Jaguar Gamedrive Questions

[Cousin Vinnie]

Sorry to sound like an idiot, but Im new to the Jaguar scene. If I buy a Jaguar Gamedrive, where do I get the official release and homebrew roms?

 

Funk

[PFG 9000]

Orionsoft (Google it) offers roms of their games for sale from their website.  Many homebrew games and demos are free.  You can Google them to find them, or search the forums here.  As for the commercial library, a Google search will give you everything you're looking for.

[JagChris]

US or UK?

Edited July 28, 2022 by JagChris

[Cousin Vinnie]

6 minutes ago, JagChris said:

US or UK?

USA USA USA

[Gummy Bear]

2 hours ago, Cousin Vinnie said:

USA USA USA

So you want 3 sets of ROMs? 

[juansolo]

Most things aren't currently released in the ROM format.

 

Which is becoming increasingly a problem for anyone not in the US as it's now so expensive to import the physical carts from AA. Great though these games are, you're now looking at £100, plus duty, if you order a single Jag game from AA via eBay ( https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325267564441 ). Which frankly has become too expensive.

 

I've made my decision now to buy Champ Games for the 2600 via rom as even direct, $60 per game, plus delivery, plus duty comes to frankly silly money when I want three of them. So I'm now just waiting for the other two to appear on their site and when they do, I'll get all three as ROMs for $60 which is way more paletable. Best will in the world, I love homebrew, I love having the physical carts, but it's getting silly now. I genuinely hope that other homebrew devs follow suit and offer their ROMs to buy and download.

 

I sold my GameDrive because the one reason to own one as far as I'm concerned is to play homebrew and none of them are available as ROMs (I'm obviously not counting the ST ports. Though I do have one of those as a physical cart curtosy of Gaztee, and if Super Sprint ever happens, I'll be there like a shot for that one also). There are a handful of commercial releases worth playing, which if you're being charitable comes to maybe 5 games. At this point in time it was just easier to buy the bare carts and jump through the hoops required to buy the homebrews.

 

Sorry to go on a rant, I'm just letting some of my frustration out (hoping my Gravitic Mines lands soon...).

Edited July 28, 2022 by juansolo

[+Sauron]

On 7/28/2022 at 12:34 AM, juansolo said:

I sold my GameDrive because the one reason to own one as far as I'm concerned is to play homebrew and none of them are available as ROMs (I'm obviously not counting the ST ports. Though I do have one of those as a physical cart curtosy of Gaztee, and if Super Sprint ever happens, I'll be there like a shot for that one also). There are a handful of commercial releases worth playing, which if you're being charitable comes to maybe 5 games. At this point in time it was just easier to buy the bare carts and jump through the hoops required to buy the homebrews.

 

Sorry to go on a rant, I'm just letting some of my frustration out (hoping my Gravitic Mines lands soon...).

Give it time. The GD is relatively new, and sooner or later homebrews will start becoming available for it. Nothing in the Jag scene happens overnight.

 

 

[+CyranoJ]

On 7/28/2022 at 5:04 PM, juansolo said:

I sold my GameDrive because the one reason to own one as far as I'm concerned is to play homebrew and none of them are available as ROMs

I get your point, but....

 

Project One, SuperflyDX,  Beebris, Downfall, HMS Raptor, Rocks Off, Expressway, Degz, Kobayashi Maru, Rocketeer, DragonKeep, Biopede, Gravitic Mines (DEMO)...

Tiles, 2049, Barbarian (Various), Duckie Egg, Fallen Angels, Gemrace, Gryzzles, Do The Same, Tube (and SE)...

 

Not games, but still time and effort given by devs for free:

ULS, RLN, RMAC, RAPTOR, rB+, JagStudio, Removers, Virtual Jaguar (all versions), etc, etc...

 

I mean I could go on...

 

I also have a few more games I'll be releasing for free in the future, and then bundling into a compilation later.

 

When so much is given away freely, asking people to buy some of the bigger stuff to fund them is so bad?

 

I know you specifically want ROMs for your GD, but that isn't really the fault of the devs. Blame the people who sell copies on ebay/etsy - but more so, blame the people who buy them from these sellers.

 

Saying all of that, I do hope one day to have digital downloads, but given development time and production costs, don't expect them to be $2.99

(I see above you mentioning Champ's downloads, so that isn't directed at you, Juan!)

 

Out of interest, if the physical copies in the AA store had a digital version attached (Not sold seperately), would that have swayed your thoughts?

[+cubanismo]

FWIW, I recently tried to rip my legitimately purchased copies of Rebooteroids and Gravitic Mines to play on the Game Drive, and it didn't work. Rebooteroids redscreens, and Gravitic Mines works up to the menu, but glitches out and freezes when trying to start a game.

 

The Rebooteroids rip works fine on the Skunkboard, but Gravitic Mines has ROM content well below $802000, which is one of the easiest ways to defeat current Skunkboard BIOS's. I've dumped them multiple times using both the Jaglink/UART dumper and @ZerosquaredBJL dumping program (for Rebooteroids), and all attempts result in the same md5 checksum, so I'm pretty confident it's not a bad transfer. @CyranoJD o these titles have some kind of copy protection to prevent playing dumped ROMs? Given the bad behavior of eBay jerks, I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but I would kind of suck for legit customers like myself.

[+Sauron]

49 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

@CyranoJD o these titles have some kind of copy protection to prevent playing dumped ROMs? Given the bad behavior of eBay jerks, I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but I would kind of suck for legit customers like myself.

You already have the cart. Is it that difficult to swap out the JagGD for the cart of a homebrew game? Of course, I do get it. You own a copy of the game, therefore you should be able to do with it as you please as long as that doesn't constitute giving it away to others for free or selling copies of it. But on a practical level there's no need for legit customers to dump the ROM. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people for patience until a proven model of digital sales that works well for both developers and customers becomes available.

 

[juansolo]

3 hours ago, CyranoJ said:

Out of interest, if the physical copies in the AA store had a digital version attached (Not sold seperately), would that have swayed your thoughts?

Not really, as the point of getting the ROMs would be to buy the game, but not have to pay the same amount again in postage/duty fees. I'm not wanting them for the convenience of using a flash card (I don't have one for the Jag any more for a start), I would prefer to buy them physically on the Jaguar and I don't really have an issue with the USD cost of them, just importing from the US these days is biblically expensive to the UK (and that'll soon apply to the rest of Europe also, given that they're poised to implement the same idiotic import laws that we've adopted since Brexit). I have no issues whatsoever with Champ's way of doing things and their costs. I don't find that unreasonable at all.

 

I'm just looking/hoping for options... Regional distribution, purchasable downloadable ROMs, cheaper (cart only) versions of games. Something to make it feasable to buy homebrew here. Because the way things are going, it's becoming too expensive to buy anything physically from the States.

Edited July 30, 2022 by juansolo

[+cubanismo]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

You already have the cart. Is it that difficult to swap out the JagGD for the cart of a homebrew game?

First of all, I didn't ask for anything other than info. I acknowledge piracy is a thing, and I stated in my post I understand why devs might want to put antipiracy measures in a ROM they sell. It's their choice. I just asked if such a thing happened in these carts so I'd know if I should not bother trying to get them to work, or if I'm just dumping them wrong. Again, not trying to get into whether I have the right to play them via dumped content. That's a messy moral thing I don't want to touch. I didn't sign any EULA or anything stating I can't try though, and I believe dumping a product you own for your own personal use is covered by fair use, so I don't believe I'm doing anything illegal in the US at least.

 

Now, you've made some assumptions about how I use my cartridges, and if you are a dev considering antipiracy measures, take into account you may not know how your customers want to use the thing they buy. In fact, I guarantee you don't as a general rule. Customers do all kinds of crazy stuff. In my case, I travel around. I have Jaguars stashed a few places, and I bring one with me sometimes. I obviously have plenty of Skunkboards, and I have a Gamedrive I can easily shove in my backpack. However, I can't shove all the real cartridges I want to play in my backpack. Also, I just don't want to. I have, after all, a device that can play them all from an SD card. Another option is to buy multiple copies and stash them with my stashed Jaguars. I'm fortunate enough that's an option, even if it seems like it should be unnecessary if I'm the only one playing them. However, then I have multiple save games. I only want one.  I take my Rayman save game with me wherever I go and just flash it to the EEPROM or put the .e2p file on the game drive, then download it back to my server when I'm done. I currently can't do that with Gravitic Mines.

 

Now again, I didn't ask anyone to make this work. I am probably a pretty unique user, and I don't expect the world to cater to me. However, if you are developing a game and are considering such things, be careful about making assumptions when you're determining the impact of antipiracy measures.

 

Also, it would be nice if such things were disclosed on product store pages. I haven't investigated further, so I don't know if these particular ROMs have antipiracy measures, nor whether the GD locks out ROMs like the Skunkboard BIOS does (though anyone with an assembler can trivially disable this part of the Skunk BIOS), but it seems like something consumers should be informed of IMHO.

[+CyranoJ]

All valid points, however disclosing if such features are present is not required, nor should it be, if the product, as sold, works as intended and does nothing nefarious to the hardware or environment it is intended to run in.

 

eg, Sony rootkits do NOT fall under the above.

[+Sauron]

11 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

First of all, I didn't ask for anything other than info. I acknowledge piracy is a thing, and I stated in my post I understand why devs might want to put antipiracy measures in a ROM they sell. It's their choice. I just asked if such a thing happened in these carts so I'd know if I should not bother trying to get them to work, or if I'm just dumping them wrong. Again, not trying to get into whether I have the right to play them via dumped content. That's a messy moral thing I don't want to touch. I didn't sign any EULA or anything stating I can't try though, and I believe dumping a product you own for your own personal use is covered by fair use, so I don't believe I'm doing anything illegal in the US at least.

 

Now, you've made some assumptions about how I use my cartridges, and if you are a dev considering antipiracy measures, take into account you may not know how your customers want to use the thing they buy. In fact, I guarantee you don't as a general rule. Customers do all kinds of crazy stuff. In my case, I travel around. I have Jaguars stashed a few places, and I bring one with me sometimes. I obviously have plenty of Skunkboards, and I have a Gamedrive I can easily shove in my backpack. However, I can't shove all the real cartridges I want to play in my backpack. Also, I just don't want to. I have, after all, a device that can play them all from an SD card. Another option is to buy multiple copies and stash them with my stashed Jaguars. I'm fortunate enough that's an option, even if it seems like it should be unnecessary if I'm the only one playing them. However, then I have multiple save games. I only want one.  I take my Rayman save game with me wherever I go and just flash it to the EEPROM or put the .e2p file on the game drive, then download it back to my server when I'm done. I currently can't do that with Gravitic Mines.

 

Now again, I didn't ask anyone to make this work. I am probably a pretty unique user, and I don't expect the world to cater to me. However, if you are developing a game and are considering such things, be careful about making assumptions when you're determining the impact of antipiracy measures.

 

Also, it would be nice if such things were disclosed on product store pages. I haven't investigated further, so I don't know if these particular ROMs have antipiracy measures, nor whether the GD locks out ROMs like the Skunkboard BIOS does (though anyone with an assembler can trivially disable this part of the Skunk BIOS), but it seems like something consumers should be informed of IMHO.

Don't get so touchy about it. The points I raised are all quite valid, as are the ones you raised as well. Also, don't assume that developers have no idea what their customers want from them, especially when it comes to the homebrew market. I think it's safe to say that pretty much all homebrewers are "customers" first and foremost, and are well aware of the many ways in which people want to use whatever games they purchase. Whatever measures they take to combat piracy or profiteering is not only up to them, they are also well within their right to not disclose whether such measures have been taken or not. As I'm sure you're aware, advertising that a product has anti-piracy measures is pretty much begging for pirates to take their best crack at it.

 

 

 

[+cubanismo]

7 minutes ago, CyranoJ said:

disclosing if such features are present is not required, nor should it be, if the product, as sold, works as intended

That's the thing though. "as intended" is subjective if you don't disclose exactly what that means. E.g., will games using some clever trick for anti-piracy on the Jaguar work on some future FPGA-based Jaguar console? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that's not an intended useage, but it's only implied that these things are only intended to work on the currently available Jaguar consoles. No one ever thought embedding the CD and/or memory track BIOS in a CD game would be a problem either, for example, but then I wrote a Skunkboard memory track emulator, and it doesn't work for games that did this. No foul play involved in that case AFAICT, and AFAIK it only affects products given away for free. I'm not trying to say it's wrong or evil to make assumptions about the platform. I'm also not trying to assert you must disclose things, but I personally think it's a good idea, so the consumer can make their own decision about whether they agree with the "working as intended" part. I also don't think it weakens an anti-piracy measure to admit such a thing exists. Anyone with the skill to break such things can easily determine if they exist on their own anyway.

[+CyranoJ]

The game is sold for the Jaguar on a cartridge you put in a Jaguar.

 

It quite literally doesn't need to disclose anything for any future device.  Thats like saying a car manufacturer should disclose you can't fit thrusters where the wheels are for when we get skyroads.  If it doesn't work on a future device, thats for the future device to fix.

 

If some future FPGA Jaguar fails to run it, then it isn't accurate enough. It's a bit like fixing games to run on emulators.... that is 100% completely backwards thinking, imho.

[+CyranoJ]

Getting back to the point above, this is something we have been considering for a long time, and we do hope to have a digital download solution for my games (I can't and won't speak for other developers) to be available for people with GameDrive devices.

 

We hope to make this available for:

• People who previously bought a physical copy direct from AtariAge (If we are able - Licensing issues will prevent this on some titles)
• Future new Reboot games purchased direct from AtariAge

It will be limited to one digital copy per purchase. People who bought a game indirectly (ie, re-sold from someone else) will almost certainly not be supported.

It is possible digital only sales will be made available.

 

I don't know when, but stay tuned - as I said, where possible, existing purchasers of physical copies will have a digital GameDrive option.