Wow, it wasn't my intention to stir things up Sorry about that

@Poke: wow!

Actually on other platforms (CPC, Spectrum) a lot of those old tape games have been made "abandonware" by their publishers. Perhaps it also applies to the MSX versions. It could be worth investigating in that direction. I REALLY doubt Activision is planning to make a big come back anytime soon on the 8Bits scene trying to make money out of Power Drift tapes, MSX version

yes... if MRC can handle the mailing involved about asks to the legal holders... maybe we found that a lot of titles can be used freely

I had the idea that some games were only cracked in such a way that people would buy 512k memory mapper expansions.

Next I saw a copied version of breaker breaker before it was actually released (if I remember correctly). Pretty strange, as this guy also produced several programs for a semi-commercial basis. And sometimes even with a hw copy protection! ( No it's not that circuit designer guy...)

I never knew the Boss was a DUTCH guy. Is this also the case for the SMA stuff etc?

Quote:

Well, MSX tapes become unreadable in time. I do believe it's a good thing we try to preserve them in digital formats. As far as I'm concerned, nothing wrong with that

agreed.

Quote:

SPREAD THE WORD...NOT THE DISK

hm. what about the tapes then

Quote:

yes... if MRC can handle the mailing involved about asks to the legal holders... maybe we found that a lot of titles can be used freely

That would be great
They could be preserved and spread without there being a problem about it.

Quote:

I had the idea that some games were only cracked in such a way that people would buy 512k memory mapper expansions.

I think it was nescesary to be able to run the full game into memory;
Like MG2, large rom; so it needs a lot of memory.

There are two reasons why cracked ROMs require more RAM than the size of the ROM:
- Some RAM cannot be used for storing the ROM contents because the MSX BIOS needs some memory (system RAM) and the game state needs some memory as well. For most games, 16K of RAM is used for system RAM + game state.
- Most MegaROMs have mappers with 8K pages. The MSX RAM mappers have 16K pages. A 128K game contains 16 8K pages, which would in theory require 16*16 = 256 16K pages (4MB) to store all possible combinations. However, in practice games only use a couple of combinations: 128K MegaROMs typically need about 10 16K pages (160K), so 128K MegaROMs need 256K RAM when cracked.

You may have seen cracks that run 128K MegaROMs on 128K machines. There are a couple of tricks to make this possible:
- remove data from the game (for example, sound)
- store data in unused VRAM (MSX1 games only use 16K of VRAM, most MSX2 games only use 64K of VRAM)
- copy data around to create 8K page combinations when the game is running
Both the VRAM and the copy tricks require a lot of data to be moved while the game is running and can therefore lead to slowdowns.

And, no, I wasn't a famous cracker myself. By the time I mastered these skills, all MegaROMs had been cracked already.

@ sander: some old quote in a game on the amiga

Quote:

I had the idea that some games were only cracked in such a way that people would buy 512k memory mapper expansions.

Especially as other hacked version could be played with less memory. Btw I completely agree with the remarks from mth.

@Pat, SMA was French, not Dutch... Do you have to be this abusive?

About the "legal" discussion... I don't want to meddle with that too much, but I like the point stated before by Maggoo, especially the term "abandonware" he coined, and the fact that we should actually investigate this matter (do the companies that made the games/conversions on MSX still care, do they even still exist, etc...).

This goes IMHO as well for the "preservation" argument, it's true that this can be used as a cover-up for software piracy, but it sure is a point...
Don't we love to play Sweet Acorn? How many working copies are around of that game, nowadays?

Would Konami think we are really, really bad persons if they'd find out that we have a ROM image of Vampire Killer on our PC?
I'd almost bet both my balls that they don't care...

I'd even bet Compile didn't care back in 1989 if they'd found out about all those illegal copies of Aleste 2.
Why do you think they did everything in Japanese? Those guys didn't even realise that people outside of Japan actually liked their work.
Nor did MicroCabin, Falcom, etcetera...

To the Dutch guys (and gals) in this forum:
Do you remember the crusade of Frank Druyff/MCM against "illegal" (boo-f*cking-hoo) copies of MSX DOS, while EVERYONE had MSX DOS but was just too lazy to copy it to disk over and over and over again?
Did that make any sense then? Would it now? Not if you ask me...

Not that I'm trying to promote "illegal" distribution of copyrighted games, and, moreover, intellectual property...

Quote:

(Does anyone have/remember the picture of the "Slak" that was once on a cover? I liked that; in fact, I even imitated the drawing in Designer Plus myself, but that one got lost)

It was Mari vd Broek of TNI who drew that picture; A few years ago I met him again in a very seedy heavy metal/gothic joint, where we eventually recognized eachother as being "MSX brothers" and wreaked some havoc in that stupid gothic bar together!
I think Guyver may know more about the whereabouts of this guy, as those two were (or still are?) TNI...

By the way, 10 years ago, some people had entire catalogues (even made with Dynamic Publisher I think, wha ha ha! ) with "cracked" games you could order, or trade with games they didn't have in their collection yet. Blame them too.

Take a game like Fighter's Ragnarok. It sure as hell is a good game (I lost it, by the way) and it sure as hell was worth every guilder I payed for it!

Quote:

It was Mari vd Broek of TNI

Mari v/d Broek is/was member of NBNO and used to run "the Games BBS".
I doubt he has or had any links to TNI...

Quote:

Mari v/d Broek is/was member of NBNO and used to run "the Games BBS". I doubt he has or had any links to TNI...

Perhaps he ment " Marius Hartland (Akuma) " of TNI ?
Mari wasn't a TNI member as far as I recall ...

Yes, Marius Hartland was the designer of the slug

Yeah, that's the one I meant, sorry...