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Games Entertainment

Bleem's shipping-the exe that is 56

Posted by Hemos from the at-long-last dept.
Twitch writes "Looks like the guys over at Bleem finally managed to get their Playstation emulator for the PC out, in spite of repeated attempts by Sony to prevent it. Check it out at their website. " From what I understand, they are going to begin shipping within the next week. Excellent. I've been informed that it started shipping a few weeks ago-but some people aren't so happy with it. Click below to read more. What's come out now is the actual exe.
Hemos,
Bleem started to ship over 2-3 weeks ago. The actual exe was just released on the 15th. You buy the CD from them, which just has DirectX 6.1 on it and some sort of key. You then download the exe from them, and it checks for your CD key. Some sort of way of preventing piracy I guess. It annoys the hell out of me because you need to put the CD Key CDROM in your cdrom drive every time you want to play Bleem!. Not to mention that it does not work with my Sony DVD IDE drive. I had to borrow a friend's CDROM just to play the damn thing. It's got a lot of bugs.. I'd wait to order it if I were you. It's also got some reported problems with Voodoo cards.

Crypt242
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Bleem's shipping-the exe that is More

Bleem's shipping-the exe that is

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  • Missing the point (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You guys are all REALLY missing the point here. It's not 'turning a $2000 pc into a $200 console' if you don't exactly own the console in the first place, now is it?

    While the key system DOES seem to be a strange idea-- I fully expect to see pirated versions out within a week-- I don't see how that has anything to do with compatibility problems.

    As for preannouncing, they HAD a product when they announced it. Setbacks DO happen in the industry, and it sure looks like Sony wants to stop these *any* way they can.

    As for bugs, when was the last time you bought *any* software that was bug-free?

    Give them time, things will settle down and become stable with a few fix releases.

  • According to this article [wired.com] in Wired:

    Sony will begin shipping the development workstation in September, said Phil Harrison, Sony's vice president of research and development. The machine, to be priced under US$20,000, will be based on the same chipset as the PlayStation II, including the 128-bit 'Emotion Engine' and graphic chips.

  • Actually... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You've got the order backwards, the .exe was just posted on the website, nothing else, it is designed to work with the CD Key that was sent out to the people who ordered it (the thing that was 'sent out a few weeks ago), and encryted password, a waste of a cd, is burned onto the special Bleem! disc. The full .exe checks for the CD before it'll fully load (can anyone say crack?). Anyway, with the lame CD key technology they can have new versions bugfixes and whatever without having top send out new CDs, just thought you shoud know...

  • Ken Kutaragi, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and former manager of Sony's Playstation research and development, is known to be interested in Linux and the possibility of encouraging other parts of Sony to adopt their new CPU e.g. for embedded systems products. However, a recent interview with Kutaragi [asiabiztech.com] by NikkeiBP showed his initial goal is limited to using Linux only as a development environment to create software for the Playstation. Look up Sony!

    Real-Time Linux [nmt.edu] + PSX CPU would be a great environment for embedded systems. Sony should realise the opportunities and start marketing in the next year or two before the price/performance advantage is lost. Sony could get Linux ported to the PSX with absolutely minimal investment assuming they gave adequate technical documentation to the open source community. Perhaps somebody in Sony (Japan) will read this and take up the suggestion.

    Signed, 9cd1ecb08da5d9f864a14310d4607185

  • Sony doesn't get it. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sony looses money on every PlayStation sold, and only makes it up through game sales. Instead of fighting the guys who write emulators, couldn't Sony develop it's own emulator, sell a $30 CD-ROM drive capable of reading their black CDs (that's how much double speed drives went for, last I checked), preferably with some sort of copy protection, and then have all the benefits of people buying PlayStation games, without the financial looses of people buying PlayStations?

    - pmitros (possibly with dated information)
  • Word on the IRC channels is that it still has some problems running on 3dfx cards. I recieved my CD Key in the mail two weeks ago, and can't wait to get home and try it. Has anyone else that already has it had problems getting it to run?
  • If you already have a PC, $25 for bleem is alot cheaper than a $200 console... Looks much nicer on a voodoo card and SVGA monitor than on a nasty TV set.

  • At this point, I'd trust them as far as I could throw them. It wasn't Sony that kept delaying them--it was their own incompetence. Implementing a ridiculous key-CD copy protection system? In 1999? That's what made them miss their first ship date--when they put in the key disc code, everything else stopped working. Ha.

    I feel sorry for them getting hassled at E3 by Sony reps, but in all other respects they deserve all the abuse they get.

    Lord, I hate preannouncements with the emu scene. If they had just shut up until they had a product, and perhaps forgotten about the keydiscs, maybe they wouldn't be such a joke.
  • | If you already have a PC, $25 for bleem is alot
    | cheaper than a $200 console... Looks much nicer
    | on a voodoo card and SVGA monitor than on a
    | nasty TV set.

    1) It's a $130 console - NEW. Cheaper if you look hard enough.

    2) It takes more than a $130 investment in PC hardware to get the thing to run good on your average PC. Sure, if you've already sunk the money it's probably not too expensive, but otherwise ...

    3) A PSX is less hassle. Plain and simple. Pop in "Colony Wars: Vengeance", plug in the Dual Analog Flightstick, and I'm there. Now where was that DLL or .so again? :)

    4) It's too early. Sure, if PSXen were hard to come by, I could see the point - like MAME for old arcade games that are damned near impossible to find these days. Or UAE - since Amigas aren't exactly easy to come by. But a PSX?

    5) I have a nice TV set, hooked to a nice stereo system. The PSX looks pretty damned good hooked up to the TV with s-video. And the sound - oh my! Contrast with the PC which, while it has a good trinitron monitor, it's only 17". And I only have a 75WPC stereo system hooked to the computer. (A real stereo, not "multimedia speakers", but still - no competition for the living room).

    6) (And the most important reason this thing is lame) - No Linux port. :)

    ... give it a while and it'll show up in mame. ;)
  • True Enough, ID did have a Key system, and it was cracked within a few weeks. Allowed someone to install every ID game up to quake on their machine for free.
  • The software mode works pretty good for me seeing that I've got a PII 450 but the D3D mode with my Voodoo II doesn't have textures unless I enable managed textures and once I do that the emulation becomes so slow that it annoys me to much to play. But overall I'm happy that bleem! was finally released. I've been waiting for a long time to use this silly bit of code and now I have it and I'm smiling :) I'm not worried about the compat. issues that are running amok. I'm sure they will be worked out with time. Randy, their coder, seems like he knows what he's doing. Alright I'm gonna go play Megaman X4 some more now.
  • It doesn't run horribly for me in software mode. (and even that runs better than the demo did for me.)

    So D3D has some problems right now....oh well, I'm just happy I finally have a build of the .exe

    The D3D issues will work themselves out quickly with a few bug fixes. Don't worry, be happy.
  • My monitor is 19 inches and I have a very nice sound system on my computer...not to mention it's in my bedroom next to where all my friends hang out when I'm home from college. I don't have enough room to put a large TV in here on top of everything else (all geeky) that's in here. So it makes perfect sense for me to emulate the PSX...not to mention it's just cool in a techy sort of way.

    Oh yeah...and about the comment a few posts up in the thread

    Wine is not an emulator :P

    Just my $.02
  • Maybe I'm a fool or just a lover of the law.

    But I paid for bleem! and I have paid for all my playstation games.

    +

    And I don't own a PSX console. I only emulate.

    =

    Sony has a new paying customer.


    Emulation could be such a goldmine if only it wasn't scorned.
  • I agree with you here, but just wanted to point out that pretty much any CDROM drive will read the black CDs. In fact, I have not come across a CDROM drive yet that won't read them. Also, it's a standard format (ISO9660 I would assume) because you can actually look at the contents of the disc.
  • W ine
    I s
    N ot an
    E mulator

    I'd have to agree w/ you about playing console games on the couch. But, alas WINE is not an emulator, check the doc's on their page.
  • also valid in win-dos
  • I'm certainly no CD-ROM expert, but upon closer inspection, the bleem key is not a standard CD. There are around 10 circles (concentric) visible on the CD surface (much like the gap between tracks on those antique vinyl records ;-), my guess is that a CDR will be unable to duplicate this.
  • If Sony followed this plan, they'd be alienating a large chunk of their market - people who don't own a PC.

    Plus, the saleable life of any console is much longer than that of a PC, and over time, the cost to produce one goes down.
  • $200? Try $129 new, WITH a Dual Shock controller. You could find one used for under $70 if you looked. I fail to see any compelling reason to buy this product, and the CD key protection scheme is a total farce.
  • Running a platform emulator through an OS emulator? Isn't that a whole lot of hassle? Why not just shell out for a real PSX? It's not exactly a big-ticket item...
  • Hehe, you've got me there. I just don't see the point, myself, other than from a technical geekboy POV. Console games just play so much better lying on your ass on the couch, with a nice big 25" TV and a good stereo :-) Hunched over my monitor on a crappy deskchair? That's ok, but I do it 40hrs/wk at work already, plus all my goofing off at home. I need a reprieve ;-)
  • Yeah yeah yeah, that's nice. I have a 20" IBM P201 monitor (Trinitron, 19.1" viewable, .25 AG, yadyadayada), a Voodoo2, a P2-450, and Aureal Vortex sound, it's a perfectly great gaming machine.... for Quake 3 or Myth 2.

    The fact remains, however, that the essence of console gaming and computer gaming remain miles apart. I would never dream of futzing around for hours trying to get a 4 or 8 player game like Wave Race 64 or NHL 98 working on my computer, then have to find space in my office for my friends to sit. Why bother? I can just go plop down on the NICE BIG COUCH in the living room and play, and they can sit wherever they like. Furthermore, I don't have to go out and buy a bunch of new USB joysticks, that MAY or MAY NOT work properly with the package.

    Consoles are consoles, computers are computers, and never the twain shall meet. I like each for what it does, and it's cool you like the idea of playing PSX games on your PC, but count me out. It ruins the whole experience. And yes, I've tried it... R4 and Bushido Blade 2 running on a fast G3 with VGS... it kinda stunk. I also tried Soviet Strike and FF7 on the Bleem demo, and it was pretty sad... SS wouldn't load, FF7 looked like garbage, all wildly pixelated.

    Wine isn't an emulator? How amusing then that the FAQ (you can find it anywhere) for it should state in no uncertain terms, "WINdows Emulator"... Furthermore, why is the WINE newsgroup comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine? Please enlighten me. :-P
  • The original development kit for the PSX1 was about $14,000, plus the cost of the PC that you had to put it in, which was probably another few thousand, so $20000 doesn't sound too outrageous. Also, remember, that usually the publisher is the one to buy the dev kits, and then they give them to the developers, so the cost isn't really a huge issue.
  • if a publisher can't afford a few $20000 dev kits for it's developer, then how is it going to be able to afford marketing, manufacturing,and distributing the game as well?
  • After waiting for a long time, finally got bleem, and it runs horrible. The Direct3D mode is a joke, it runs better in software mode. (like the demo). What a waste.

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