Argonaut Games’ cult classic survival horror FPS Alien Resurrection has been hiding a secret for 23 years: it contains a cheat code that lets you play backup disks on PS1 without having to mod the hardware at all.
What the article didn’t mention, and it says in the video, Alien: Resurrection was possibly going to be a multi cd game at one point and the dev was experimenting with the code to get that working.
"Godsend" is a bit of an exaggeration, considering how many ways there are to get the same result without even going into emulation and stuff, but alright. It's still a fun bit of history and behind the scenes info.
A lot people like playing on genuine hardware, and this enables skipping a ton of steps to making that possible. For those select people this really is a massive convenience if maybe not a godsend.
It depends on what type of hardware. On the right console you could do this in real time with nothing but a jammed opening mechanism. I've personally swapped disks on a launch PSX just by learning the right timing and made it work 9/10 times. By 2000 I also knew of multiple places to just get hard mods, but honestly, Bleem came out in 99, so... that would have been my go-to. And now... well, now you can get a MiSTer to run those games if what you want is OG I/O.
I'm gonna say if you're a "OG hardware" kinda person, and I'm one, so I should know, you're also a OG software kind of person. I'll play a real PSX game on a real PSX for shits and giggles, but if I'm gonna burn a CD I have better ways to get that game to run if I am using bootlegs on any part of that chain. Also, if you're a OG hardware kinda person, you may be in the same boat I am and have such restricted shelf space that your default PSX vessel is a PS2 because if you can consolidate two consoles into one that's way more useful than a way to run copied CDs, although that may be a me thing.
It’s in the video provided in the article. It’s pretty complex and lengthy. You have to put in like 3 cheat code menu entries, then go to a level select option and hold down l1 and x, then the disk will stop, oh you had to keep your disc eject propped down so the console won’t detect the tray has been opened, switch out the disc, hold like triangle and x, let go of l1, triangle and x all at the same time, then it will boot into whatever pirated disc you switched out without the checks.
I can see why it’s not in the article, it’s hard to accurately write down and it would be almost as long as the article itself. That said, I don’t know how much of a godsend this is, it requires a copy of a pretty undersold and otherwise mediocre game. That said, I am not that into retro gaming so maybe this is truly a major change for the community.
Alien Resurrection came out in 2000. We had known about hot swapping PSX disks and other softmods for years by that point. So yeah, this would have been a fun quirk even when it happened. Still fun, though.
The quad swap trick worked… but was a fucking nightmare. If you got the timing off by just a second, the game would either not boot…boot and crash…or have no sound…and there were four opportunities to fuck this up. Source: my own experience
To have a flawless swap trick that stops the drive was much much better
For as much as I engaged with the PSX I was an early adopter (I'm talking keep it upside down because overheating early), so swaps were trivial.
Maybe this is the reason why the guy bothered with it as late as 2000, get some later models on equal ground there. Although by that time it was also trivial to get some hard mods, also.
I doubt it, it’s much easier to mod the console. Or just use a boot disc (or whatever those were called, I had the chip mod, so I don’t remember, but my friend used to have the disc which he had to insert before playing a pirated game).
Look, it’s very simple - even a cocaine addled exec can see. You remove a fair deal of your gameplay time, say 1/3, and focus budget and development time on quality control and polish. I.e quality over quantity. This is a matter of management and Bethesda’s management is dumb. It’s not rocket science, it’s just business.
Well I don’t know how to make a game, but I do know how to write interesting characters and stories, and Emil clearly doesn’t, so something something glass houses, Bethesda.
Just like I don’t need to be a ship captain to tell when the titanic is sinking. It doesn’t matter how it’s made, a product is bad if your model audience doesn’t like it. Starfield isn’t some avant-gard experimental piece, it was meant to appeal to the masses. He can’t use the excuse of opinionated craftsmanship to excuse its poor quality.
I wish people knew more about the way business works in general. Focusing on quality of product or service is a strategy only the smallest businesses can afford. In the big leagues it’s all about triggering purchasing behavior and minimizing price sensitivity by using well-proven psychological techniques to sell cheap minimally-viable and soon to be obsolete products to as many people as possible, and sell them the solutions to the problems left in the original product as “optional” add-ons. Developers all want to make good games, but the businesses they work for couldn’t care less since they make their money in other ways. Welcome to the 21t century, consumers!
Yeah but businesses typically don’t go out and rub that in their customers faces. That’s basically what most of the complaints are about: Bethesda should just shut the fuck up and swallow their pride. Is some/most of the stuff people throw at them unfair? Likely. Is it completely unwarranted? No. Should they defend it? Also no.
A lot of these comments from developers read to me like “We really tried guys, but you don’t know what it was like.” Given this is usually without commenting that industry norms are toxic since that can get you blacklisted. Their marketing department doing damage control is of course way less sympathetic to me.
I would consider Todd Howard to be part of development (since he directs the creative and narrative angle, from what I understand).
He defended bad performance with “get better hardware”. He defended criticism of the content with “you play the game wrong”.
Both are bullshit “excuses”. The first one was even debunked by modders who showed that there was potential for optimization. And modders are far more limited than engine devs. The game doesn’t look ugly, but there are far better looking games with more scene complexity out there that run better.
And “you play it wrong” is bullshit because if enough people play it wrong to have an effect on the rating of the game, then the game is badly designed. Part of game design is making sure the game explains itself or subtly pulls players in the right direction. Either they failed with that, or there simply is no clear direction. But that’s not the players fault.
Sounds like a terrible business model that deserves the problems it runs into. If a company doesn’t prioritize the quality of its offerings, why should anyone give them a cent?
“But throughout that time, I actually had no inkling what game development was actually like. How hard the designers, programmers, artists, producers, and everyone else worked,” he says. “The struggle to bring a vision to life with constantly shifting resources. The stress.”
Then tell us about it. Make it heard where you get Stressed and where you rub up on the state of the art. List off what had to be finished in crunch time. What got pushed by Marketing or Management. Leaving everything up to a nebulous “you don’t know” makes any criticism easily dismissed and reduces leverage against systemic issues.
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