Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Main Forum => Topic started by: Quacker Blaster on August 29, 2013, 09:51:34 pm
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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
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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.
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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
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http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/namcos23.c.html (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.
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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.
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http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/drivers/namcos23.c.html (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. :P 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
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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
:dizzy: 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