/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.10725851]

Japan has a big underground piracy circle for gaming, but they keep it hush-hush due to strict copyright laws, and hosting on foreign servers (Russian, Swedish, etc) isn't realistic because in the past other large piracy circles that did the same were still targeted by the Japanese government.

The only way to get in is to know the right people. The only reason the English speaking world even knows it exists is because one of the hackers in the rhythm game community traded notes with the English community when they were setting up their network. They managed to talk him into sharing some of his rhythm game data with sows (the western private tracker for that kind of thing). For most of the 2010s, that's where a good chunk of rhythm game dumps originated. From the few details he brought back about it, they have basically everything you could imagine dumped and a good amount of shit working that we don't in the west.

The Japanese pirates have basically anything you can imagine. They have the full Satellaview catalogue including the lost Kirby games and that F-Zero broadcast that western fans had to recreate through a romhack. They have the PCE prototype of Cocoron, and that unreleased Fantasy Zone game. They have cracked versions of old Japanese flip phone games like those Mega Man ones that recently got cracked. They have so many prototypes and unreleased games that it makes the gigaleak look like child's play, and there's so many scanned design documents and art from all kinds of games from early in development. They even have standalone emulators for arcade games that don't work in mame.

And none of you will ever get access to it, as it could lead to it all getting shut down. There are some gaijin members but they all live in Japan and joined after befriending members at retro arcades like Mikado. On of them actually runs a big official public archival group and he had been paramount in making sure this stuff is properly archived so that its never lost.

[Anonymous No.10725857]

How do you know all this OP? Not that I distrust you haha.

[Anonymous No.10725868]

Also they're paranoid about takedowns and they hate slow downloads. So while there is an online element to it for relevant stuff like rhythm games that require a network, much of it is operated like a library. There are physical servers hidden in some of the more hardcore arcades. They have a catalogue and you tell them what you want and provide a removable storage medium and they will give you the files. It takes time, but it makes it harder to get shut down. There's multiple arcades in on this so you don't have to go to a single arcade, and this is also how some of those arcades stay in business. Mikado is a member. Some of the membr arcades shut down though, like that one in Saitama where competitive Puyo players hung out. The biggest member was that arcade warehouse that operated out of a building owned by Taito - which shows you just how big this circle is. The reason they had to move out from the Taito warehouse is because it was discovered that they had some of the servers there and were providing files to people.

[Anonymous No.10725871]

>>10725857
I hang out at Mikado a lot and compete in their competitions. If you go often you get to know people, and if you get invited out for drinks they sometimes slip up when topics like unreleased games comes up.

[Anonymous No.10725874]

>>10725851
>i had to shave it

[Anonymous No.10725880]

>>10725851
do they have the sonic 1 tokyo toy show demo?

[Anonymous No.10725895]

>>10725851
>For most of the 2010s, that's where a good chunk of rhythm game dumps originated.
Which ones? Beatmania games were dumped back in the early 2000's, in the 2010's by Guru, or recently by Windy Fairy. DDR games all seem to have been handled by smf.

[Anonymous No.10725904]

>>10725880
No clue. They have binders with sheets listing what they have and there's pictures, and you can look through it and pick what you want. I wanted Cocoron for PC Engine so I got to look through the PC Engine binder, Mega Drive stuff is in a different binder. If you've ever been to a card shop, it's a similar system. You find the guy who manages it and he brings you the binder for the system you want. You leave your flash drive with him and you pick it up another day.

I didn't get my flash drive yet but I was told you get a member number and they have a tool which attaches your member number to the rom file somehow, and that's how they catch leakers in order to protect the circle. If you leak it and they find your member number attached to the leaked file you'll get kicked out. You don't even know what your number is so you can't just go in with a hex editor. Some members got kicked out in the past for leaking and they're not even allowed in the arcades themselves anymore.

[Anonymous No.10725905]

[Anonymous No.10725907]

>>10725851
Do they have Kirby GCN?
I've made it my life's mission to find that game before I die, so having a general location to look (Japanese arcades) would be a massive help.

[Anonymous No.10725908]

>>10725895
You would be better off asking someone with access to sows I'm not into rhythm games

[Anonymous No.10725912]

>>10725904
i want to believe you, but
> they have a tool which attaches your member number to the rom file somehow, and that's how they catch leakers in order to protect the circle
> You don't even know what your number is so you can't just go in with a hex editor.
that sounds like bullshit. what leaked games came from this secret cabal? surely autists that poke around with this shit would notice the random garbage data?
and that doesn't prevent people from taking screenshots or video without being compromised.

[Anonymous No.10725913]

>>10725907
That's a great question. When I get my flash drive back I'll ask about it.
>general location to look
If you hang around Mikado, look for a guy named Ikarashi. Don't get his name confused as Igarashi. Get on his good side and he might let you in if you talk about the game. Mikado has a few locations so heads up, and he's not always there. You should probably participate in events or you'll be viewed as an outsider. I met him at a KoF competition they did.

[Anonymous No.10725917]

>>10725912
Ok, so don't believe me

[Anonymous No.10725924]

>>10725917
with a cop out like that, i have to think you're bullshitting. you could tell us what leaked games we have that came from this scene, and that would allow someone to look for weird blocks of data. clearly the people who've already have been kicked out wont be affected, and you've already given enough information to identify yourself, so there's not much reason not to at this point.

[Anonymous No.10725925]

>https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Metroid_(Sega_pitch)
I wonder if some unfinished prototype of this exists

[Anonymous No.10725932]

Anon. You just made some bullshit to post your waifu again.

[Anonymous No.10725951]

>>10725924
I told you what I know and I told you how to get in. I can't tell you things that I don't know.
>you've already given enough information to identify yourself
Ok? It doesn't matter if you know who I am, I don't operate any of the libraries and I haven't leaked anything.
>>10725932
Nah, I'll post her anyway

[Anonymous No.10725982]

>>10725951
>I haven't leaked anything.
except the existence of a cabal so secretive they allegedly fingerprint their ROMs, from which you openly claim to be in the process of obtaining a specific ROM that isn't publicly available

i genuinely want to believe, anon: if you post some new, clean screenshots of PCE cocoron that aren't the same ones floating around for the past 20 years, ill eat crow. bonus points if you get your hands on the sonic 1 1990 demo.

im not asking you leak the ROMs either, i just want to know that japanese autists actually have a grip on this valuable shit, even if what we have access to is extremely limited. it's better than the status quo idea of there being a limited number of faggot hoarders who dont even like video games who ruin auctions for everyone else.

[Anonymous No.10726000]

>>10725982
People in the rhythm game community have known about this for years, I haven't said anything new

I already said I don't know if they have that sonic demo. That cart was literally stolen .

[Anonymous No.10726010]

>>10725851
>They have the full Satellaview catalogue
more than enough evidence to prove you're lying.

it just sounds like you are exaggerating a group of bounty hunters who sell pirated copies of games of lesser-known titles. if anything you are getting scammed.

lost media/archive groups would not try to capitalize this hard on content that is not even theirs unless something fishy is going on.

[Anonymous No.10726028]

>>10726010
If I was lying and you had evidence of it you would have posted the evidence.
>sell
They're not selling anything. It's like a library.

[Anonymous No.10726032]

>>10725851
anon, I...

[Anonymous No.10726035]

>>10726010
even if OPs post sounds pretty larpy i wouldnt be surprised if this was actually the case. there is a massive split between the japanese and western internet. shit that is just common knowledge to japanese fans doesnt get overseas until some weeb fan decides to translate some shit that everybody just assumed was "irrelevant" for the past 2 decades.

[Anonymous No.10726037]

>>10726032
DELET THIS NOW

[Anonymous No.10726042]

>>10726037
>noooo my secret hacker club has been exposed

[Anonymous No.10726085]

>>10725851
>They have the full Satellaview catalogue including the lost Kirby games and that F-Zero broadcast that western fans had to recreate through a romhack. They have the PCE prototype of Cocoron, and that unreleased Fantasy Zone game. They have cracked versions of old Japanese flip phone games like those Mega Man ones that recently got cracked. They have so many prototypes and unreleased games that it makes the gigaleak look like child's play, and there's so many scanned design documents and art from all kinds of games from early in development. They even have standalone emulators for arcade games that don't work in mame.


So they're basically bitch-ass collectors who keep their stuff behind seven locks. Fuck them, then.

[Anonymous No.10726090]

>>10725851
I don't really care about it, they can hold onto those games if they want, there are more than enough free ROMs to play. But I want to lick Amy's knees so much like you wouldn't believe

[Anonymous No.10726101]

>>10726090
That's a low-tier scrub desire. For me it's the butthole.

[Anonymous No.10726109]

>>10726032
I will never seed again... I was one of the lucky ones that didn't get raided... just in case I deleted terabytes of ROMs that I had kept in storage for >24 hours...

[Anonymous No.10726120]

>>10725851
Cool story bro.
Too bad my uncle works at Nintendo's copyright enforcement department and is tracing your IP right now.

[Anonymous No.10726159]

>>10726120
I named enough groups, people and places that if I were lying it would be easy to prove

[Anonymous No.10726167]

>>10725851
>The Japanese pirates have basically anything you can imagine.
So does a simple google search.
>[name of game i want to play] rom
>oh look there it is

>b-but my ultra rare garbage jank collection
don't care, not aspergers

[Anonymous No.10726170]

>>10726167
>don't care, not aspergers
Don't you lie to us. You post here.

[Anonymous No.10726208]

do care. am aspergers.

[Anonymous No.10726227]

>>10726167
>[name of game i want to play] rom
>oh look there it is
I want to play the Sonic 1 Tokyo Toy Show demo or the PC Engine remake of Cocoron

[Anonymous No.10726268]

>>10725851
>and that unreleased Fantasy Zone game
Space Fantasy Zone?
Yeah we also have it.
I'm interested in unreleased games from 5th to 7th gen so I would love to meet them and ask what we missed out on.
Cute Amy btw.

[Anonymous No.10726285]

>>10726227
you don't actually want to play those.

[Anonymous No.10726291]

>>10725851
This is what's killing preservation. Selfish assholes that want to keep it artificially rare.

[Anonymous No.10726314]

>>10726285
>You don't actually want to play the remake of your favorite game with improved graphics or the stolen demo of your other favorite game that's drastically different than the final product
Speak for yourself faggot

[Anonymous No.10726316]

>>10726291
>This is what's killing preservation. Selfish assholes who work hard to make sure that the gaming corpos, the government, and the copyright laws in their country can't stop them from preserving history.

[Anonymous No.10726324]

Yuzo Koshiro is in on that. He lives near Tachikawa by the way, you can find him around there sometimes. He's very friendly and willing to share but don't talk about it on Twitter or he will deny it.

[Anonymous No.10726325]

post proof or kill yourself. actually, since you're a furfag, just go ahead and kill yourself anyway. you don't even live in japan you larping fuck. reminds me of those kids in school who told me they had "gamecube 2"

[Anonymous No.10726352]

>>10726325
nta but there are at least a handful of anons that regularly browse vr who do actually live in japan and there is at least one regular anon here who is japanese (he has posted his passport a few times). of all the boards full of larpers and schizos on this site, vr is the one board where if someone claims to live in japan they are most likely telling the truth. you should lurk more before commenting, tourist. and I think anon is legit, this same topic is also being discussed in another thread and it seems probable.

[Anonymous No.10726356]

>>10726291
What do you propose then, faggot?
Make it public so suits can rape your ass in court and take everything down, removing it permanently from the internet?

[Anonymous No.10726359]

>>10726356
he wants everything to be on a single website so that it can be taken down

[Anonymous No.10726497]

On the one hand I wouldn't be surprised if something like this existed for particularly niche things like rhythm games. On the other I also wouldn't be surprised if these apparent trading groups don't have the hot shit that betakids jerk off to, since many of the prolific Japanese collectors who have confirmed copies of such rarities appear to be tech illiterate dadgamers, solely interested in owning and trading the physical media, who pop their rare cartridges into memeshit emulator consoles and play them for five minutes via composite on an LCD for twittercred before boxing them up. And when they do actually bother to dump them, seem entirely ignorant as to how to analyze the data.