I Guess People Are Stealing Games from Redbox...

[AppleQueso]

The only Sega Channel exclusive I want is Mega Man: The Wily Wars so I wouldn't have considered it to be that awesome for just one game.

I dunno. 35 to 50 games for $15 would have seemed pretty awesome to me at the time, considering the number of games I owned or could afford to rent in a month was much less than that.

Anyone know if the Sega Channel version of Wily Wars was ever dumped for emulation and copiers? I was never able to get past the region lockout on the PAL version on an actual NTSC Genesis, and I'm too cheap to pay the prices people want for repro carts that work. Well, that and I never pay for pirated stuff of any sort just on principle.

If there's repro carts, there's roms floating around. How do you think the repro carts get made?

So yes, there's dumps.

[Weekend_Warrior]

My local Red Box has had Xbox 360 games for years. I've never rented from one, but I once scanned through a machine out of curiousity and saw they had Dead Space and Grid for rent. Thought that was pretty cool

[flex wood]

The games would be downloaded in about one minute

can anyone verify this? I honestly don't think that dl speeds could have been that fast in the mid to early 90s unless I'm mistaken and it was more of a stream service.

[Ziggy]

If there's repro carts, there's roms floating around. How do you think the repro carts get made?

So yes, there's dumps.

Well, yes and no. I don't know of any actual Sega Channel ROMs that have been leaked/found/whatever. Since the games were released in other countries, people usually use modified versions of those.

Anyone know if the Sega Channel version of Wily Wars was ever dumped for emulation and copiers? I was never able to get past the region lockout on the PAL version on an actual NTSC Genesis

What were you trying to play it on? Did you have an actual PAL cart, or a flash cart? If you have the real PAL cart, you need to use a Game Genie with a code to defeat the region lockout. There's versions of the ROM out there with this code hacked into it (the copy right screen says "hacked by so-in-so" instead of "licensed by Sega"). If you're using a flash cart, Wily Wars is also kind of weird in that it uses an EEPROM to save instead of the normal SRAM. I'm not sure if the currently available flash carts can handle EEPROM saves or not. But some one was nice enough to make a hack that makes it use SRAM so that it will work properly in most emulators as well as on real hardware.

and I'm too cheap to pay the prices people want for repro carts that work. Well, that and I never pay for pirated stuff of any sort just on principle.

Most people will sell a cart only copy of Wily Wars (repro) for $35-45 dollars. This is super cheap considering the work and time people have to put into making them. It's also cheaper than what you'd probably pay to import a copy of the game. As far as calling repros pirated, well, I guess technically they are pirate games. However, you really shouldn't call them that. Most of the time, they're made by dedicated fans FOR fans. Besides, owning and using repros is no different than flash carts, backup devices, and emulators.

[AppleQueso]

Most people will sell a cart only copy of Wily Wars (repro) for $35-45 dollars. This is super cheap considering the work and time people have to put into making them. It's also cheaper than what you'd probably pay to import a copy of the game. As far as calling repros pirated, well, I guess technically they are pirate games. However, you really shouldn't call them that. Most of the time, they're made by dedicated fans FOR fans. Besides, owning and using repros is no different than flash carts, backup devices, and emulators.

Yeah I was gonna say that calling repro carts of unreleased games 'pirates' makes them sound dirtier than they actually are.

[Jayson]

So what would prevent someone from getting a game, doing the same thing, and then saying that they just received the game from the redbox that way. Wouldn't that screw the last renter over and get them a free game (not even having to pay the $2).

I guess you could even take it a step further and post about how you were "almost screwed" on your favorite gaming forum to further throw off the police investigation.

[Flake]

So what would prevent someone from getting a game, doing the same thing, and then saying that they just received the game from the redbox that way. Wouldn't that screw the last renter over and get them a free game (not even having to pay the $2).

I guess you could even take it a step further and post about how you were "almost screwed" on your favorite gaming forum to further throw off the police investigation.

If the police actually cared about a crime like this (and I really doubt they would unless it was done on a much much larger scale) there are tons of forensic tests to determine the point of origin for the scam.

I am pretty sure that Red Box has either already foreseen this problem and designed their business model to accommodate the small loss in capital or they will quickly alter their kiosks if this problem continues.

[Ziggy]

Yeah, I was gonna say, they only recently started renting out games but they've been renting out movies in the same fashion for a while now. I'm sure people have stolen movies in the same way before.

[AppleQueso]

don't see why you'd go to the trouble of making a hi-res photocopy of the disc.

Would be just as easy to peel off the barcode sticker and put it on a scratched cd-r mix of various eminem and nelly songs your friend left behind.

[BRIK]

don't see why you'd go to the trouble of making a hi-res photocopy of the disc.