even if you DO burn your Dreamcast out from heavy cd-r usage.. the trade-off is still plenty worth it.

I mean, you can typically pick up a used DC for what.. $20-$30? Whereas a decent real copy of Ikaruga will probably run you about $60-$100. I'd say it's worth wrecking a DC over.

Right, that's what I'm screamin. I plan on just scanning eBay every once in a while and snagging up all of those systems with just a controller or a VMU that go for less than $20 shipped. It seems the general population has no idea how awesome the DC really is. There's probably also the factor that people don't know how easy it is to burn games for the system and there are actually probably more systems than there are copies of games adequate to go around since there was likely tons of unsold stock when they declared the end of the Dreamcast in 01. In fact, there are tons of sealed DCs still floating around everywhere, much more than any system made prior to the DC.

I still would argue that any well made CD-R game isn't any more harmful than commercial games or minimally so, though.

[gohmc]

I Agree that using Burned Games instead of the Original GD-ROMS will damage your drive is like saying that putting burned DVDs in your DVD player will shorten its life which in my opinion and probably everybody else's too is absolutely ridiculous

[ice445]

I Agree that using Burned Games instead of the Original GD-ROMS will damage your drive is like saying that putting burned DVDs in your DVD player will shorten its life which in my opinion and probably everybody else's too is absolutely ridiculous

Holy necro batman.

But yes, it's bunk. The only thing that's going to shorten a console's life span is actually playing it. It doesn't matter what you shove in the tray, the hours of gameplay are what counts.

[gohmc]

I Agree that using Burned Games instead of the Original GD-ROMS will damage your drive is like saying that putting burned DVDs in your DVD player will shorten its life which in my opinion and probably everybody else's too is absolutely ridiculous

Holy necro batman.

But yes, it's bunk. The only thing that's going to shorten a console's life span is actually playing it. It doesn't matter what you shove in the tray, the hours of gameplay are what counts.

That is very true I have used lots and lots of burned CD and DVDs over the years and most of my equipment that includes CD/DVD/CD-ROM/DVD-ROM equipment and they all still work just like the day the I took them out of the box. I think that this was probably a Ploy by SEGA to keep people from making burned copies of games during the Dreamcast's lifecycle

[goldenband]

My understanding was that a lot of original Dreamcast GD-ROMs had multiple redundant copies of the same file in different places on the disc, to minimize the need for laser assembly movement. "Scene" releases eliminated the redundant files, and presumably changed the file pointers to have them all point to a single copy, so that a game could fit on a 700MB CDR -- but doing so increased the wear and tear on the drive, for obvious reasons.

That explanation certainly makes a lot of sense, but I don't know how accurate it is. I do seem to remember that some releases added on-the-fly compression and similar things, and that's supposedly what causes stuttering in games like Skies of Arcadia.