NCS Week of June 28, 1999

Imports

Dino Crisis / SLPS 02180
The following code may be used with a Game Shark or PAR v1.5 to unlock the protection on Dino Crisis.

D014957E - 1040

8014957E - 1000

Thanks and kudos to the usual suspects for e-mailing us the codes.

Retrospect
Legitimate import gamers have had to suffer the insult of anti-mod games for about half a year now. Have the protection schemes stopped anyone from playing imports? No, every import from 1998's Poporogue to yesterday's Dino Crisis is playable with a chipped Playstation, a Game Shark (or similar device) and a few lines of code. NCS assumes that the anti-mod scheme was concocted to prevent the flood of unauthorized copies from being booted on chipped Playstations. However, that camp is forging ahead unhindered with ISO patches that render on-disc protection schemes harmless. Defused. The end result being the pirated copy is more user friendly than the legitimate copy.
It is perfectly logical for any software publisher to protect it's intellectual property. Call it a natural defense mechanism for keeping the bottom line black. However, history shows us that protection schemes invariably fail and only serve to inconvenience legitimate users. NCS reflects all the way back to the era of the Commodore 64 computer for some examples. Piracy was rampant and publishers sought to stop the illegal copying of 5 1/4" discs by loading error tracks on discs that would cause the Commodore disc drive to knock around inside. Sounded like a mini car wreck on your desktop. In any case, it didn't sound healthy and shortened the life of the disc drive. Then there was the dongle scheme that required a user to plug a physical key into your computer before the program would boot. Should you be so hapless as to misplace the dongle, the software disc became a coaster. The pirate's solution? Patch the software so that the dongle is not requested at all. Lesson from history: Protection schemes don't work. Publishers will try to fend off the pirates but there will always be those consumers who will only buy legitimate software and those who will only touch pirated copies. There is also a middle ground of consumers who will sample both types of software. Legimate users are inconvenienced by protection schemes for the life of their ownership of the legitimate copy. Pirates are inconvenienced for a couple of seconds while they apply the patch and never again.