Time Crisis Copy Protection

[Quacker Blaster]

I was looking at the games MAMEUI supported and noticed Time Crisis 2 and 3 aren't supported due to copy protection not being emulated. I tried a Google search to see how the copy protection was implemented in those games as a curiosity and got nothing. Does anyone know how the copy protection works in those games or is it still a mystery? Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Quacker Blaster

[paigeoliver]

Copy protection in most games involves a custom chip or chips that decrypt encrypted data and do other assorted voodoo. Said chip or chips are often inside a big old brick of epoxy.

If the data is just encrypted then the encryption can often be broken with a trojan program or hardware add on that will read the data after it has come through the decryption.

It can get a lot more involved than that though, that is old school 1986 era security. Newer games can have even more involved copy protection.

[Quacker Blaster]

Copy protection in most games involves a custom chip or chips that decrypt encrypted data and do other assorted voodoo. Said chip or chips are often inside a big old brick of epoxy.

If the data is just encrypted then the encryption can often be broken with a trojan program or hardware add on that will read the data after it has come through the decryption.

It can get a lot more involved than that though, that is old school 1986 era security. Newer games can have even more involved copy protection.

So Time Crisis 2 and 3 used encryption? If so then no one has managed to decrypt it yet? I am checking it against MAMEUI 0.149U1 info and it states for the copy protection hasn't be emulated yet. Any assistance in this matter would be greatly appreciated.

Quacker Blaster

[WindDrake]

http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/namcos23.c.html

Namco (Super) System 23 was a pretty complicated beast. The MAME preliminary driver is a good bit of reading.

[paigeoliver]

Just looking at the driver shows the game has a dozen Namco custom chips and custom programmed PIC microcontroller. I don't know how much of that is security related, but it could be pretty nasty if it is more than a couple chips.

[Quacker Blaster]

http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/namcos23.c.html

Namco (Super) System 23 was a pretty complicated beast. The MAME preliminary driver is a good bit of reading.

Wow thanks for the link. I asked cause I wanted to "emulate" a copy protection similar to old 80's arcade machines for my open source game. Of course I won't make it difficult to bypass as it is an open source project.  It was gonna be more of a nostalgia thing then real copy protection and i will release info on "cracking" said copy protection.

Just looking at the driver shows the game has a dozen Namco custom chips and custom programmed PIC microcontroller. I don't know how much of that is security related, but it could be pretty nasty if it is more than a couple chips.

Yep, i took a quick look at the specs and it looks very beastly compared to the first arcade machines. 

Sincerely,

Quacker Blaster

[GIZMOGAMES]

best bet really is ps2 with time crises gun footpedals no sign of it for mame im afraid and yah most of that era had  a hardcoded chip copywrit in them :S
  or even ps3 with the latest vs  of timecrises 3  i blieve but as ussual these work with the older tv's with rf inputs