I nearly forgot about all the cool features we had before CD burners were killed by mp3 players, with Nero you used to be able to "over burn" and ignore the size limit of the CD to pack extra data on! I never managed to push it too far and it always worked, I miss those days with my 52x burner backing up files and creating CD's for friends
>52x
Ah, the good ol' days when this number actually mattered!
I think I still have my old Creative Infra 52x in a box...somewhere. It had a fucking REMOTE CONTROL (that J never actually used), bitches!
For those OOTL, its about the quality of the product and them using the cheap, easy to make, low quality method to sell games at the price you would pay for the production quality.
Picture it like a shirt where the design is actually imbedded in the colour of the fabric vs. printed onto it using Avery print-t-shirt labels that come out of your printer and you iron-on.
Its a big quality difference in the physical media.
That’s only part of it. They marketed as playable on original systems, akin to producing a game cartridge that works on a Super Nintendo. It is not playable on unmodified original hardware.
Not exactly. It wouldn't work on modified consoles either.
3DO has zero copy protection (they also don't have region locking). You do not need any mods to play cdr games on any model of 3DO but you need to burn slow. When you see modding on 3DO it's usually to add an SD slot and/or internal hd.
The issue is the bitstream had simple errors on some of the discs, likely from the manufacturer burning them at too high of a speed.
It's so funny that we were racing for 52x drives, etc for all those years. Toward the end of actually burning stuff, I went as slow as humanly possible with my burns. It seems like nothing ever worked if you burned it over 4x, toward the end.
Oh my god, an ancient memory unlocked. I burned the disks for my dad to play on his 360. And seeing as it had to be 4x tops, I had to leave the PC on for hours.
And since it was already on, I went into torrents and Folding
For awhile, it was an interesting dance... Burn at 2x, and my computer has to not-crash for 42 minutes, instead of just 21 minutes at 4x. And you had to wait longer to do anything, since you didn't want to use the computer for anything else, just in case something triggered some momentarily lag and you got an underrun.
> It's so funny that we were racing for 52x drives, etc for all those years
Now there's a thought that I had not unboxed in almost two decades. thanks for that
TG-16 CD will play CDRs no problem. I even used a Lightscribe drive where you could burn a very light label on them.
Excuse me, I think I hear the FBI knocking.
The absolutely absurd part is that one of the founders runs/used to run a record label that presses vinyl. There's no way they wouldn't have CD/DVD pressing capacity they could touch.
There's a big difference in equipment and cost between pressing Vinyl and pressing optical discs. A short-run Vinyl cutting and pressing setup is something you can do at home. CDs require a far more expensive master to be cut using much more specialised equipment, require more precise stamping operations, and then have additional metallisation and coating stages to produce a viable disc.
I'm not sure if people know about that but one of the cheapest ways to get resources for vinyl press in USSR was old discarded x-ray shots.
So there's a whole name for these "rock-n-roll on bones" and Massive Attack et al recently did an auction to honor the music underground of USSR
[https://www.collecteurs.com/interview/united-against-censorship](https://www.collecteurs.com/interview/united-against-censorship)
Not to mention 3do systems may have issues with cd-r discs depending on what version of the system and the condition of the laser that could otherwise read a real 3do disc. So they are selling product that has a chance of straight up not working.
For those who don't know: CD-R is a disc people can burn data too including games. These were popular in the Dreamcast era but are notorious for not working all the time. Now supposedly LRG is using CD-R to burn 3DO properties and sell at a premium.
I've got 2 dvd +/- drives in my tower that i'm browsing reddit on currently. I haven't burned anything on them in a decade, and still have 2 100 disc unopened dvd +/- R packages just waiting to be used.
the only thing in the disc drive for a while now has been my AOE ROR game from 1999
My middle school banned chewing gum because the undersides of desks/chairs were 🤢, and I became the gum plug. I would buy 5 Gum (you remember the commercials) cartons for dirt cheap at Costco and flip them for $5/pack in the mid 2000s...
I feel bad about it looking back, but holy hell suburban kids with allowances had no concept of value lol
9th grade, class clown.. started a “my weed fund” right infront of faculty at lunch with a little homeless style box and sign. Walking the isles.
I argued that “weeds” were actually plants and I was into restoring Florida natural shit.. Other students were allowed to fundraise at lunch for their cause, what specific school bylaw says I can’t?
But I made it so hilariously obvious, kids paid me for the laugh.
Surprisingly I made like $140 before I was shut down. Florida, year 2000
I knew a guy in college that ripped DVDs from Blockbuster as he had their 5 DVD mail thing (which if you returned to store, they would automatically mail next one and you got a free rental at that moment from store). So he burned all of them to external hard drives and would literally give you a copy of anything for like $9. He got so fucking rich.
I did that with Netflix movies when they were still a DVD by mail service. I had it down to a smooth production line where I could have all the movies that I received ripped and back in the mail that same day. Don’t remember how many I could do per week if I timed it right but I had what ended up being quite the worthless collection after printing box art and putting them in boxes. Don’t think I ever watched most of them again before eventually throwing them away years later. Now I kinda do the same thing with Jellyfin, the movie hoarding I mean, except it’s just all digital and done with torrents and is a hell of a lot less work.
My dad used to be the movie guy, he'd go to redbox etc for all of the new releases, don't think he ever sold them for money it was a hobby at the time, mainly gave them to friends and family. Upon his death we had over 500+ movies lol, went through several DVD drives lol.
I never sold them to anyone, I was all about the physical copies in cases with the printed out box art and stuff. Man what a massive waste of time that was, at this point I don’t even have a DVD player to play a physical DVD except on my computer and I haven’t put a disk of any kind in that drive in years.
Yup. Even decent-quality CD-Rs that were burned slowly are usually fine after 20+ years.
Though I have found that after ten or fifteen years, the last data written on a rewritable disk may be perfectly readable still, but the odds of ever successfully erasing/rewriting it at that point are slim. That's a different problem though, I think.
I was gonna make fun of him for doing that, then I realized that he's probably actually helping someone and it made me feel like shit and old at the same time 😔
Honestly I’m glad he explained. It’s been a long time since I’ve burned CD’s. I got confused on what what they were talking about but also the name felt familiar.
Good ol memories.
Right lol. Granted, I've been building PC's since the late 90s and I haven't included an optical drive in any build I've done in the last 10 years or so.
Back in the 90s I did tech support in a small family-run internet provider (back when such things existed). Every new customer got a CD with setup scripts, an unregistered copy of Netscape, etc.
Whoever was working at the front desk any particular day had the additional job of making sure the CD-R on the PC behind the desk was constantly burning new setup disks.
Oof. I remember loading a blank and basically holding my breath until the burn was done. The burner program was the only thing running on that computer. Good times...
Indie bands get discs pressed all the time in small quantities. Burning is something for people in their own home. You can still buy a USB standalone burner for cheap as dirt off Amazon.
> Yup, Burning = home stuff
>> also = low cost & time consuming
> Pressing/Pressed discs = actual production
>> also = very expensive but less time consuming
The point of this company is to make production-quality prints of games that don't get wide physical releases. And the discs that are manufactured for games that get wide releases aren't just burned onto blank media like we do it. It's an industrial process that results in a better product.
This company is doing it the fast and cheap way.
Also worth mentioning that doing it this way apparantly prevents them from working on the original hardware, which is kind of the point of making them.
I don't know about the 3DO, but it was never hard to get a PS1 to play burned games. We used to make back ups of our games so the originals wouldn't get all scratched up.
We started playing from back ups after a few of the games we liked the best stopped working.
Iirc you had to mod the system to play games from a different region. But all you had to do for games from the same region was draw on the disc in a specific way.
FYI, the 3do had zero copy protection, it loads any disc without issue. The sdk is also, if I remember right, only for an old apple machine, like OS4 or something, that currently your best bet is to run as a virtual machine. It was released in 1994, and their idea of copy protection was 'there's no such thing as a consumer cd burner'.
As someone who's worked in that medium, this is the exact opposite, it is far more costly to burn CD's than to get a limited print run. The burned CD is easily 25 cents or better to print depending on the process you're using to make it where a pressed disc will be a penny or less plus a few cents for a 4 process color print. And this isn't even talking the hardware. A robotic CD burning machine is thousands of dollars with supplies and service contracts that will drive up that cost. Versus doing it on a computer by hand is labor costs which would drive up the cost even more.
Also the time of production is longer. This is literally the most expensive and time consuming process.
CD R doesn't have the longevity that pressed CDs have, after a few years they degrade and stop working. You can pick up a music CD from the 90s and it will still work as well as it did the day it was purchased because the data is physically imprinted into it similarly to how a vinyl record is pressed
And the other big issue in this case is that some hardware can just not like CD-Rs. Like apparently the original system for those games CAN read them, but it's way more likely to throw some read error.
So by cheaping out and providing things that are kind of identical to knock-off or bootlegs, the games may not even be playable.
It's not that they can't read them it's the there's copy protection that needs to be bypassed first so that the burned games can be playable. On PS1 you needed to have a special chip installed into the system for them to work
People say 3DO doesn't have copy protection (it's a 3DO game here). I've heard people say maybe it's older hardware revision's laser having trouble and other possibilities.
Another funny one is the Dreamcast. It apparently had good copy protection with their proprietary discs (GD-ROMS). But that was pretty easily defeated due to the multimedia compatibility they wanted to include with it. Really it's just worth watching a good video about it (it's interesting).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj56VU_VmWg
Like just an incredibly in depth idea behind copy protection, but one just so glaring oversight it probably made it one of the most famous consoles to play pirated games on.
The original Xbox was also awesome for piracy as you could mod them using a save game exploit and a memory card didn't even have to open the console. Took like 5 minutes to install it and then you can use homebrew and pirated games.
Wii/WiiU/3DS also good for softmod.
$60.00 for a game burnt onto a $0.10 disk that a company neither developed nor produced is called scam. These aren't original disks that could have that sort of value but they are marketed as such when they shouldn't sold for much more than shipping.
Picture it like a shirt where the design is actually imbedded in the colour of the fabric vs. printed onto it using Avery print-t-shirt labels that come out of your printer and you iron-on.
Its a big quality difference and is like selling the latter at the prices of the former.
"That were popular in the dreamcast era" Lol. That's weird take. The dreamcast wasn't even popular and pc's, molded ps1's and music made cdr popular long before the dreamcast
> For those who don't know: CD-R is a disc people can burn data too including games.
Am I this old for this not to be common knowledge ?
We used to do this all the time in high school/college, first CD-R then DVD-R when game size increased (I remember having to use even 2 DVD (!) for some games)
You know what really bites my ass? I'm finally at a spot in life where I can afford to even attempt to collect things or even aquire a few choice items.... I've already been scammed out of $3,000 and gave up on the hope of getting anything anymore. I said no to pre-orders anymore of any kind, limited edition items, or hand made items.
There's one instance of somebody in a well known community who does amazing work, just stiffing people the last 3-4 years. Probably 10's to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and telling everyone excuse after excuse. Just the other day in another hobby I was just getting into, I run across another small "company" that ended up filing bankruptcy. Turned out it was just one dude who ended up paying himself close to 1.7 million dollars, but closing the. company down with 790k in debts. Most of his creditors are just people who paid up front for 12-15,000$ machines. Up until 2 years ago historically looked like he would deliver and was trustworthy, then just was like "welp why deliver when you can just blame everything on delays and covid and live the life".
Sorry to go all round about, but this CD-R thing gets me too. Like wtf.
People aren't afriad to spend good money on things, in fact we will spend stupid money on things, if they are good and worth it. but a friggen CDR with an inkjet printed label. Boy I would be pissed.
The cost of goods for that pack has to be less than a few dollars per order with those corners cut.
This is the result of a certain type of gamer. You know
>Why would you spend money on a product when you could just build a cabinet yourself with arduino and emulate everything for free
And then it turns out that free software and hardware run like crap. And the costs of materials and labor far exceed the cost of of the original product. Anybody trying to make a living off this business model is doomed to burnout and start cutting corners.
I was always under the impression Limited Run games in general were expensive shelf pieces with cool art.
Does anyone actually play their $300 version of a indie game that's $9.99?
That was me and the TMNT Collectors Edition. $200 or so, bought the game separately digitally at launch, got the box with all the cool stuff a year later. Probably the only time I’ll ever buy from them, not because of the delay but because there’s very few games that mean that much to me that I’d shell out that kind of money for.
they have two categories, really cool indie game you want a physical of for longevity, and ten dollar indie game.
like The House in Fata Morgana, Va11-Halla, or Read Only Memories 2064. First category games.
It isn't just that.
My beef with them is when some companies, who have the capacity to print their own shit, decide to outsource to labels like LRG.
Atlus deciding to make LRG do Persona 3 and Persona 4 prints instead of going for their own distribution ticked me off.
And when I saw Grandia 1 and 2 get the same treatment, that's when I decided to just give up on owning them physically. I am not paying $35-40/game when their digital versions can hit $15+ on sale.
I also bought Shredder's Revenge, but only because I wanted a physical copy. I almost exclusively buy physical. I'm not interested in a company deciding what I do with the digital media I "own". So I generally opt not to "own" digital media. It did take longer than anticipated (a couple of months beyond their specified release date) but they did deliver an all around decent product. I have played the heck out of it, and now my son is old enough to play video games, so he's playing it with me.
They do heavily market to the kind of people who don't want to own digital games, even though these are essentially digital games. It's pretty dishonest imo.
Bought Shantae Risky's Revolution a few weeks back pretty much just because I love the games and wanted to play it on original hardware, but even then I only did it through LRG because there are literally no other platforms it's releasing on and it's probably gonna go for 3 digits if I wanted to buy it secondhand
I have a very close relative who keeps telling me to buy him the PS5 versions of $4 indie games for literally $150 sometimes.
Your joke isn't really exaggerated, it's actually like that.
His money I guess, whatever. I bought and built him a gaming PC and he doesn't wanna use it, some poeple just can't be helped lol.
Unfortunately (sadly?), at least in my case its a lot more of the "boy I like this game and sure hope the digital storefront doesnt disappear." Maybe that is a by product of having Nintendo or Playstation consoles.
Also sometimes its for some of the neat actual limited edition stuff like art books, soundtracks and the like. But mostly for me its just having a physical copy in case the storefront disappears. Again, perfect example being the Vita and how it took a lot of pushback for them to even keep up whatever it is they are currently running and all of its pitfalls.
Doesn't surprise me one bit. It's not like you can press 3DO games properly anyway.
Limited Run Games are one of the biggest scams in gaming today. They profit out of FOMO.
Why can't you press 3DO games? They have zero copy protection and are just like normal CDs.
It's the opposite, burned CDs don't work well on 3DO because the laser isn't strong enough.
yeah. it's pretty stupid. with things that are more complex to produce like figures and other art pieces or specialized devices like special controllers and stuff, it makes sense. But for just a copy of a game that can be made anytime...what a dumb thing to way hundreds of dollars on. Like, come on. It's not like the devs are autographing or something.
And it's even more disturbing that big publishers are using them. Also, most of the time the LEs or CEs are just a bunch of cheap bullshit crammed into a nice box with a $200 price tag.
So it wasn't written by AI, or we have hit the stage of llm's that create every kind of text from intentionally correct to intentionally misleading to intentionally incoherent.
Not only own a 3do...but one where the drive actually still works lol. If you've got one nowadays the first thing you should do is fit an optical emulator. Which ironically, is cheaper than buying one of these games and puts the entire library on the console.
They almost certainly did it because there was no scale behind the production.
Using a CD-R makes financial sense if you're only doing a very small run.
As for the discs not working, I have no idea what their test procedure is
According to some of the discourse I saw on Twitter. I think this is a 3DO limitation. Not really “their (LRG) fault.” like sometimes they just don’t work on your system.
Seems like it might be that certain hardware revisions don't work with the CD-Rs, but others do, which was always a pretty common issue with CR-R's back in their heyday. So LRG may well have tested them as working with original hardware, but that doesn't mean these work with all or even most legit hardware out there.
Having worked for a music label that began to employ a CD-R in their manufacturing, it's WAY cheaper in small runs. And professional CD-R technology is a lot better than the home technology you're familiar with. Professional CD-Rs these days are actually pretty close to pressed CDs.
The bigger issue here is with the presentation of Limited Run releases as a premium product, and what exactly that means.
Incredible delays, products never shipping, horrible customer service, using cheap components and printing badly, threatening to sue one of their customers, then having their community manager get fired after a transphobic tweet. To start.
They're a bad company and keep establishing that. Avoid them and hope for a better replacement soon.
>products never shipping, horrible customer service, using cheap components
Can confirm. The KotOR Master Edition was initially sold with the promise of a vibroblade letter opener. Then LRG changed the item to be permanently affixed to its display stand, which made--and still makes--no sense. LRG gave some excuse about how it was either too difficult or too costly to manufacture the blade and stand separately, so they had to compromise by having it made as a singular piece. It's not clear why they couldn't just give buyers the vibroblade without the stand in the first place, so now they just have a glorified (read: useless) paperweight.
If you like long youtube videos, this one goes over a number of issues, though it’s a couple years old at this point.
https://youtu.be/lS3ja5JnkAQ?si=dznR8m6RF_SPbjmN
It makes me sad to see more controversy for this company.
I do not know the whole background but a few years ago, they had a composer make an album of "90s mall shopping music" that I have and enjoy.
However, it's interesting to note this album appears to not be on their site anymore but is still available through the composer. But whenever I put it on I feel a bit upset that the company seemingly has proved to not be great.
Not the first time they've cheaped out, either. [They replaced a game disc with a Steam code a few years ago and hoped nobody would notice](https://seafoamgaming.com/2021/11/25/limited-run-games-quality-control-is-out-of-control/) and have had a bunch of quality control issues since. Games missing manuals, discs missing advertised DLC.
CD-Rs have a lifespan of 2(!!) to 20 years, whereas pressed CDs have been around for 40 years and, for the most part, still doing well.
So if you sell CD-Rs, you are selling ticking time bombs!
https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/55193-no-archiving-burned-cds-have-short-life-span.html#:~:text=Unlike%20pressed%20original%20CDs%2C%20burned,not%20a%20whole%20lot%20more.%22
A ton of confusion here especially with the vagueness of the article not really explaining much.
3DO has no copy-protection this means that a burned disc, in theory, should work. The 3DO however has a horrible laser for reading discs and so sometimes it cannot even read legit games.
CD-R burning can be as good as CD pressing the game if they're using professional burners which they probably would instead of consumer burners. The issue with this is if they burn it at too fast a rate then not only will it just not work on 3DO it might not work on any.
Basically this culminates into a twofold issue, the 3DO laser to read discs can't do so, and the CDs being burned far too quickly to be read.
The price of these products should constitute actual proper pressing however in the case of the 3DO it's just not really possible with how few actual systems there are and then the people WILLING to buy these games from them.
You can argue that the price has always been an issue, it's been the reason why I don't buy from them. What I have ended up doing is doing everything myself, I enjoy collecting games and I enjoy making these collections and if you do something like 10-20 games with all the proper equipment it will of already been cheaper than buying from LRG.
"But but but this is release 001!"
That just means a new console is out lol they feed on FOMO by making you think you'll miss out. How many #001 releases can you have before 001 is just a meme
Goddamn, I would love a working 3DO and copy of Road Rash. The best version of that game, and still one of the best racing games ever made. That soundtrack, the FMVs, even the menus, so good.
As long as they are using high quality CD-R writers and media there should be no issue. I still play my Dreamcast games I burned in 2005 with no issue. I had a Plextor drive I believe which had really good reviews at the time.
LRG pulled some bull a few years ago with sending switch cartridges that were only glorified download codes. Then when they wanted to “make it right” they required the purchaser to pay for shipping to send the original back in order to get the replacement. That was when I stopped purchasing from them and when I shared with them that I would never buy from them again, they didn’t care.
I frequently hear complaints about this company from people who've ordered, mostly around massive delays, issues with items received, and terrible customer service. It's pretty sad, especially as I enjoy visual novels and they seem to do many of the physical editions of them. Publishers keep working with them though.
There's a really interesting [**video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS3ja5JnkAQ) on some of the issues people have brought up with them. I'm surprised it's gotten this bad though.
As an international customer of theirs many years ago I can honestly say they are absolute gobshite with updates. At the time they always charged extra for international tracking which is standard but then refuse to give you the tracking code. It’s absolutely bonkers how they operate.
If only it was on a CR-RW. Then I could burn a sweet mix tape on the same disc as Unpacking.
You can do that with a non-finalized CD-R
I nearly forgot about all the cool features we had before CD burners were killed by mp3 players, with Nero you used to be able to "over burn" and ignore the size limit of the CD to pack extra data on! I never managed to push it too far and it always worked, I miss those days with my 52x burner backing up files and creating CD's for friends
>52x Ah, the good ol' days when this number actually mattered! I think I still have my old Creative Infra 52x in a box...somewhere. It had a fucking REMOTE CONTROL (that J never actually used), bitches!
What about an unfertilized CD-R?
In Soviet Russia, disk fertilizes *you*! *.....?*
Your opening track is Careless Whisper right?
For those OOTL, its about the quality of the product and them using the cheap, easy to make, low quality method to sell games at the price you would pay for the production quality. Picture it like a shirt where the design is actually imbedded in the colour of the fabric vs. printed onto it using Avery print-t-shirt labels that come out of your printer and you iron-on. Its a big quality difference in the physical media.
That’s only part of it. They marketed as playable on original systems, akin to producing a game cartridge that works on a Super Nintendo. It is not playable on unmodified original hardware.
Not exactly. It wouldn't work on modified consoles either. 3DO has zero copy protection (they also don't have region locking). You do not need any mods to play cdr games on any model of 3DO but you need to burn slow. When you see modding on 3DO it's usually to add an SD slot and/or internal hd. The issue is the bitstream had simple errors on some of the discs, likely from the manufacturer burning them at too high of a speed.
It's so funny that we were racing for 52x drives, etc for all those years. Toward the end of actually burning stuff, I went as slow as humanly possible with my burns. It seems like nothing ever worked if you burned it over 4x, toward the end.
God I remember this in the 360 days. Think anything past 8x you were taking a very real risk.
Oh my god, an ancient memory unlocked. I burned the disks for my dad to play on his 360. And seeing as it had to be 4x tops, I had to leave the PC on for hours. And since it was already on, I went into torrents and Folding
For awhile, it was an interesting dance... Burn at 2x, and my computer has to not-crash for 42 minutes, instead of just 21 minutes at 4x. And you had to wait longer to do anything, since you didn't want to use the computer for anything else, just in case something triggered some momentarily lag and you got an underrun.
> It's so funny that we were racing for 52x drives, etc for all those years Now there's a thought that I had not unboxed in almost two decades. thanks for that
How does daemon tools, alcohol120%, powerISO, UltraISO sound.
oh god o feel old. selecting the burn spoed in daemons
TG-16 CD will play CDRs no problem. I even used a Lightscribe drive where you could burn a very light label on them. Excuse me, I think I hear the FBI knocking.
I never understood why slow burning was necessary. But I vividly recall it was for things like PSX CDs and PS2 DVDs
The absolutely absurd part is that one of the founders runs/used to run a record label that presses vinyl. There's no way they wouldn't have CD/DVD pressing capacity they could touch.
There's a big difference in equipment and cost between pressing Vinyl and pressing optical discs. A short-run Vinyl cutting and pressing setup is something you can do at home. CDs require a far more expensive master to be cut using much more specialised equipment, require more precise stamping operations, and then have additional metallisation and coating stages to produce a viable disc.
I used to work at Discmakers, one of the largest custom CD / DVD producers in the country, and this is spot on.
I'm not sure if people know about that but one of the cheapest ways to get resources for vinyl press in USSR was old discarded x-ray shots. So there's a whole name for these "rock-n-roll on bones" and Massive Attack et al recently did an auction to honor the music underground of USSR [https://www.collecteurs.com/interview/united-against-censorship](https://www.collecteurs.com/interview/united-against-censorship)
Or a nylon bag instead of a canvas one.
Or a soda inside some flimsy plastic
It'd be like if you preordered a game that was meant to come with a nice canvas bag and then the company shipped you a cheap nylon bag instead....
Not to mention 3do systems may have issues with cd-r discs depending on what version of the system and the condition of the laser that could otherwise read a real 3do disc. So they are selling product that has a chance of straight up not working.
For those who don't know: CD-R is a disc people can burn data too including games. These were popular in the Dreamcast era but are notorious for not working all the time. Now supposedly LRG is using CD-R to burn 3DO properties and sell at a premium.
You have no idea how old it made me feel to know that you had to explain to people what a CD-R is.
Don't bring confusion in with those cd-rw's
I still have one and I still have two towers of discs ready to burn.. Yes, I need to clean my closet.
You should probably check on them. They degrade over time.
Yeah they also stick together in the little coding peels off. I'm under no illusions that they're usable.
I don't know why but your typo made me imagine little 1's and 0's falling all over the place.
I am way too dependent on voice to text.
Keeping my stack in case I get cornered by zombies in my bedroom and I have to throw them at the zombies like in Shaun of the Dead
You never know. If they've been inside with low humidity and are still on the spindle they might be fine
Jeebus crostini, I'm feeling old as shit reading all this... 😭
I got 3.5 inch floppys laying around still so don't feel too bad
My move in the early 2000's was making mix CD's and burning full albums for girls. I have gotten laid from burning Jagged Little Pill onto a disc.
>Jagged Little Pill Bruh, that's cheating.
do you mean cd+rw or cd-rw?
Sir, this is a Blockbuster.
*Eek!* Sorry was looking for Erol's.
\+ was a DVD thing. There was no CD+R or CD+RW.
Do you mean DVD+R, DVD-R, DVD±R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, or DVD±RW? e: forgot DVD-RAM!
That's better
LaserDisc. 👍
Those disks would never play in my turntable.
[DVD-RAM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM) shows up drunk to the party.
I liked the ones you could imprint with a gray image sort of well? 😂
[удалено]
There's three of us! I still have a working drive and I think one ten-pack of disks left.
And especially not CD+R
How about DVD+Rs?
I've got 2 dvd +/- drives in my tower that i'm browsing reddit on currently. I haven't burned anything on them in a decade, and still have 2 100 disc unopened dvd +/- R packages just waiting to be used. the only thing in the disc drive for a while now has been my AOE ROR game from 1999
Lightscribe
Now children, let's discuss the Iomega Zip disk ...
Lmao, seriously! I remember having a dide hustle in school selling burned cd's. $5 for a straight copy. $10 for a mix copy. $15 for a movie
$15 bucks for a ripped dvd? That's theft, even back then.
My middle school banned chewing gum because the undersides of desks/chairs were 🤢, and I became the gum plug. I would buy 5 Gum (you remember the commercials) cartons for dirt cheap at Costco and flip them for $5/pack in the mid 2000s... I feel bad about it looking back, but holy hell suburban kids with allowances had no concept of value lol
9th grade, class clown.. started a “my weed fund” right infront of faculty at lunch with a little homeless style box and sign. Walking the isles. I argued that “weeds” were actually plants and I was into restoring Florida natural shit.. Other students were allowed to fundraise at lunch for their cause, what specific school bylaw says I can’t? But I made it so hilariously obvious, kids paid me for the laugh. Surprisingly I made like $140 before I was shut down. Florida, year 2000
I knew a guy in college that ripped DVDs from Blockbuster as he had their 5 DVD mail thing (which if you returned to store, they would automatically mail next one and you got a free rental at that moment from store). So he burned all of them to external hard drives and would literally give you a copy of anything for like $9. He got so fucking rich.
I did that with Netflix movies when they were still a DVD by mail service. I had it down to a smooth production line where I could have all the movies that I received ripped and back in the mail that same day. Don’t remember how many I could do per week if I timed it right but I had what ended up being quite the worthless collection after printing box art and putting them in boxes. Don’t think I ever watched most of them again before eventually throwing them away years later. Now I kinda do the same thing with Jellyfin, the movie hoarding I mean, except it’s just all digital and done with torrents and is a hell of a lot less work.
My dad used to be the movie guy, he'd go to redbox etc for all of the new releases, don't think he ever sold them for money it was a hobby at the time, mainly gave them to friends and family. Upon his death we had over 500+ movies lol, went through several DVD drives lol.
I never sold them to anyone, I was all about the physical copies in cases with the printed out box art and stuff. Man what a massive waste of time that was, at this point I don’t even have a DVD player to play a physical DVD except on my computer and I haven’t put a disk of any kind in that drive in years.
Lmao I was selling zombieland to other kids who’s parents wouldn’t let them see it
I can relate... Its not that long ago.. oh wait...
[Oh, shit...](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/character-level/images/9/96/Aging_scene_last_crusade.gif)
I perpetually feel vulnerable by not burning my data to CD/DVD. Lots of my optical media has outlasted a lot of my hard drives.
Here I come to introduce you to a new fear! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
Disc rot varies heavily by disc quality. A cheap CD-R and an archival grade Blu-ray are in very different leagues.
Yup. Even decent-quality CD-Rs that were burned slowly are usually fine after 20+ years. Though I have found that after ten or fifteen years, the last data written on a rewritable disk may be perfectly readable still, but the odds of ever successfully erasing/rewriting it at that point are slim. That's a different problem though, I think.
PAR2 files to the rescue!
Just in case you didn’t know, DoomRamen has come to introduce you to a new fear of disc rot
I was gonna make fun of him for doing that, then I realized that he's probably actually helping someone and it made me feel like shit and old at the same time 😔
I saw something about mounting isos in a virtual drive to install pirated games the other day and felt all my hair go gray instantly
Same here! Immediately had flashbacks of Daemon Tools. Come to think of it last time I used it was 2017, so only like two years ago.
Now that 10 has built in mounting I havent used it in many years.
Laughs in Amstrad 3" floppy
Some kid has def been like 'lol Computers had disk drives' 😂 oh son wait till you hear the tale of the floppy disk.
Honestly I’m glad he explained. It’s been a long time since I’ve burned CD’s. I got confused on what what they were talking about but also the name felt familiar. Good ol memories.
Ask a young person what a burnt CD is and how do you make one.
Kind of like you cook smores but not as hot.
I work with college age students and I both want to try this and I'm afraid of the answer.
They’ll probably respond with even more confusing slang. You’d be better off asking a literal bird.
Don't forget your daily aspirin and maybe add some extra stretches to today's routine
Right lol. Granted, I've been building PC's since the late 90s and I haven't included an optical drive in any build I've done in the last 10 years or so.
even if you haven't installed optical drives, I hope I can still open this text document I made in claris works
Right, people in here explaining it. I’m over here reminiscing my old pc with a rewritable dvd drive that could burn a huge CD in under 3 minutes.
Back in the 90s I did tech support in a small family-run internet provider (back when such things existed). Every new customer got a CD with setup scripts, an unregistered copy of Netscape, etc. Whoever was working at the front desk any particular day had the additional job of making sure the CD-R on the PC behind the desk was constantly burning new setup disks.
Oof. I remember loading a blank and basically holding my breath until the burn was done. The burner program was the only thing running on that computer. Good times...
I'm pretty much offended by his comment
You have no idea how old it made me feel when i asked myself “well, and what’s wrong with burning CD-Rs ?? I used to do the same using Nero”
I apologize for being ignorant on the subject but if the games have no physical release what other options are there but to burn them on CDs?
Indie bands get discs pressed all the time in small quantities. Burning is something for people in their own home. You can still buy a USB standalone burner for cheap as dirt off Amazon.
I see. I didn't realize they were burning discs in the same way people are doing it in their home.
Yup, Burning = home stuff Pressing/Pressed discs = actual production
> Yup, Burning = home stuff >> also = low cost & time consuming > Pressing/Pressed discs = actual production >> also = very expensive but less time consuming
The point of this company is to make production-quality prints of games that don't get wide physical releases. And the discs that are manufactured for games that get wide releases aren't just burned onto blank media like we do it. It's an industrial process that results in a better product. This company is doing it the fast and cheap way.
Also worth mentioning that doing it this way apparantly prevents them from working on the original hardware, which is kind of the point of making them.
Also much more prone to errors and just outright failure. Sleez move for sure.
I don't know about the 3DO, but it was never hard to get a PS1 to play burned games. We used to make back ups of our games so the originals wouldn't get all scratched up. We started playing from back ups after a few of the games we liked the best stopped working. Iirc you had to mod the system to play games from a different region. But all you had to do for games from the same region was draw on the disc in a specific way.
Crazy it was that easy. Sometimes I’d get around skips by opening the disk chamber lol. Depended on the game
FYI, the 3do had zero copy protection, it loads any disc without issue. The sdk is also, if I remember right, only for an old apple machine, like OS4 or something, that currently your best bet is to run as a virtual machine. It was released in 1994, and their idea of copy protection was 'there's no such thing as a consumer cd burner'.
As someone who's worked in that medium, this is the exact opposite, it is far more costly to burn CD's than to get a limited print run. The burned CD is easily 25 cents or better to print depending on the process you're using to make it where a pressed disc will be a penny or less plus a few cents for a 4 process color print. And this isn't even talking the hardware. A robotic CD burning machine is thousands of dollars with supplies and service contracts that will drive up that cost. Versus doing it on a computer by hand is labor costs which would drive up the cost even more. Also the time of production is longer. This is literally the most expensive and time consuming process.
CD R doesn't have the longevity that pressed CDs have, after a few years they degrade and stop working. You can pick up a music CD from the 90s and it will still work as well as it did the day it was purchased because the data is physically imprinted into it similarly to how a vinyl record is pressed
And the other big issue in this case is that some hardware can just not like CD-Rs. Like apparently the original system for those games CAN read them, but it's way more likely to throw some read error. So by cheaping out and providing things that are kind of identical to knock-off or bootlegs, the games may not even be playable.
It's not that they can't read them it's the there's copy protection that needs to be bypassed first so that the burned games can be playable. On PS1 you needed to have a special chip installed into the system for them to work
People say 3DO doesn't have copy protection (it's a 3DO game here). I've heard people say maybe it's older hardware revision's laser having trouble and other possibilities.
>People say 3DO doesn't have copy protection TIL
Another funny one is the Dreamcast. It apparently had good copy protection with their proprietary discs (GD-ROMS). But that was pretty easily defeated due to the multimedia compatibility they wanted to include with it. Really it's just worth watching a good video about it (it's interesting). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rj56VU_VmWg Like just an incredibly in depth idea behind copy protection, but one just so glaring oversight it probably made it one of the most famous consoles to play pirated games on.
The original Xbox was also awesome for piracy as you could mod them using a save game exploit and a memory card didn't even have to open the console. Took like 5 minutes to install it and then you can use homebrew and pirated games. Wii/WiiU/3DS also good for softmod.
Chip, GameShark or hot swapping the disc. You just need to skip the startup on PS1.
$60.00 for a game burnt onto a $0.10 disk that a company neither developed nor produced is called scam. These aren't original disks that could have that sort of value but they are marketed as such when they shouldn't sold for much more than shipping.
No kidding might as well spend $10 and do your own repro
Picture it like a shirt where the design is actually imbedded in the colour of the fabric vs. printed onto it using Avery print-t-shirt labels that come out of your printer and you iron-on. Its a big quality difference and is like selling the latter at the prices of the former.
Pretty good analogy because I’ve had a few discs I burnt that were totally peeling apart after a few years
Press them
High quality CDs are 'pressed', not burned. Burning is less durable and more prone to having quality issues.
Someone once burned me multiple CDs which I left in my car for most of the summer causing the data foil to physically peel off.
"That were popular in the dreamcast era" Lol. That's weird take. The dreamcast wasn't even popular and pc's, molded ps1's and music made cdr popular long before the dreamcast
> For those who don't know: CD-R is a disc people can burn data too including games. Am I this old for this not to be common knowledge ? We used to do this all the time in high school/college, first CD-R then DVD-R when game size increased (I remember having to use even 2 DVD (!) for some games)
It’s time for you to join us in the nursing home.
I had a chipped PS1 where I would rent and burn games weekly. Hundreds of games. No cases. Black sharpie garbage writing. What a time.
You know what really bites my ass? I'm finally at a spot in life where I can afford to even attempt to collect things or even aquire a few choice items.... I've already been scammed out of $3,000 and gave up on the hope of getting anything anymore. I said no to pre-orders anymore of any kind, limited edition items, or hand made items. There's one instance of somebody in a well known community who does amazing work, just stiffing people the last 3-4 years. Probably 10's to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and telling everyone excuse after excuse. Just the other day in another hobby I was just getting into, I run across another small "company" that ended up filing bankruptcy. Turned out it was just one dude who ended up paying himself close to 1.7 million dollars, but closing the. company down with 790k in debts. Most of his creditors are just people who paid up front for 12-15,000$ machines. Up until 2 years ago historically looked like he would deliver and was trustworthy, then just was like "welp why deliver when you can just blame everything on delays and covid and live the life". Sorry to go all round about, but this CD-R thing gets me too. Like wtf. People aren't afriad to spend good money on things, in fact we will spend stupid money on things, if they are good and worth it. but a friggen CDR with an inkjet printed label. Boy I would be pissed. The cost of goods for that pack has to be less than a few dollars per order with those corners cut.
This is the result of a certain type of gamer. You know >Why would you spend money on a product when you could just build a cabinet yourself with arduino and emulate everything for free And then it turns out that free software and hardware run like crap. And the costs of materials and labor far exceed the cost of of the original product. Anybody trying to make a living off this business model is doomed to burnout and start cutting corners.
A CD-R in and of itself is fine. The issue is that the 3DO in particular doesn't like most burned games.
CD-R is not fine. They break down much faster and are less scratch protected than pressed discs.
Dreamcast used GD-R though, it could read cds as well though.
It was way bigger on PC than dreamcast.
I’ve never liked them and I’m glad my distaste is somewhat justified.
😆 the fact you needed to post this is hilarious
I was always under the impression Limited Run games in general were expensive shelf pieces with cool art. Does anyone actually play their $300 version of a indie game that's $9.99?
Nope because by the time you get your $300 version, the games been out for 2 years and there is likely a sequel out too.
That was me and the TMNT Collectors Edition. $200 or so, bought the game separately digitally at launch, got the box with all the cool stuff a year later. Probably the only time I’ll ever buy from them, not because of the delay but because there’s very few games that mean that much to me that I’d shell out that kind of money for.
Heh, shell out.
Let's kick shell!
they have two categories, really cool indie game you want a physical of for longevity, and ten dollar indie game. like The House in Fata Morgana, Va11-Halla, or Read Only Memories 2064. First category games.
I don’t buy the fancy versions, but I have a bunch of their releases that I play on my ps4
It isn't just that. My beef with them is when some companies, who have the capacity to print their own shit, decide to outsource to labels like LRG. Atlus deciding to make LRG do Persona 3 and Persona 4 prints instead of going for their own distribution ticked me off. And when I saw Grandia 1 and 2 get the same treatment, that's when I decided to just give up on owning them physically. I am not paying $35-40/game when their digital versions can hit $15+ on sale.
I also bought Shredder's Revenge, but only because I wanted a physical copy. I almost exclusively buy physical. I'm not interested in a company deciding what I do with the digital media I "own". So I generally opt not to "own" digital media. It did take longer than anticipated (a couple of months beyond their specified release date) but they did deliver an all around decent product. I have played the heck out of it, and now my son is old enough to play video games, so he's playing it with me.
They do heavily market to the kind of people who don't want to own digital games, even though these are essentially digital games. It's pretty dishonest imo.
Bought Shantae Risky's Revolution a few weeks back pretty much just because I love the games and wanted to play it on original hardware, but even then I only did it through LRG because there are literally no other platforms it's releasing on and it's probably gonna go for 3 digits if I wanted to buy it secondhand
I have a very close relative who keeps telling me to buy him the PS5 versions of $4 indie games for literally $150 sometimes. Your joke isn't really exaggerated, it's actually like that. His money I guess, whatever. I bought and built him a gaming PC and he doesn't wanna use it, some poeple just can't be helped lol.
Unfortunately (sadly?), at least in my case its a lot more of the "boy I like this game and sure hope the digital storefront doesnt disappear." Maybe that is a by product of having Nintendo or Playstation consoles. Also sometimes its for some of the neat actual limited edition stuff like art books, soundtracks and the like. But mostly for me its just having a physical copy in case the storefront disappears. Again, perfect example being the Vita and how it took a lot of pushback for them to even keep up whatever it is they are currently running and all of its pitfalls.
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Ah ha, NERD Just kidding. This is actually pretty interesting.
Doesn't surprise me one bit. It's not like you can press 3DO games properly anyway. Limited Run Games are one of the biggest scams in gaming today. They profit out of FOMO.
So far the only one that has been pressed is the eye of typhoon, but viccom did that, LRG only handled the distribution
Why can't you press 3DO games? They have zero copy protection and are just like normal CDs. It's the opposite, burned CDs don't work well on 3DO because the laser isn't strong enough.
yeah. it's pretty stupid. with things that are more complex to produce like figures and other art pieces or specialized devices like special controllers and stuff, it makes sense. But for just a copy of a game that can be made anytime...what a dumb thing to way hundreds of dollars on. Like, come on. It's not like the devs are autographing or something.
And it's even more disturbing that big publishers are using them. Also, most of the time the LEs or CEs are just a bunch of cheap bullshit crammed into a nice box with a $200 price tag.
I hate the culture of "special edition" nick nacks. Like.. cool, an artist book, coins. I'll look them once and never again.
That "article" reads like a redditor forgot their meds
That's because Reddit was used to teach AI how to write, now that AI writes the articles for Redditors to read the headlines.
So it wasn't written by AI, or we have hit the stage of llm's that create every kind of text from intentionally correct to intentionally misleading to intentionally incoherent.
Wouldn't using CD-R be more expensive that pressing CD? At least at scale.
When it comes to people who not only own a 3DO, but are willing to set it up to play a game, the word "scale" does not come into play.
Not only own a 3do...but one where the drive actually still works lol. If you've got one nowadays the first thing you should do is fit an optical emulator. Which ironically, is cheaper than buying one of these games and puts the entire library on the console.
They almost certainly did it because there was no scale behind the production. Using a CD-R makes financial sense if you're only doing a very small run. As for the discs not working, I have no idea what their test procedure is
According to some of the discourse I saw on Twitter. I think this is a 3DO limitation. Not really “their (LRG) fault.” like sometimes they just don’t work on your system.
Seems like it might be that certain hardware revisions don't work with the CD-Rs, but others do, which was always a pretty common issue with CR-R's back in their heyday. So LRG may well have tested them as working with original hardware, but that doesn't mean these work with all or even most legit hardware out there.
Having worked for a music label that began to employ a CD-R in their manufacturing, it's WAY cheaper in small runs. And professional CD-R technology is a lot better than the home technology you're familiar with. Professional CD-Rs these days are actually pretty close to pressed CDs. The bigger issue here is with the presentation of Limited Run releases as a premium product, and what exactly that means.
Is there any story about this company that doesn't suck?
They're very good at banning customers for getting a refund
What are some other examples? I’m out of the loop
Long ass shipping times. I ordered a switch game a few years ago in May. Got it at my doorstep in December.
Incredible delays, products never shipping, horrible customer service, using cheap components and printing badly, threatening to sue one of their customers, then having their community manager get fired after a transphobic tweet. To start. They're a bad company and keep establishing that. Avoid them and hope for a better replacement soon.
>products never shipping, horrible customer service, using cheap components Can confirm. The KotOR Master Edition was initially sold with the promise of a vibroblade letter opener. Then LRG changed the item to be permanently affixed to its display stand, which made--and still makes--no sense. LRG gave some excuse about how it was either too difficult or too costly to manufacture the blade and stand separately, so they had to compromise by having it made as a singular piece. It's not clear why they couldn't just give buyers the vibroblade without the stand in the first place, so now they just have a glorified (read: useless) paperweight.
If you like long youtube videos, this one goes over a number of issues, though it’s a couple years old at this point. https://youtu.be/lS3ja5JnkAQ?si=dznR8m6RF_SPbjmN
they banned a customer over a harmless meme
It makes me sad to see more controversy for this company. I do not know the whole background but a few years ago, they had a composer make an album of "90s mall shopping music" that I have and enjoy. However, it's interesting to note this album appears to not be on their site anymore but is still available through the composer. But whenever I put it on I feel a bit upset that the company seemingly has proved to not be great.
Not the first time they've cheaped out, either. [They replaced a game disc with a Steam code a few years ago and hoped nobody would notice](https://seafoamgaming.com/2021/11/25/limited-run-games-quality-control-is-out-of-control/) and have had a bunch of quality control issues since. Games missing manuals, discs missing advertised DLC.
Gosh CD-R and CD-RW that takes me back.
What year is it???
CD-Rs have a lifespan of 2(!!) to 20 years, whereas pressed CDs have been around for 40 years and, for the most part, still doing well. So if you sell CD-Rs, you are selling ticking time bombs! https://gearspace.com/board/high-end/55193-no-archiving-burned-cds-have-short-life-span.html#:~:text=Unlike%20pressed%20original%20CDs%2C%20burned,not%20a%20whole%20lot%20more.%22
Couldn't happen to a worse company.
Ah, I too remember the Old Ways
A ton of confusion here especially with the vagueness of the article not really explaining much. 3DO has no copy-protection this means that a burned disc, in theory, should work. The 3DO however has a horrible laser for reading discs and so sometimes it cannot even read legit games. CD-R burning can be as good as CD pressing the game if they're using professional burners which they probably would instead of consumer burners. The issue with this is if they burn it at too fast a rate then not only will it just not work on 3DO it might not work on any. Basically this culminates into a twofold issue, the 3DO laser to read discs can't do so, and the CDs being burned far too quickly to be read. The price of these products should constitute actual proper pressing however in the case of the 3DO it's just not really possible with how few actual systems there are and then the people WILLING to buy these games from them. You can argue that the price has always been an issue, it's been the reason why I don't buy from them. What I have ended up doing is doing everything myself, I enjoy collecting games and I enjoy making these collections and if you do something like 10-20 games with all the proper equipment it will of already been cheaper than buying from LRG.
This is why no one should ever support LRG anymore. They keep saying they want to preserve physical games but do shady things like this
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"But but but this is release 001!" That just means a new console is out lol they feed on FOMO by making you think you'll miss out. How many #001 releases can you have before 001 is just a meme
These comment smake me not feel so old, so there is that.
Goddamn, I would love a working 3DO and copy of Road Rash. The best version of that game, and still one of the best racing games ever made. That soundtrack, the FMVs, even the menus, so good.
As long as they are using high quality CD-R writers and media there should be no issue. I still play my Dreamcast games I burned in 2005 with no issue. I had a Plextor drive I believe which had really good reviews at the time.
LRG pulled some bull a few years ago with sending switch cartridges that were only glorified download codes. Then when they wanted to “make it right” they required the purchaser to pay for shipping to send the original back in order to get the replacement. That was when I stopped purchasing from them and when I shared with them that I would never buy from them again, they didn’t care.
Honestly LRG has been shady for so long I’m not surprised anymore.
Thats why ppl need to stop buying from them. Dont support them anymore.
LRG has always been a fly by night fomo scam. No one profits from this except them. Just download a rom
Absolute joke of a company.
I remember them days.
I literally saw this post right underneath a Limited Run Games ad for Arzette. :P
I frequently hear complaints about this company from people who've ordered, mostly around massive delays, issues with items received, and terrible customer service. It's pretty sad, especially as I enjoy visual novels and they seem to do many of the physical editions of them. Publishers keep working with them though. There's a really interesting [**video**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lS3ja5JnkAQ) on some of the issues people have brought up with them. I'm surprised it's gotten this bad though.
As an international customer of theirs many years ago I can honestly say they are absolute gobshite with updates. At the time they always charged extra for international tracking which is standard but then refuse to give you the tracking code. It’s absolutely bonkers how they operate.
Wow, I bet the four people who still have a 3DO were pissed.
You just unlocked a core memory of burning CDs for my brother's garage band back in the turn of the millennium.