I used to work in a video game shop back in the days. We had a lot of visits from sales representatives and Nintendo used to be very thorough and inspect the shelves to see if it contained any unlicensed titles or if they were priced below suggested retail price. There was an implicit threat that game shipments may suffer if we did so, but we were good boys that played ball, so we got extra copies of desirable games and marketing material originally meant for other stores. The Sega representatives? They did not care, not one iota.
@Eddie Edric No, it's because they want to maximize price gouging. It's a cartel in effect, instead of competition every shop shafts the customer. And I like how some naive child in first reply praises Nintendo, because we really need more of big corporations tightening the screws to extract more money without lube...
8 years after 1991, Electronic Arts refuses to put out their games on SEGA's lastest console, the Dreamcast, partially dooming SEGA as a console manufacturer.
@referral madness Sega also didn't have a 2K series football(soccer) game, they just had Sega Worldwide Soccer, and its Euro 2000 update. I mean if Sega were going to put all their other sports titles under the 2K brand, they should of either changed the name of SWWS to Sega Soccer 2K or had a separate 2K branded soccer game in addition to SWWS. NBA 2K, NHL 2K, NFL 2K, World Series Baseball 2K1, NCAA College Football 2K2 , then just Sega Worldwide Soccer, even Sega Worldwide Soccer 2K would of been a better name.
Not for anything related to the initial spat, though. Sega's hardware choices (obscure architectures and lack of committal to the modem) played a role, but it was mostly because EA demanded sports exclusivity, and Sega had already bought Visual Concepts for $10 million and was only willing to grant EA third-party sports exclusivity.
Microsoft at the time was ready to enter in the console market and it's not unlikely that they had a little chat with EA, maybe promising them something good if they helped to bring down SEGA.
At least Electronic Arts (not EA, as we know them today) made some really standout games. Among my earliest games were the early Need for Speed games, and they were great. Thankfully, slashing off 1/3rd of a game's content and calling it DLC wasn't such a lucritive option back then!
Ah yes the capital G Gamer meme of ea bad. I really don't see what EA did wrong here. Sega was taking a huge cut of others work and EA just found a very clever way of subverting that by not even using sega's own dev tools or software at all. If anything that's just very creative.
And disappointing players, their latest Star Wars squadron has two teams of eight instead of a massive multiplayer experience like Battlestar Galactica online did years ago.
@@huleyn135 This is just a drop in a bucket man. People have a few thousand valid complaints they can make against EA. EA could breathe and people would still have a right to be mad.
5:20 "Hawkins didn't back down, he threatened to release their games without a licence anyway." I heard that Trip Hawkins threatened to show OTHER developers how to make unlicenced games unless Sega gave them a better deal.
Or EA could have said they were going to be an independent manufacturer or publisher and start contacting SEGA licensees and offering them a deal to be published cheaper than Sega.
9:36 "...but the biggest blow to Sega was since there was no way to boot any Genesis game without triggering TMSS..." As part of Sega's case against Accolade, they actually demonstrated in court that there was a way to boot without triggering the TMSS message on a TMSS-protected console. They wouldn't tell anyone how but they were happy to demonstrate a game booting without the message on a TMSS-protected console. That much is still out there and easy to source, but another story seems to have been purged where Electronic Arts figured out how to circumvent TMSS the same way Sega demonstrated and, thus, was able to negotiate an even better licensing agreement. Sega agreed to the "sweetheart" deal in order to keep EA from dropping out/going rogue and publishing for other unlicensed developers, like Accolade/Ballistix.
@@stonent I would assume a TMSS console doesn't bootstrap the cartridge until after displaying the message. Then again, neither did the Game Boy and yet unlicensed games could switch the Nintendo text after the first read for verification but before it was read again to be displayed on the screen. That was done with hardware mapping and not native code on the Game Boy but perhaps something similar is possible on TMSS consoles: let them read the string to authorize bootup then switch the string before it reads again to display on screen. If it was that easy though I'd expect more unlicenced games so there still had to be some trick to it.
Interesting fact! We just read this case in my law school copyright class while learning about fair use. Sega probably wanted to demonstrate it was possible to boot without triggering TMSS because a key element of fair use in regards to copying source code is that there is no other way to examine the code features without copying it. If Sega could demonstrate it was unnecessary to copy the code, the court may have ruled fair use inappropriate. I assume Sega's demonstration was unconvincing to the court. Thanks for sharing!
What a brilliant story, i had no idea why Mega Drive (your Genesis) cartridges were different. I guess i thought they had something special, but i had no idea this was the reason. Thanks for the video!
@referral madness I knew about the Dreamcast logo colour/Tivola. I didn't think about the fact the manuals were multi-language meant that would necessitate having bigger boxes.
Sounds Aussie, so would also be Mega Drive. The word "Genesis" is there to attract the American audience for views as it is perceived as that area of the world are not aware of different names for things.
I've learned *so* much the past 8 months since I found your channel about gaming, coding, and history than ever before in my life. A million thank you's for the rich, educational content you provide.
Pretty harsh price SEGA set there, since it was calculated by produced copies instead of sold copies. No wonder publisher gone all out to avoid these costs.
These court rulings show that the 1990s was a very different time in American legal history. Now EA and Accolade would have very likely violated the DMCA as while they didn't violate any copyright or trade mark laws, they did bypass copy protection measures.
Eh, not really. A lower court would probably uphold that, but higher courts would look at it much more closely and say "well, this product you made isn't a copy of x product and thanks to sega vs accolade, its legit." There is a reason that a court case isn't over until you lose at appeal, since lower courts tend to be very.... not good.
is not much that was different, it was that gaming and software in general was a much much smaller business back then. try to do something similar to microsoft, google or apple nowdays and you will see all the power of their bilhions
@@MarkMcDaniel Good point, in copyright law this is called the "first sale doctrine." Authors lose copyright of distribution after the first sale, this is why we are allowed to resale (redistribute) products after we've bought them. Authors don't, however, lose all copyright interest, like the right to copy the product. This is why we can't copy songs and resell them even if we bought the song. In this case, Accolade had to momentarily copy the source code (by uploading it to the computer's ram) in order to examine the code. This is copyright infringement, but they won because the court determined it was fair use, which is an affirmative defense to copyright. Probably more than you wanted to hear; I'm currently learning about this in my copyright class so thanks for letting me nerd out.
@@PapaPoptart -- Exactly. I read up on copyrights some twenty years back. Yes, when you buy a product, you buy a copy of that product. That doesn't impart unto you the right to copy it except to create and store an archive copy for personal use only. But, the important thing to note is that the user has the legal right to modify or resell the individual copy of the product. And, should they resell it, they must destroy the archived copy.
actually emulation and roms were deemed by the DMCA as legal when Nintendo filed a lawsuit against emulator creators and lost cause they dont use the original source code.The rule was change that if your running a rom on an emulator without the original source code its for "testing" purposes
@@kyles8524 Actually Nintendo doesn't aim at emulator but roms they allready knew that attacking emulator itself is futile they have lot of experience in laws so they know that suing for emulators that usually don't have their code is pointless but roms however are different story they are usually flashed from cartridge. Oh by the way you might want to look for Bleem that's the emulator with lawsuit from Sony and Bleem won that one but unfortunately for them the cost of court was too much thus making Sony the winner.
@@Mikael404 no lol, Nintendo tried to also file a lawsuit against emulators but that was also shot down cause they weren't running the original source code, therefore also being ruled by the DMCA or aka the Digital Management Copyright Act who actually makes the rules about all of this stuff basically ruled any rom being ran on an emulator not running the same source code is for testing purposes and completely shuts down any more attempts from Nintendo to try and pull this again.Its illegal to be selling the roms but not "testing" them.Thats why rom sites never have a paid membership or something of that nature or they would get sued rather quickly.
My dad doesn't know much about computers but he always told me this growing up, "If it can be played, it can be copied". He knew about DRM technologies, though not by name, could be defeated easily. His example (specifically related to audio) was "What stops someone recording the audio output into the audio input?.". So far he's always been right. Love the videos MVG! It's cool to learn the bits we might have missed during the active years :)
Fun story: whilst I was in college doing electronic engineering the mod chip scene took off when I was in my second year, there were maybe 6 of us per class, so we'd moved next door to the lab and the new first years came in, there was maybe 8 of them as well - I was 17 years old at the time, the first years were 16. After a while the first years turned the lab into a ps1 modding shop, the lecturers saw it as an interest and liked that they were learning the skills... Until it was revealed they were earning a load of money doing it and the college put a stop to it. But for a brief moment in time, a college electronic engineering lab became a ps1 mod shop.
@@timf7413 it was part of the startup screen every game had to have anyways. They just checked whether that starting screen was present (and sued if s/o wrote "SEGA" w/o a licence). Actually a pretty common approach of the time, check for a character string, check for existence and position of a brand logo (afaik the GameBoy did that), and so on
@@sepruecom The GameBoy sorta did that in that all officially licensed games showed the "(c) Nintendo" screen, but I also remember having an unlicensed game that did not show that, but instead showed the copyright of the company making that unlicensed game.
it was already standard, but wasn't used until the consoles with TMSS came out there are a few games that didn't follow the standard because at the time it had no adverse effect, which caused the game to not work on TMSS equipped Mega Drives
Great video! :) Note that while the legal status of reverse engineering is indeed similar to what it is in the US in many parts of the world, make sure to check that this is also the case in your own jurisdiction if you are planning on doing any reverse engineering projects where you will release things publicly.
Rule number one of anything, never assume something can't be reversed. If you do, you're wrong, you should feel bad, and it'll inevitably come back to bite you.
It's my fault, I installed a lot of mod chips over the years, up until I messed one up and had to buy the guy a new system and then mod that. My 13 year old financial situation would not allow me to make that mistake again, and my mom...rofl. Basically cleaned out all the profit I made installing chips in one fell swoop. I charged 15 bucks for original systems and 25 for PS1's... Rent, Burn, Return. I grew up in a pretty poor family, but my mom certainly saw her investment of getting me a soldering iron and screw driver set at age 10, then just some years later being able to "get" games after we rented them. I was one of the first to get a cd burner when they came out with the 8x TDK at my junior high school. It paid for it's self in the first month. At that point in time, a custom CD with the tracks you wanted was seriously cool. I feel like 20 bucks for a custom cd with "dirty lyric''d songs" that took days to download on napster was not over charging. Everyone was so stoked to get all the songs they wanted on one disc. I went by DJ PJ... hahahhahah
Nice showing off The Strike games. I miss those days; staying up for hours, not going home for weeks on end, sleeping under my desk... good times. LOL. My favorite part of all that hard work is when fans appreciate it. My least favorite part of all the hard work is when people who have no idea how hard we work just go on shade-fests, condemning hard working people, in some sort of retaliation against being wrong by a company. (I've been finding that people can't seem to understand what I'm saying in these comments, so..) TRANSLATION: I made The Strike games, I was there when we reversed engineered the Sega, I slept under my desk for months on end crunching on the Strike games (and others), I'm glad someone's covering this stuff vs. the standard wikipedia-scraping fluff.
2:31 $15 per cartridge!? Damn, how would you make any profit? New titles sold for like $60. That's 1/4th cut already on top of the cost of developing the game, licensing any trademarks (like sports or movie games), marketing, and producing the cartridge and packaging itself. Especially a year later or so, it'd be pointless for companies to sell older releases for $20.
yeah, kind of crazy, definitely harsher for a small company. Re-releasing is probably not really an option unless you reach an agreement with the main company to be included with a "greatest hits line".
Actually, games use to cost more considering the value of money back then and inflation adjusted. Console Original Adjusted NES (1986) $30 - $50 $60 - $100 SNES (1991) $58 - $60 $80 - $95 N64 (1996) $50 $70 PS2 (2000) $50 $65 360 (2005) $60 $70 Although it looks like the industry is raising game prices to $70 next-gen, Nintendo might be the exception if we are lucky since their games sell forever and they rarely drop in price, they of all publishers have the least need and reason to raise their price.
@@jamesdlin7 Sorta, but kinda of worst. Remember that back in the day, the console company gets their cut...AND the retail store gets their cut. (edit: well that's still true today for physical games ^_^;)
Hacking wouldn’t be such a “problem” if game companies took game preservation, accessibility and a pathway to eschew overly long licenses that does no one any good, more seriously.
I agree but in all honesty, why? I have no idea how gaming companies work but I imagine that every developer who has ever worked on a game in the 90s for a company is long gone. They moved to another company, different profession, or whatever. For what it is, gaming companies do seem to have a somewhat high turn over rates from its developers and, even if they treated a game like their child, they cant take it with them and have no choice to leave it in the hands of the IP holder, usually the company. If upper management is like the places I worked at, they dont appreciate their workers, their efforts, or what they create, they just want them to make something, sell it, and make a profit. Sadly, thats all a company legally has to do, make profit while conservation would probably hinder their profits to some degree. I really want more preservation and conservation is the world but old greedy farts have the money and can influence laws.
@@CaseNumber00 yes, all correct descriptions of Publishers, not necessarily game developers. Publishers go out buying developers, but it takes two to tango and the onus is also on the developers selling their company for short term stability. In the long run developers are better off independent where they have far more control of their creations, majority of the profits go to them, have a stronger relationship with gamers and a good reputation. So what if they don't have the finance to get big time IP licenses, they have more freedom to create original works e.g. was Bioware with the Mass Effect series before EA bought them. Another example now is Kojina who is legendary among millions of gamers, but is restrained by Konami. Now Konami has gone and bastardized it's famous IPs for the sake of mobile games and F2P monetary models, but Kojima, though having a rough start with 'Death Stranding' is able to continue to make great games that millions of who love is work can and will support.
@@CaseNumber00 when I mean by game preservation is also tied up with licenses and not just lost source codes. There are many classic games - TMNT for example cannot be sold anymore because Konami no longer has to the license of TMNT or other cases some games cannot be sold because the license holder for whatever reason can't allow it. I think there needs to be a limit to licenses hold in respect to the work that is created based on that license or IP, either have a defined path for that particular creation become public domain, the creators and original creators are fairly credited or have an agreement to an extended sale grace period. Otherwise all it really does is encourage more people to look for ways to attain games illegally and devs or original creators don't benefit financially. A good example is Nintendo's treatment of it's classic games and lackluster VC programs. Nintendo is beating a dead horse trying to stamp out piracy with their bullheaded litigious nature, but more victories are won with fans of their games than if establishing good relations than creating a war against piracy.
@@timf7413 The issue with games nowadays is that they're registered under "services" legally when they're "products" and the law hasn't caught up with that. Its an issue with all digital goods tbh, but games see the worst of this classification. By law, a company can deny service whenever they want as long as it doesn't break a contract, while if the company tried to take away your "product" its akin to stealing and you can sue them. (Recalls you can CHOOSE to send it back for a full refund. huge difference here.) And since most games don't work without their connectivity or some just being deleted at a company's whim, and none of them are considered goods or products, but services, you can't do anything legally until that classification changes. Good news though, Apple lost a suit where they tried to pull this same thing on their phones and computers, so the law is slowly catching up. (And one fun fact, if games are considered products, companies can't do down the road paid cash shops nor release patches that break the game without it being sueable, which is another huge win. AND if they release a super buggy mess like Arkham Knight for the PC again, they can be sued for a bad product.)
I'd love to see "Nexus the Jupiter Incident" reverse engineered, loved the look of that game. be good to bring it's graphics up to date, it would look amazing
There's a note on the back of my Universal Soldier cart box that says something like "Despite what the Genesis says, this game is not licensed by Sega." It's cool to learn exactly why that's there now.
I had heard that initially but also heard that Corona Data Systems did it before Compaq did. But it has been around even longer. The Soviet Union was known for purchasing mini-computers and mainframes from IBM and Digital Equipment Corp and building compatible clones. The IBM 370 mainframe was cloned as the Soviet ES-EVM. Digital was so aware of their designs being replicated in the Soviet Union that they would taunt the Soviet engineers with insults on the chip die written in Russian. One such taunt was "When you steal from the very best." micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
@@guna14146 Exactly. A hobby/passion. He's really in the "business" and knows the topic. I noticed that he's making videos about things he knows and understand well. Because of that he can present it using own words, without heavy scripting etc.
This may not be popular for views, but I like it when you get technical. On something like this it's fairly simple, but knowing what hex addresses were impacted, how to get around them, etc is fascinating.
Haha I remember in school people thinking that yellow tag was something to do with a special chip inside the carts. I had always wondered why they looked different though and now I know.
ooh... i was lucky to happen to wait long enough to see you mention NSA Ghidra. i didn't know what you meant by "reverse engineering tool" because i thought it just meant something to dump ROMs but now i see it's a disassembler. that's very cool for a CS graduate going for a Master's. the only other disassembler i've ever heard of had an obvious ugly virus on it when i got a portable version so i never ran it.
The 3DO failed for different reasons, most notably tyhe price of the console. It might have been cheaper than a PC, but it was way more expensive than a PlayStation. Though that was really down to the business model under which the 3DO was produced. Console manufacturers were the game developers, 3DO might have published and developed 3DO games, but they never made consoles. This prevented the consoles from being sold as loss leaders with the money being masde back on licensing fees imposed on games publishers. Except 3DO charged very low licensing charges to developers, making 3DO devlopment very accessible.
GeoNeilUK yeah, blame Panasonic et al for the 3DO. 3DO said ‘here’s something awesome that’s cheap to dev for’ . The dev industry went ‘meh, it’s install base is tiny because it costs more than a Ford escort so no dice’
@@AcornElectron Wasnt really Panasonics fault, as neil says without having exclusive game licencing to absorb a loss on each console sold they had to price it high. Im guessing it cost a lot to manufacture something so advanced at the time. I had one and it blew away anything else on the market until the ps1. As an aside, my FZ-1 3do still works perfectly and has its save games intact nearly 27 years later, its was built to last with quality components unlike my ps1 that died within 2 years.
@referral madness A lot of 3DO's have worn out a gear on the CD mechanism, I mean my FZ-1 3DO still works perfectly, but then again so does my SCPH-1002 PlayStation.
My understanding is that those early EA games, like Populous, won't boot on later console revisions. Now I understand why. Sega added the same boot up screen to later revisions of the Game Gear, even locking out an official peripheral, the TV tuner. Was piracy or unlicensed game releases on the Game Gear a major concern for Sega?
It's kind of funny that Sega really went out of it's way to fight EA for wanting to avoid paying a $10 ($18.63 in inflation from 1992) per cartridge when if EA didn't reverse engineer to release their games, there would exist a Genesis without Road Rash, Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike, Madden, NHL, MLB, FIFA, PGA Tour and Toughman Contest. Basically the Sega Genesis's best games that didn't involve 1st party studios. Nintendo would of mopped the freakin' floor with them more then they already did.
Karateka, Budokan, Gladiator....this is a long list...LHX Attack Chopper, Blades of Vengeance, B.O.B., Shockwave series and too many more to list . NHL98 was released on it a few months before they released NHL 98 on the Saturn and was the last game they made for the Genesis. 9 Years worth.
Be very interested in seeing you do a piece on Ghidra itself (or have I missed it?) One minor minor quibble (only raised because of the high standard of your videos)... Motorola not Motorolla (unless you're trying to avoid an issue with them, I guess). Anyway, always interesting to see this kind of technical stuff, MVG. Cheers!
Yeah, I love the videos too but "Motorolla" makes me cringe :) ... also the pronounciation is with stress on a long "rou", not the "la" (cf. wikipedia: /ˌmoʊtəˈroʊlə/)
He speaks native English, not Japanese, so saying it like most English speaking people do, is fine and not really cringy unless you`re being some hipster about it.
I'm amazed the NSA released open source reverse engineering tools for the public to use. That Ghidra logo is badass as well. This officially makes the NSA, the renegade cool kids in government, besides NASA of course
Hacking ie getting the specifications then passing spec that over to a new team, 'clean room design' is perfectly legal. How compaq reverse engineered IBMs bios so they could make PC fully compatibles. The only unique thing about the original IBM PC was the bios, everything else was off the shelf.
I spy a Amiga Action Replay MK III cart in the background, absolutely beautifully designed inside, Great peace of kit that. The way the traces run on the board, reminds me of the movie Tron. That cart would make a very interesting video indeed. Freeze, Rip Mem peek commands and instructions oh and the Trainer options. oh my, oh my the memories. Top man! MVG 😍👍
Let you know what we thought about this video? Dude, all your videos are fascinating. That's a question that doesn't need answering really at this point. Keep it up. I love watching these. There's a good sense of continuity in your videos too from previous videos and subjects.
I love you MVG and all the amazing information you provide. I love watching your videos and learning so much from the technology we all know and love. Keep up the good work, I'll be watching.
I've only watched two of your videos so far, but I've really liked what I've seen. In the opinion of a random RUclips commenter and for all the authority with which that carries: good job.
I met Trip Hawkins during the 3DO launch event in New York City. (I think it was 1993?) That man is one of the most charming bastards you'll ever meet. He could sell water to a fish.
I had previously read that EA didn't actually reverse engineer the Genesis successfully (although they were close), but rather made Sega believe they had. After watching this video, it seems that they did successfully reverse engineer it before the introduction of the TMSS, and perhaps the introduction of TMSS gave a reason to re-enter into negotiations. Fascinating stuff!
You did a masterful job of explaining the legal ramifications of clean room engineering, so much so that even my caffeine deprived brain could understand it. Well done.
Thanks for all of your videos! This stuff is really fascinating, even for someone with a superficial understanding of software and computing. You make me wish I'd gotten into software engineering!
I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of your videos that I've watched. Your channel is great, and the content answers so many questions I had while growing up during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
@@Deutschehordenelite that doesn't have anything to do with the monitor, it's a completely external device that upscales 240p / 480p pictures to HD resolutions.
Yeah, unfortunately the term "Mega Drive" was already trademarked in the US (or it may have been Canada) so when the system launched in North America, the name had to be changed.
@@salvatronprime9882 They were not in competition as it was the same frigging machine sold in different parts of the globe to different areas... so... Genesis/Mega Drive sold=(salesOf(Genesis)+salesOf(MegaDrive))
In 1992 when I worked at Origin Systems, EA purchased us. To make all of us happy, EA gave everyone Sega Genesis systems and TONS of cartridges. I think I had every EA Sega game ever made for a while.
esentially what this case ends up saying is that emulators isn't technically pireting it's gaming history preservation. thats my take from this what about you?
Indeed, emulation is legal, as long as it does not involve directly copying copyrighted code from the console or games in question and then redistributing that. So if you dump your own ROMs and BIOSes (or in the latter case use a drop-in replacement which was written in a "clean room" style), emulation is legal. The moment you start downloading copyrighted ROMs off the internet it stops being legal.
@@TechnoHackerVid Wouldn't work unless you wrote a very shitty clone. Every part of the game from the logic to graphic assets to the story, is subject to copyright. Even if you supplied your own code logic, you'd still be straight up copying a huge part of the IP.
@@hellterminator John Carmack released the source code of most of the games he programmed at id and the only two things missing are the assets and his fast inverse square root of a float calculation which is 4X faster than the traditional method (Carmack's Reverse). Anyone can freely grab the code off github and use it to build their own game around it, porting or studying.
It is always fascinating to go over these reverse engineering stories in times where "DRM" was hardcoded and hardware. Even today it seems very complex to me.
That's because Atari didn't managed to reverse engineer the lock-out system, they filled a suit to obtain the 10NES code and then started to make their own cartridges. Basically, they used stolen code, that's why they lost.
Great video. I was always aware of the yellow tabbed cartridges but as a kid never really thought anything of it and never noticed they were all EA games.
I still think Sir Alan Sugar had the best anti-piracy system for his Amstrad CPC 464 Microcomputer. (Yeah, while America was arguing over Sega vs Nintendo or having a video game market crash, the UK was having a huge micro-computer war) When he discovered that people were duplicating the audio-tapes that the games came on, his solution was to start selling double cassette decks, so you can pirate your games on hardware sold by him.
I used to work in a video game shop back in the days. We had a lot of visits from sales representatives and Nintendo used to be very thorough and inspect the shelves to see if it contained any unlicensed titles or if they were priced below suggested retail price. There was an implicit threat that game shipments may suffer if we did so, but we were good boys that played ball, so we got extra copies of desirable games and marketing material originally meant for other stores.
The Sega representatives? They did not care, not one iota.
Business culture starts at the top and trickles down.
@Eddie Edric No, it's because they want to maximize price gouging. It's a cartel in effect, instead of competition every shop shafts the customer. And I like how some naive child in first reply praises Nintendo, because we really need more of big corporations tightening the screws to extract more money without lube...
@@KuK137 Yeah, I've never been able to understand all of the praise for Nintendo. They had some awful business practices..
If you were going to pull any tricks you'd just do it off the books. Maybe otherwise unseen discounts for regular customers.
Steam meanwhile...
8 years after 1991, Electronic Arts refuses to put out their games on SEGA's lastest console, the Dreamcast, partially dooming SEGA as a console manufacturer.
@referral madness Sega also didn't have a 2K series football(soccer) game, they just had Sega Worldwide Soccer, and its Euro 2000 update. I mean if Sega were going to put all their other sports titles under the 2K brand, they should of either changed the name of SWWS to Sega Soccer 2K or had a separate 2K branded soccer game in addition to SWWS.
NBA 2K, NHL 2K, NFL 2K, World Series Baseball 2K1, NCAA College Football 2K2 , then just Sega Worldwide Soccer, even Sega Worldwide Soccer 2K would of been a better name.
Not for anything related to the initial spat, though. Sega's hardware choices (obscure architectures and lack of committal to the modem) played a role, but it was mostly because EA demanded sports exclusivity, and Sega had already bought Visual Concepts for $10 million and was only willing to grant EA third-party sports exclusivity.
EA's main claim to fame during that time was sport titles. IMO Sega's 2K series was better.
Even EA could see what the fate of the Dumpcast was going to be.
Microsoft at the time was ready to enter in the console market and it's not unlikely that they had a little chat with EA, maybe promising them something good if they helped to bring down SEGA.
so EA has been penny pinching since way back then. Glad to see them sticking to their roots
At least Electronic Arts (not EA, as we know them today) made some really standout games. Among my earliest games were the early Need for Speed games, and they were great. Thankfully, slashing off 1/3rd of a game's content and calling it DLC wasn't such a lucritive option back then!
Ah yes the capital G Gamer meme of ea bad.
I really don't see what EA did wrong here. Sega was taking a huge cut of others work and EA just found a very clever way of subverting that by not even using sega's own dev tools or software at all. If anything that's just very creative.
LMFAO
And disappointing players, their latest Star Wars squadron has two teams of eight instead of a massive multiplayer experience like Battlestar Galactica online did years ago.
@@huleyn135 This is just a drop in a bucket man. People have a few thousand valid complaints they can make against EA. EA could breathe and people would still have a right to be mad.
5:20 "Hawkins didn't back down, he threatened to release their games without a licence anyway." I heard that Trip Hawkins threatened to show OTHER developers how to make unlicenced games unless Sega gave them a better deal.
Or EA could have said they were going to be an independent manufacturer or publisher and start contacting SEGA licensees and offering them a deal to be published cheaper than Sega.
9:36 "...but the biggest blow to Sega was since there was no way to boot any Genesis game without triggering TMSS..."
As part of Sega's case against Accolade, they actually demonstrated in court that there was a way to boot without triggering the TMSS message on a TMSS-protected console. They wouldn't tell anyone how but they were happy to demonstrate a game booting without the message on a TMSS-protected console.
That much is still out there and easy to source, but another story seems to have been purged where Electronic Arts figured out how to circumvent TMSS the same way Sega demonstrated and, thus, was able to negotiate an even better licensing agreement. Sega agreed to the "sweetheart" deal in order to keep EA from dropping out/going rogue and publishing for other unlicensed developers, like Accolade/Ballistix.
Maybe they just patched the system in ram to replace the information with a blank screen.
@@stonent I would assume a TMSS console doesn't bootstrap the cartridge until after displaying the message. Then again, neither did the Game Boy and yet unlicensed games could switch the Nintendo text after the first read for verification but before it was read again to be displayed on the screen. That was done with hardware mapping and not native code on the Game Boy but perhaps something similar is possible on TMSS consoles: let them read the string to authorize bootup then switch the string before it reads again to display on screen. If it was that easy though I'd expect more unlicenced games so there still had to be some trick to it.
Interesting fact! We just read this case in my law school copyright class while learning about fair use. Sega probably wanted to demonstrate it was possible to boot without triggering TMSS because a key element of fair use in regards to copying source code is that there is no other way to examine the code features without copying it. If Sega could demonstrate it was unnecessary to copy the code, the court may have ruled fair use inappropriate. I assume Sega's demonstration was unconvincing to the court. Thanks for sharing!
That's weird. I was literally thinking last night, why doesn't the SEGA logo appear when booting up EA games on the Genesis? Now I know.
Whoa, a gundam
What a brilliant story, i had no idea why Mega Drive (your Genesis) cartridges were different. I guess i thought they had something special, but i had no idea this was the reason. Thanks for the video!
He should make a video on why Dreamcast BOXES are different in the UK(Europe) than they are in the US.
What are you talking about? The EA carts were different but that's not the reason why US / JP carts were different. Actually watch the video, please
EA's case was superior, game wasn't.
@referral madness I knew about the Dreamcast logo colour/Tivola. I didn't think about the fact the manuals were multi-language meant that would necessitate having bigger boxes.
Sounds Aussie, so would also be Mega Drive. The word "Genesis" is there to attract the American audience for views as it is perceived as that area of the world are not aware of different names for things.
I've learned *so* much the past 8 months since I found your channel about gaming, coding, and history than ever before in my life. A million thank you's for the rich, educational content you provide.
Pretty harsh price SEGA set there, since it was calculated by produced copies instead of sold copies. No wonder publisher gone all out to avoid these costs.
Imagine if SEGA had been the console E.T. The Extraterrestrial had been published on, instead of Atari.
@@gblargg PROFIT!
*publishers went
These court rulings show that the 1990s was a very different time in American legal history.
Now EA and Accolade would have very likely violated the DMCA as while they didn't violate any copyright or trade mark laws, they did bypass copy protection measures.
Eh, not really. A lower court would probably uphold that, but higher courts would look at it much more closely and say "well, this product you made isn't a copy of x product and thanks to sega vs accolade, its legit." There is a reason that a court case isn't over until you lose at appeal, since lower courts tend to be very.... not good.
It's bullcrap. If I buy their game system, whatever I do to my system is my right, I own it. All these companies can go eat sh_t.
is not much that was different, it was that gaming and software in general was a much much smaller business back then.
try to do something similar to microsoft, google or apple nowdays and you will see all the power of their bilhions
@@MarkMcDaniel Good point, in copyright law this is called the "first sale doctrine." Authors lose copyright of distribution after the first sale, this is why we are allowed to resale (redistribute) products after we've bought them. Authors don't, however, lose all copyright interest, like the right to copy the product. This is why we can't copy songs and resell them even if we bought the song. In this case, Accolade had to momentarily copy the source code (by uploading it to the computer's ram) in order to examine the code. This is copyright infringement, but they won because the court determined it was fair use, which is an affirmative defense to copyright. Probably more than you wanted to hear; I'm currently learning about this in my copyright class so thanks for letting me nerd out.
@@PapaPoptart -- Exactly. I read up on copyrights some twenty years back. Yes, when you buy a product, you buy a copy of that product. That doesn't impart unto you the right to copy it except to create and store an archive copy for personal use only. But, the important thing to note is that the user has the legal right to modify or resell the individual copy of the product. And, should they resell it, they must destroy the archived copy.
Sega used this one little trick to legalize emulation! Console manufacturers hate them!
actually emulation and roms were deemed by the DMCA as legal when Nintendo filed a lawsuit against emulator creators and lost cause they dont use the original source code.The rule was change that if your running a rom on an emulator without the original source code its for "testing" purposes
Kyle S iirc it was Sony that filed that lawsuit, not Nintendo
It's 100% legal after copy rights and licenses run up. That's why we seen an explosion of legal emulator consoles over the last few years.
@@kyles8524 Actually Nintendo doesn't aim at emulator but roms they allready knew that attacking emulator itself is futile they have lot of experience in laws so they know that suing for emulators that usually don't have their code is pointless but roms however are different story they are usually flashed from cartridge. Oh by the way you might want to look for Bleem that's the emulator with lawsuit from Sony and Bleem won that one but unfortunately for them the cost of court was too much thus making Sony the winner.
@@Mikael404 no lol, Nintendo tried to also file a lawsuit against emulators but that was also shot down cause they weren't running the original source code, therefore also being ruled by the DMCA or aka the Digital Management Copyright Act who actually makes the rules about all of this stuff basically ruled any rom being ran on an emulator not running the same source code is for testing purposes and completely shuts down any more attempts from Nintendo to try and pull this again.Its illegal to be selling the roms but not "testing" them.Thats why rom sites never have a paid membership or something of that nature or they would get sued rather quickly.
My dad doesn't know much about computers but he always told me this growing up, "If it can be played, it can be copied". He knew about DRM technologies, though not by name, could be defeated easily. His example (specifically related to audio) was "What stops someone recording the audio output into the audio input?.". So far he's always been right. Love the videos MVG! It's cool to learn the bits we might have missed during the active years :)
Fun story: whilst I was in college doing electronic engineering the mod chip scene took off when I was in my second year, there were maybe 6 of us per class, so we'd moved next door to the lab and the new first years came in, there was maybe 8 of them as well - I was 17 years old at the time, the first years were 16.
After a while the first years turned the lab into a ps1 modding shop, the lecturers saw it as an interest and liked that they were learning the skills... Until it was revealed they were earning a load of money doing it and the college put a stop to it.
But for a brief moment in time, a college electronic engineering lab became a ps1 mod shop.
How did games officially licensed by SEGA that were produced before they invented TMSS continue to work on the new revision of the console?
I'd assume it was part of a standard library they had been using since the beginning and which was distributed with the development kit.
I think that's part of why they chose the code they did. It was something that was already there in all officially licensed games.
@@timf7413 it was part of the startup screen every game had to have anyways. They just checked whether that starting screen was present (and sued if s/o wrote "SEGA" w/o a licence). Actually a pretty common approach of the time, check for a character string, check for existence and position of a brand logo (afaik the GameBoy did that), and so on
@@sepruecom The GameBoy sorta did that in that all officially licensed games showed the "(c) Nintendo" screen, but I also remember having an unlicensed game that did not show that, but instead showed the copyright of the company making that unlicensed game.
it was already standard, but wasn't used until the consoles with TMSS came out
there are a few games that didn't follow the standard because at the time it had no adverse effect, which caused the game to not work on TMSS equipped Mega Drives
Great video! :)
Note that while the legal status of reverse engineering is indeed similar to what it is in the US in many parts of the world, make sure to check that this is also the case in your own jurisdiction if you are planning on doing any reverse engineering projects where you will release things publicly.
Rule number one of anything, never assume something can't be reversed. If you do, you're wrong, you should feel bad, and it'll inevitably come back to bite you.
You can only assume it will stall hacks for long enough to satisfy investors.
@@OfficialDJSoru the hope was that the message showing up being a lie would whack them. It did not
Sex change? 🤣
This
i just reverse engineered your orientation based on your profile picture.
I was just looking up your channel a few hours ago in case I had missed any videos, what a treat!!!
Same. Can't beat a well made and thought out video and real facts.
MVG always releases his vids on monday :)
In my opinion, the most interesting stories are about reverse engineering. Keep on! Great video, by the way.
It's my fault, I installed a lot of mod chips over the years, up until I messed one up and had to buy the guy a new system and then mod that. My 13 year old financial situation would not allow me to make that mistake again, and my mom...rofl. Basically cleaned out all the profit I made installing chips in one fell swoop. I charged 15 bucks for original systems and 25 for PS1's... Rent, Burn, Return. I grew up in a pretty poor family, but my mom certainly saw her investment of getting me a soldering iron and screw driver set at age 10, then just some years later being able to "get" games after we rented them. I was one of the first to get a cd burner when they came out with the 8x TDK at my junior high school. It paid for it's self in the first month. At that point in time, a custom CD with the tracks you wanted was seriously cool. I feel like 20 bucks for a custom cd with "dirty lyric''d songs" that took days to download on napster was not over charging. Everyone was so stoked to get all the songs they wanted on one disc. I went by DJ PJ... hahahhahah
Nice showing off The Strike games. I miss those days; staying up for hours, not going home for weeks on end, sleeping under my desk... good times. LOL. My favorite part of all that hard work is when fans appreciate it. My least favorite part of all the hard work is when people who have no idea how hard we work just go on shade-fests, condemning hard working people, in some sort of retaliation against being wrong by a company. (I've been finding that people can't seem to understand what I'm saying in these comments, so..) TRANSLATION: I made The Strike games, I was there when we reversed engineered the Sega, I slept under my desk for months on end crunching on the Strike games (and others), I'm glad someone's covering this stuff vs. the standard wikipedia-scraping fluff.
Loved the Desert Strike running on the background.
2:31 $15 per cartridge!? Damn, how would you make any profit?
New titles sold for like $60. That's 1/4th cut already on top of the cost of developing the game, licensing any trademarks (like sports or movie games), marketing, and producing the cartridge and packaging itself.
Especially a year later or so, it'd be pointless for companies to sell older releases for $20.
yeah, kind of crazy, definitely harsher for a small company. Re-releasing is probably not really an option unless you reach an agreement with the main company to be included with a "greatest hits line".
@@dtester The alternative was to release nothing and make nothing (or I guess to put the legwork in and create their own console.)
Sega's cut in this case seems comparable to the (I think) 30% cut that Steam, Apple, and Google take for their app stores.
Actually, games use to cost more considering the value of money back then and inflation adjusted.
Console Original Adjusted
NES (1986) $30 - $50 $60 - $100
SNES (1991) $58 - $60 $80 - $95
N64 (1996) $50 $70
PS2 (2000) $50 $65
360 (2005) $60 $70
Although it looks like the industry is raising game prices to $70 next-gen, Nintendo might be the exception if we are lucky since their games sell forever and they rarely drop in price, they of all publishers have the least need and reason to raise their price.
@@jamesdlin7 Sorta, but kinda of worst. Remember that back in the day, the console company gets their cut...AND the retail store gets their cut. (edit: well that's still true today for physical games ^_^;)
Fascinating, I love history bits like this. It shows how the current market was shaped. I’d be down for more landmark games dev law insights 110%!
Hacking wouldn’t be such a “problem” if game companies took game preservation, accessibility and a pathway to eschew overly long licenses that does no one any good, more seriously.
I agree but in all honesty, why? I have no idea how gaming companies work but I imagine that every developer who has ever worked on a game in the 90s for a company is long gone. They moved to another company, different profession, or whatever. For what it is, gaming companies do seem to have a somewhat high turn over rates from its developers and, even if they treated a game like their child, they cant take it with them and have no choice to leave it in the hands of the IP holder, usually the company. If upper management is like the places I worked at, they dont appreciate their workers, their efforts, or what they create, they just want them to make something, sell it, and make a profit. Sadly, thats all a company legally has to do, make profit while conservation would probably hinder their profits to some degree. I really want more preservation and conservation is the world but old greedy farts have the money and can influence laws.
@@CaseNumber00 yes, all correct descriptions of Publishers, not necessarily
game developers.
Publishers go out buying developers, but it takes two to tango and the onus is also on the developers selling their company for short term stability.
In the long run developers are better off independent where they have far more control of their creations, majority of the profits go to them, have a stronger relationship with gamers and a good reputation.
So what if they don't have the finance to get big time IP licenses, they have more freedom to create original works e.g. was Bioware with the Mass Effect series before EA bought them.
Another example now is Kojina who is legendary among millions of gamers, but is restrained by Konami. Now Konami has gone and bastardized it's famous IPs for the sake of mobile games and F2P monetary models, but Kojima, though having a rough start with 'Death Stranding' is able to continue to make great games that millions of who love is work can and will support.
@@CaseNumber00 when I mean by game preservation is also tied up with licenses and not just lost source codes.
There are many classic games - TMNT for example cannot be sold anymore because Konami no longer has to the license of TMNT or other cases some games cannot be sold because the license holder for whatever reason can't allow it.
I think there needs to be a limit to licenses hold in respect to the work that is created based on that license or IP, either have a defined path for that particular creation become public domain, the creators and original creators are fairly credited or have an agreement to an extended sale grace period.
Otherwise all it really does is encourage more people to look for ways to attain games illegally and devs or original creators don't benefit financially.
A good example is Nintendo's treatment of it's classic games and lackluster VC programs. Nintendo is beating a dead horse trying to stamp out piracy with their bullheaded litigious nature, but more victories are won with fans of their games than if establishing good relations than creating a war against piracy.
That argument assumes that gamers have an automatic right to any of those thing, which is at best, a highly debatable point.
@@timf7413 The issue with games nowadays is that they're registered under "services" legally when they're "products" and the law hasn't caught up with that. Its an issue with all digital goods tbh, but games see the worst of this classification. By law, a company can deny service whenever they want as long as it doesn't break a contract, while if the company tried to take away your "product" its akin to stealing and you can sue them. (Recalls you can CHOOSE to send it back for a full refund. huge difference here.)
And since most games don't work without their connectivity or some just being deleted at a company's whim, and none of them are considered goods or products, but services, you can't do anything legally until that classification changes. Good news though, Apple lost a suit where they tried to pull this same thing on their phones and computers, so the law is slowly catching up.
(And one fun fact, if games are considered products, companies can't do down the road paid cash shops nor release patches that break the game without it being sueable, which is another huge win. AND if they release a super buggy mess like Arkham Knight for the PC again, they can be sued for a bad product.)
I love this guy’s voice and I learn a ton from his videos, thanks for making these, you’re amazing!!
This is maybe the most interesting youtube channel about videogames history and development.
I'd love to see "Nexus the Jupiter Incident" reverse engineered, loved the look of that game. be good to bring it's graphics up to date, it would look amazing
There's a note on the back of my Universal Soldier cart box that says something like "Despite what the Genesis says, this game is not licensed by Sega." It's cool to learn exactly why that's there now.
What was the first clean room reverse engineering? The Compaq Portable and their reverse engineering of the IBM PC BIOS is the first that I know of.
Same here.
I had heard that initially but also heard that Corona Data Systems did it before Compaq did. But it has been around even longer. The Soviet Union was known for purchasing mini-computers and mainframes from IBM and Digital Equipment Corp and building compatible clones. The IBM 370 mainframe was cloned as the Soviet ES-EVM. Digital was so aware of their designs being replicated in the Soviet Union that they would taunt the Soviet engineers with insults on the chip die written in Russian. One such taunt was "When you steal from the very best." micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
would this also mean, if someone were to clean room reverse engineer iOS then apple have no grounds to sue?
MVG your videos are like therapy for me.
I love listening to to the tech specs, and seeing the history of these systems.
Kudos sir
I'm amazed of quality and amount of content that you're publishing in this year. I don't know how you're doing research on these topics so fast.
@@guna14146 Exactly. A hobby/passion. He's really in the "business" and knows the topic. I noticed that he's making videos about things he knows and understand well. Because of that he can present it using own words, without heavy scripting etc.
I believe it may be partly experience. MVG is himself a game Dev and I believe he is one of the earliest people in the mod scene.
This may not be popular for views, but I like it when you get technical. On something like this it's fairly simple, but knowing what hex addresses were impacted, how to get around them, etc is fascinating.
Haha I remember in school people thinking that yellow tag was something to do with a special chip inside the carts.
I had always wondered why they looked different though and now I know.
I always thought they had the memory backup batteries in!
ooh... i was lucky to happen to wait long enough to see you mention NSA Ghidra. i didn't know what you meant by "reverse engineering tool" because i thought it just meant something to dump ROMs but now i see it's a disassembler. that's very cool for a CS graduate going for a Master's. the only other disassembler i've ever heard of had an obvious ugly virus on it when i got a portable version so i never ran it.
Desert Strike, one of the first games I played as an 8-year-old on my first gaming hardware ever (Sega Mega Drive 2)
I read a lot about this in the Console Wars book. Great video, as always. Thanks for doing this!
Trip Hawkins may have been clever doing what he did there but he wasn’t so clever in getting the 3DO to succeed! Great video.
The 3DO failed for different reasons, most notably tyhe price of the console. It might have been cheaper than a PC, but it was way more expensive than a PlayStation.
Though that was really down to the business model under which the 3DO was produced. Console manufacturers were the game developers, 3DO might have published and developed 3DO games, but they never made consoles. This prevented the consoles from being sold as loss leaders with the money being masde back on licensing fees imposed on games publishers. Except 3DO charged very low licensing charges to developers, making 3DO devlopment very accessible.
GeoNeilUK yeah, blame Panasonic et al for the 3DO. 3DO said ‘here’s something awesome that’s cheap to dev for’ . The dev industry went ‘meh, it’s install base is tiny because it costs more than a Ford escort so no dice’
@@AcornElectron Wasnt really Panasonics fault, as neil says without having exclusive game licencing to absorb a loss on each console sold they had to price it high. Im guessing it cost a lot to manufacture something so advanced at the time. I had one and it blew away anything else on the market until the ps1. As an aside, my FZ-1 3do still works perfectly and has its save games intact nearly 27 years later, its was built to last with quality components unlike my ps1 that died within 2 years.
@referral madness A lot of 3DO's have worn out a gear on the CD mechanism, I mean my FZ-1 3DO still works perfectly, but then again so does my SCPH-1002 PlayStation.
This is content is what I call “content and entertainment in the same package”! Thank you
Contertainment
My understanding is that those early EA games, like Populous, won't boot on later console revisions. Now I understand why. Sega added the same boot up screen to later revisions of the Game Gear, even locking out an official peripheral, the TV tuner. Was piracy or unlicensed game releases on the Game Gear a major concern for Sega?
My local video store rented out modified Japanese Megadrives/Genesis and NES systems.
100+ games on a cartridge was childhood bliss
It's kind of funny that Sega really went out of it's way to fight EA for wanting to avoid paying a $10 ($18.63 in inflation from 1992) per cartridge when if EA didn't reverse engineer to release their games, there would exist a Genesis without Road Rash, Desert/Jungle/Urban Strike, Madden, NHL, MLB, FIFA, PGA Tour and Toughman Contest.
Basically the Sega Genesis's best games that didn't involve 1st party studios. Nintendo would of mopped the freakin' floor with them more then they already did.
*Would have.
Karateka, Budokan, Gladiator....this is a long list...LHX Attack Chopper, Blades of Vengeance, B.O.B., Shockwave series and too many more to list . NHL98 was released on it a few months before they released NHL 98 on the Saturn and was the last game they made for the Genesis. 9 Years worth.
A wonderful video and a stark contrast between this situation and litigation vs the Nintendo Tengen dispute/mishap. Thank you as always
"9th Circle Court of Appeals" - yea that sounds close enough to the 9th Circle of Hell to be accurate
9th circuit court has always made controversial decisions.
the infamous ninth circus
Commie court
Facinating topic. Thanks for bringing it. Your videos are definitely my Monday commute delight. Thank you.
Be very interested in seeing you do a piece on Ghidra itself (or have I missed it?)
One minor minor quibble (only raised because of the high standard of your videos)... Motorola not Motorolla (unless you're trying to avoid an issue with them, I guess).
Anyway, always interesting to see this kind of technical stuff, MVG. Cheers!
Yeah, I love the videos too but "Motorolla" makes me cringe :) ... also the pronounciation is with stress on a long "rou", not the "la" (cf. wikipedia: /ˌmoʊtəˈroʊlə/)
He speaks native English, not Japanese, so saying it like most English speaking people do, is fine and not really cringy unless you`re being some hipster about it.
I'm amazed the NSA released open source reverse engineering tools for the public to use. That Ghidra logo is badass as well. This officially makes the NSA, the renegade cool kids in government, besides NASA of course
Hacking ie getting the specifications then passing spec that over to a new team, 'clean room design' is perfectly legal.
How compaq reverse engineered IBMs bios so they could make PC fully compatibles.
The only unique thing about the original IBM PC was the bios, everything else was off the shelf.
I literally love your videos. I learn and enjoy the history behind my childhood! Keep up the good work!
I guess EA is the embodiment of "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"
Great video article man! Thanks for sharing this story!
Just casually talking over the game footage in the background at 10:40. 🤣
I spy a Amiga Action Replay MK III cart in the background, absolutely beautifully designed inside, Great peace of kit that.
The way the traces run on the board, reminds me of the movie Tron. That cart would make a very interesting video indeed.
Freeze, Rip Mem peek commands and instructions oh and the Trainer options. oh my, oh my the memories. Top man! MVG 😍👍
Maybe there is some hope for Panzer Dragoon Saga being RE'd and remastered :)
Wow, I never knew these stories about Sega, EA, Accolade. Thank you for making this!
Let you know what we thought about this video? Dude, all your videos are fascinating. That's a question that doesn't need answering really at this point.
Keep it up. I love watching these. There's a good sense of continuity in your videos too from previous videos and subjects.
I love you MVG and all the amazing information you provide. I love watching your videos and learning so much from the technology we all know and love. Keep up the good work, I'll be watching.
0:43 Indeed. I have had a hard time finding one that hasn't got one :D
I've only watched two of your videos so far, but I've really liked what I've seen. In the opinion of a random RUclips commenter and for all the authority with which that carries: good job.
I met Trip Hawkins during the 3DO launch event in New York City. (I think it was 1993?) That man is one of the most charming bastards you'll ever meet. He could sell water to a fish.
@referral madness Well, if you want your company to succeed...
back when EA was good
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 Electronic Arts :) (EA is shit)
I had previously read that EA didn't actually reverse engineer the Genesis successfully (although they were close), but rather made Sega believe they had. After watching this video, it seems that they did successfully reverse engineer it before the introduction of the TMSS, and perhaps the introduction of TMSS gave a reason to re-enter into negotiations. Fascinating stuff!
Accolade: *reverse engineers TMSS*
Sega: I'LL SUE YOU
Accolade: Haha TMSS go boots
Great video, I love how you showed the assembly code for triggering TMSS!
3:00 please remember people, this was before EA were nobheads.
Kids these days wont understand that in the early 90s EA were pretty badass.
It's an understandable situation they didn't want to pay up to Sega given they eventually launched their own console, the 3DO.
referral madness yeah but Trip still had a vested stake in EA and their support when he launched the 3DO company.
Duke Dudeston DPaint anyone? 😂 yeah they were.
6581punk although 3DO just licensed their design to manufacturers. I don’t think they actually produced any consoles themselves.
Very interesting topic. You should delve deeper into similar subjects. Amazing job.
"Sega, mistakes were made.."
..a complete, ten part series! 😏
@@Oldgamingfart Only ten? Lol
LEGAL MISTAKES WERE MADE
@@winlover37 indeed! xD
Oversights were made.
Wow Accolade… childhood nostalgia just rushed back. Years of ms dos games
You did a masterful job of explaining the legal ramifications of clean room engineering, so much so that even my caffeine deprived brain could understand it. Well done.
Awesome this is essentially a whole video explaining my question about creating a ps2 devkit!👍👍👍👍
EA's slogan should be: Electronic Arts, Being shady since the 90s.
Excellent video, very nice to see an in depth technical analysis.
Mvg uploaded a new video "clicks immediately"
These history lessons really hit the spot, every time. It's all about having the right teacher.
As usual, excellent video. Thanks for your work and time.
Ah yes Ghidra *takes notes*.
*Deletes pirated copy of IDA Pro*
@@zobris OllyDbg is dead. 2.x is garbage.
In corporate America ghidra reverse engineer you.
Thanks for all of your videos! This stuff is really fascinating, even for someone with a superficial understanding of software and computing. You make me wish I'd gotten into software engineering!
Your camera is sharper than a knife, m8.
footage was enhanced in final cut pro. at least i do that after shooting. make it super sharp
I have thoroughly enjoyed every one of your videos that I've watched. Your channel is great, and the content answers so many questions I had while growing up during the 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
What model is that Dell monitor? I remember we had those in my school... how are you getting video to look so good on it?
Can't answer this directly, but in his game room tour he showed that he had a framemeister
@@Deutschehordenelite that doesn't have anything to do with the monitor, it's a completely external device that upscales 240p / 480p pictures to HD resolutions.
Adjusting the monitor settings. Tftcentral has some nice resources, and blurbusters.com
I never get bored of your videos, they always have me watching until the end, good lord
That is called the Sega Mega Drive! The trouble is ‘Genesis’ makes me think of Phil Collins 😅
Yeah, unfortunately the term "Mega Drive" was already trademarked in the US (or it may have been Canada) so when the system launched in North America, the name had to be changed.
@@purplesabbath9057 that's due to a company called megadrive systems inc
The Genesis sold more than the Mega Drive... so....
Genesis was best till Phil Collins solo career,after 1986 it sucks.
@@salvatronprime9882 They were not in competition as it was the same frigging machine sold in different parts of the globe to different areas... so... Genesis/Mega Drive sold=(salesOf(Genesis)+salesOf(MegaDrive))
In 1992 when I worked at Origin Systems, EA purchased us. To make all of us happy, EA gave everyone Sega Genesis systems and TONS of cartridges. I think I had every EA Sega game ever made for a while.
esentially what this case ends up saying is that emulators isn't technically pireting it's gaming history preservation. thats my take from this what about you?
Indeed, emulation is legal, as long as it does not involve directly copying copyrighted code from the console or games in question and then redistributing that. So if you dump your own ROMs and BIOSes (or in the latter case use a drop-in replacement which was written in a "clean room" style), emulation is legal. The moment you start downloading copyrighted ROMs off the internet it stops being legal.
@@Muzer0 inb4 teams clean room reverse engineer older games :D
@@TechnoHackerVid Wouldn't work unless you wrote a very shitty clone. Every part of the game from the logic to graphic assets to the story, is subject to copyright. Even if you supplied your own code logic, you'd still be straight up copying a huge part of the IP.
@@hellterminator true :P
@@hellterminator John Carmack released the source code of most of the games he programmed at id and the only two things missing are the assets and his fast inverse square root of a float calculation which is 4X faster than the traditional method (Carmack's Reverse). Anyone can freely grab the code off github and use it to build their own game around it, porting or studying.
It is always fascinating to go over these reverse engineering stories in times where "DRM" was hardcoded and hardware. Even today it seems very complex to me.
What android app did you use on your haked switch thx
I don't think that judgment would happen today, I'm very glad it was made because the community is amazing and its spawned entire careers.
MVG: *uploads*
People in the comments: I A M S P E E D
Love your videos mate! All high quality and well researched...
you like a little bit of gaming historian
Fascinating bit of history and some really interesting technical insights. Thanks for making another great video!
When console manufacturers were so greedy that developers had to reverse engineer consoles to publish games...
What an amazing and very unknown story. Thank you. Very good video.
but atari lost against nintendo when they bypassed the nintendo CIC....
That's because Atari didn't managed to reverse engineer the lock-out system, they filled a suit to obtain the 10NES code and then started to make their own cartridges. Basically, they used stolen code, that's why they lost.
I seriously love your channel. Great content and execution.
bell gang
Thank you so much MVG for specializing in videos like these.
Great video. I was always aware of the yellow tabbed cartridges but as a kid never really thought anything of it and never noticed they were all EA games.
I love the information and the professionalism of this channel. Earned a subscriber
I still think Sir Alan Sugar had the best anti-piracy system for his Amstrad CPC 464 Microcomputer. (Yeah, while America was arguing over Sega vs Nintendo or having a video game market crash, the UK was having a huge micro-computer war)
When he discovered that people were duplicating the audio-tapes that the games came on, his solution was to start selling double cassette decks, so you can pirate your games on hardware sold by him.
Unique presentation, very informative, as always.
I don't think this guy has ever posted a boring video
This was fascinating. I never knew this happened, great video MVG.