Capcom Announces Unreplayable Game 535
Hatta writes "Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS will be an experience that can be completed once per customer. Using a single, unwipable save slot Capcom ensures that a second hand customer gets a second rate experience. If you buy this game used, you will be stuck with the previous owner's progress, unable to start the game fresh."
Re:Dumbest Idea Ever (Score:4, Interesting)
In a way, it might. Cracking games is a long standing tradition and quite a bit of fun.
Gave up on video games myself a long time ago, but I still remember the joy of circumventing copy protection. I bought a copy of Zork once, it came on a floppy that was copy protected. The secret to copying it was to cut a small hole in the top left side of the disk before putting it in. This allowed copying to happen.
Mind you, I was never any good at Zork and got eaten continuously by Grues. I wanted a copy because I had a bad habit of throwing disks for games across the room when I lost. As far as I was concerned, I was buying the game, not the disk, and it was abominable that people were not allowing me to enjoy the game in the manner of my choosing (watching it fly when it beat me). Having a copy was about having a backup, and who were they to tell me no? /me fondly remembers the soft feel of floppies, the slight texture on the 5.5s, the way they used to soar...
Copy II PC was the program I used to copy write protected floppies. I think Wizardry was the first one where I needed to use this. I assumed I was going to be just as bad as I was with Zork and made copies before I played the game. It took me a couple weeks to get down how to use Copy II PC - while I wanted to play the game, I did not want it to end prematurely in a fiasco.
For whatever reason, one of the Wizardry games was protected against Copy II PC, and that made me leave it on the shelf until something better came along. I think it sat there for a year until I got a copy of PC Tools, which I used for making copies and also hex editing. It was with Pool of Radiance where I really learned to shine with that one, tanking around with a party of people with 18 for all their attributes and all sorts of weapons. I am not sure if you can call it playing the game once you have screwed with all the internals, I remember it did not take me long to get bored with the game itself but I was always fascinated by what I could do with the saved game files.
Purhased a lot of games that I really hated just to screw with them. I had no interest in any of the flight simulator games that were popular back then, or the SSI simulators like Panzer Commander, or any of the Sierra games (that came along later), or things like Ancient Art of War. I would buy them to add them to a library, and would spend my time screwing with the disks and data files. I probably spent as much money on floppies as I did on actual games, if you can believe that.
Fun times. If I was a kid again, I would probably buy a copy of this game just to hack it. Hoping there are others who share the same POV.
Re:Coordinated campaign against used games (Score:4, Interesting)
Most probably in a foreign language (to you):
German:
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/the-darkness-2/news/digital_extremes,46721,2323827.html [gamestar.de]
http://www.gamesaktuell.de/Fear-3-PS3-234579/News/Fear-3-Online-Pass-nicht-im-PlayStation-Store-erhaeltlich-Gebrauchtkaeufer-ausgesperrt-831504/ [gamesaktuell.de]
http://www.c-kn.de/spielkonsolen/capcom-will-den-markt-fur-gebrauchte-videospiele-austrocknen/ [c-kn.de]
The first article is the most revealing...
English:
http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/86590/florida-sheriffs-treat-gamers-like-criminals-for-trading-in-used-games/ [vgchartz.com]
What about corrupted saves? (Score:3, Interesting)
What if your battery dies in the middle of a save? It could happen by accident. Therefore I must assume one of two things:
1. Once you finish the game it never saves again (seems most likely) also giving zero replay/after-play value.
2. Like most cartridge games, if it detects a corrupted save, it deletes the save. Therefore you can work around this "feature" by switching the 3DS off in the middle of a save.