Limited Run Games selling burned CD-R games which don't work | Hacker News Reader

Limited Run Games selling burned CD-R games which don't work

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53 pointsvyrotek20 comments

Sorry, someone is charging $70 for copies of _Plumbers Don't Wear Ties_? $5 more than for _D_, which at least is an actual game? And it's "sold out"?

I'm not seeing any 3DO games on their site currently, including in their archive section, but I do see that at some point in the past they did release "definitive editions" of PDWT for modern consoles and PC. (The "collector's edition" is $90, but at least it comes with some swag.) Either they yanked it off their site or this is not a recent product.

> Sorry, someone is charging $70 for copies of _Plumbers Don't Wear Ties_?

Tell me about it, it's a million-dollar experience (at least!)

Huh, what are they doing different than me? I used to burn cheap CD-Rs, they worked, and play them on my 3DO all the time. I'm not sure I ever actually bought any games for it (I got it in 2007). I never had any issue playing the games I burned. I don't have a 3DO anymore or I'd try it now.

I still think it's low-effort crap, and burned CDs and DVDs don't last forever. My dad used to burn lots of DVDs of home movies and there's been a lot of disc rot that's ruined some of them [1]. If I had paid $60 for Plumbers Don't Wear Ties and it turns to a coaster in six years, I'd be pretty pissed. At that point, I could pretty easily just torrent an ISO and burn it myself for like twenty cents.

[1] Fortunately my dad was sort of nuts about burning like five copies of every DVD he made, so we haven't lost much and most of the stuff has been backed up on more durable sources now.

I was also surprised when I noticed all my dreamcast backups were completely rotten - I thought discs were meant to last forever...

Instead now I have an active 50TB NAS with disk swapping once in a while... but it's not at all "durable" the way I thought things should be when I was younger... it's actively monitored instead.

I believe the issue is that the dye that is used to burn the disc starts to degrade, especially on cheaper discs. I think pressed CDs can last a lot longer because of this fact, since that's actual physical pits and grooves.

I am pretty convinced that there simply doesn't really exist consumer-writable data that you don't have to babysit.

There are (or at least used to be) "archive grade" CD-Rs, which were more expensive and used some kind of different chemistry for the surface.

A solution to take advantage of that could have been to say: "Each disk has been individually burned and manually numbered by our staff", turning a lower quality item into a collectible (which seemed the main goal rather than physical preservation)

Interesting...3DO is sensitive enough to know brand of blank CD and how fast the image was burnt?

Besides the wobble detection on the PSX, are there any other consoles that have these innate security features built in? I know that its still impossible to burn a Black CD PSX to this day.

It doesn’t “know” - it’s not a security measure - but CD-Rs are harder for a disc drive to read. And the lasers in these old machines are losing power over time as their physical components (e.g. caps) decay, which make them more sensitive to this.

>And the lasers in these old machines are losing power over time as their physical components (e.g. caps) decay

That should be pretty easy to fix with a soldering iron.

>> And the lasers in these old machines are losing power over time as their physical components (e.g. caps) decay

> That should be pretty easy to fix with a soldering iron.

Depends. Some of those caps are extremely small, surface mounted and placed very near other components.

I've done it, but it ain't easy.

Old machines typically didn’t use ceramic capacitors, though. You’d be limited to film or more likely electrolytic capacitors. They only get so small and are typically leaded, especially for older stuff.

I was curious myself.

"A blank CD-R is not "empty"; the pregroove has a wobble (the ATIP), which helps the writing laser to stay on track and to write the data to the disc at a constant rate. Maintaining a constant rate is essential to ensure the proper size and spacing of the pits and lands burned into the dye layer. As well as providing timing information, the ATIP (absolute time in pregroove) is also a data track containing information about the CD-R manufacturer, the dye used, and media information (disc length and so on). The pregroove is not destroyed when the data are written to the CD-R, a point which some copy protection schemes use to distinguish copies from an original CD." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R

And/or: "Some hardware compatible with Red Book CDs may have difficulty reading CD-Rs and, because of their lower reflectivity, especially CD-RWs."

Does the guy have any photos to back up his claim? The tweet itself is just a random claim with no supporting evidence (unless there's more in the thread that Twitter is helpfully concealing from non-logged-in users)...

I can't see the thread either but Voultar is a well known modder and respected member of the retro gaming community.

I have no problem believing his claims. And frankly, with the prices charged by limited run games there is no excuse to not have the CDs pressed (yes the service is still readily available and only 1-2$ per disc for lowish qtys of 250).

> I can't see the thread either but Voultar is a well known modder and respected member of the retro gaming community.

In that case it's weird that they don't provide any evidence for such a big claim.

There was a screenshot of some tool identifying it as a finalized CD-R manufactured by TDK. Not the best evidence but something.

Video showing the opening of a sealed copy and yeah, definitely CD-R

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLE9bVMwz-c

Nice find, thanks! and wow, yeah that's really disappointing and .. borderline fraudulent?

It's rampant on eBay where there are copied titles/licenses being sold and what appear to be copied physical media too. And eBay doesn't do anything about it.

Examples of illicit digital copies:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255484863277

https://www.ebay.com/itm/235408586759

https://www.ebay.com/itm/255314441552

https://www.ebay.com/itm/233710824066

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