Are there "professional" Sega CD counterfeit games?

[lumclaw]

Curious if any pirate companies ever bothered to try MD's add-ons. Without copy protection the Sega CD entry barrier would be low, but you have the problem of relatively few users... It wasn't a smash hit in regions where commercial pirates are most active. On top of there being not many CD burners available back then. Similarly I don't recall 3DO, PC-FX, or other earlier insecure CD systems getting fake copies mass produced either.

[The Jackal]

I don't know if there was any back in the machine's heyday, but I won't be surprised if there weren't a few floating around now; not seen or heard of any myself, but it's still possible.

[ELabit]

PCEngine had a couple of unlicensed releases by Games Express. They were cd games and they came with a system Hu card. The cd's only worked with their special system cards.

[ThugsRook]

nobody bothered to pirate the SEGA CD games ~ its THAT bad

thats funny!

[xelement5x]

I would say the closest thing to what you are talking about are those homebrew ones the Good Deal Games sells. They're obviously not licensed by Sega but still go past the licensing screen, however they're only on CDRs instead of pressed like the homebrew/pirates on the PCE.

[QuickSciFi]

I think he's going for knock-offs released during the system's lifetime.

It's a good point. I can see how easy it might seem nowadays to burn a cd, but we're talking early to mid-90s. It wasn't that cheap back then and it was one of the reasons why the sega CD wasn't copy protected. However, my best guess is that the market just wasn't as big to warrant a profit. Not everyone owned a Sega Genesis back then; and only a portion of those who did owned the CD unit.

[oldskool]

I think what's interesting was that the Neo Geo suffered from pirate/boot carts just about more than any other platform. And they are much harder to produce than a burned cd! My only guess for this is that arcade operators really didn't want to spend $500 for a cart.

[TheSonicRetard]

I've seen pirated copies of Sonic CD before.

[mick_aka]

Not from back in the day, but I got stung with a 'pirate' copy of Snatcher at a Retro & Antique Market, but it was VERY well done, high quality laser printed inserts + spine card with corner perforations, printed discs on archival CDRs (silver bottomed), manual, the lot.

Only some very minor things gave it away, most notably that the 'pirate' had sneakily added his Geocities site address to the back insert and inside printed edge of the discs, which always made me think that it was an open reproduction rather than a scam copy.

I paid well under the odds for it anyway and considering the effort that had gone into the fake I wasn't too upset, I played the tits off it. A few years later I bundled it with a MegaCD I sold, making sure the buyer knew it was a copy of course.



People assume that it would have been easy to pirate for back in the day, but my first CD Writer was £400 and that was xmas '97, I dread to think what home duplication kit would have cost during the MegaCD's heyday.

[Melf]

We'll be posting an interview in early March with former SOA Technical Director Scot Bayless, and he mentions having to go to Japan to get one of the early CD burners. It cost around $50k. Granted, that was probably an industrial strength one for large production runs, but you can imagine how expensive it would have been for a personal one at the time.

[xelement5x]

We'll be posting an interview in early March with former SOA Technical Director Scot Bayless, and he mentions having to go to Japan to get one of the early CD burners. It cost around $50k. Granted, that was probably an industrial strength one for large production runs, but you can imagine how expensive it would have been for a personal one at the time.

I'm eagerly anticipating this article, it sounds really cool. I actually have an official Sega Mega CD-R in my collection that was designed to be given out to the press. The game burned on it is just a copy of Trivial Pursuit (I missed the Shining Force one, darn!), but it's really crazy to look at and imagine how much blank CD-Rs and CD burning hard/software cost back then.

[mick_aka]

I'm eagerly anticipating this article, it sounds really cool. I actually have an official Sega Mega CD-R in my collection

I have a few of those myself, they must have had quite a surplus as mine all have Saturn titles, docs or assets on them.

[bultje112]

is the article out yet?