CPS2 Suicide - reasons?

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 4:18 pm

Cave wouldn't want you to have the choice to pay. They WANT you to pay period.

Its like a try before you buy system. You can't watch a film at the cinema and only pay afterwards if you liked it

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 11:37 pm

Someone on here summed it up best when they said that gaming is not a right, its a hobby and no company owes us their games.

elvis · Post by **elvis** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 12:50 am

neorichieb1971 wrote:Cave wouldn't want you to have the choice to pay. They WANT you to pay period.

If they wanted me to pay, then they'd offer me games to buy. I've never played Ketsui in my life, but would love to. (How I loathe living in a country where "arcade" means "a twin Daytona machine and a Time Crisis machine").

And more to the point, I'd like to pay Cave directly for the privilege of playing Ketsui, and not some PCB-hawker on eBay.

I'd gladly pay $100 or more for the rights to a home-user, non-commercial, single-user license of the game ROM. Cave are missing out on a great money-making opportunity by making their titles intentionally obscure. The only people profiteering off that are the second-hand board sellers, who I don't give a shit about because they don't write software/games. Sure, people will argue they are all part of the "great circle of arcade life", but I really have no time for them. I'm far more interested in paying the guy sitting in his cubicle late at night punching out line after line of code for my gaming pleasure. Direct to the source.

Capcom legally license their game ROMs out via Ultracade. There's at least one company in the world who actually considered the idea any further than the boardroom.

Never_Scurred wrote:Someone on here summed it up best when they said that gaming is not a right, its a hobby and no company owes us their games.

That's the crux of it. Don't think I don't see the irony of using MAME and then saying all MAME warez kiddiez are nothing but ROM-begging whingers in the same breath. I am elvis' paradoxical logic centre.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:20 am

Elvis,

I think you have valid points. You seem like a very smart guy. The conclusive fact is that Cave have ample opportunity to maximise their sales long before any MAME Rom hits the net. Long long before PCB prices are respectible enough to accomadate even 50% of the userbase of this forum.

You should not defend yourself so valiantly, most people on here don't even try as hard as you to do the right thing. Personally I don't use MAME but thats because I wouldn't give a hob nobs digestive biscuit for the experience. Give me a chance to download the MP3's of an OST after seeing the origonal CD costs $100 and I won't hesitate to put some Real estate on that wasteland I got on my hard Drive.

Edit - I believe that if Cave don't care about the Western markets they should just charge the Asians and give us the shit for free.

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:12 am

What I fail to understand is how Cave is able to put out new games that cost major $$$ to develop, yet still persist in selling to that small, small market of theirs. I, like elvis and many others on here i'm sure, would love to pay for a license to play Ketsui. Until companies like Cave starts pressing up more pcb's or until ports happen, i'm more than happy to ROM'z it if its out there and beat myself up about it.

Question. Why was Ketsui singled out by Cave to stay unemulated? I mean, they have like what 6 other properties out there ready for dl. What makes Ketsui extra special?

elvis · Post by **elvis** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:29 am

I think there's more than a few Cave fanbois on these forums (myself included) who would love to crawl into the heads of some of their executives and figure out what the hell they are thinking some of the time.

As business men, they make great software developers.

[edit] How the fuck did I start ranting about CPS2 suicide and end up talking about Cave's business strategies???

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:49 am

elvis wrote:I think there's more than a few Cave fanbois on these forums (myself included) who would love to crawl into the heads of some of their executives and figure out what the hell they are thinking some of the time.

As business men, they make great software developers.

[edit] How the fuck did I start ranting about CPS2 suicide and end up talking about Cave's business strategies???

I don't think you can have a discussion like this and not bring up Coo Coo Cave at some point.

zakk · Post by **zakk** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:08 am

Never_Scurred wrote:What I fail to understand is how Cave is able to put out new games that cost major $$$ to develop, yet still persist in selling to that small, small market of theirs. I, like elvis and many others on here i'm sure, would love to pay for a license to play Ketsui. Until companies like Cave starts pressing up more pcb's or until ports happen, i'm more than happy to ROM'z it if its out there and beat myself up about it.

Question. Why was Ketsui singled out by Cave to stay unemulated? I mean, they have like what 6 other properties out there ready for dl. What makes Ketsui extra special?

I doubt Cave really spends 'major $$$' to develop their games. The development costs are probably fairly modest at this point. Also keep in mind that Cave has many other aspects of their business (some not even game related) which may very well be partially funding the arcade division

I don't believe they singled out Ketsui. the first PGM-based Cave rom that showed up in mame was DOJ (it didn't work). Apparently some company (either Cave or Arika) contacted someone and asked/told them they didn't want it emulated. So they stopped working on the cave PGM stuff (or at least don't discuss any work on it in public)

It made sense at the time. There were still available copies of the PS2 ports of DOJ and Galuda; so there was likely some concern about emulation having an impact on sales. It's also possible they were anticipating porting Ketsui and didn't want the emulation out there.

Of course now it doesn't much matter, unless Arika are up to something behind the scenes with regards to ports.

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:31 am

ahhh, I see, thanks for the clarification.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 4:38 am

Cave should not use proprietary hardware in the first place if porting is a goal. There is no reason they could not take the game engine that Arika developed for DOJ and Galuda and make the games system 246 based for the arcade market in the future. Even if the game used more power on the arcade platform it could still be brought to the home with loading times.

Arika could then take some credit/license fee's for the game engine and we would all be happy campers.

I think the reason Cave want to remain exclusive to the arcade market is because their team is small and they concentrate on new content.

cody · Post by **cody** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:00 pm

elvis wrote:
Your three answers are wonderful and succinct if you subscribe to the idea that modern copyright law is the best possible implementation of the idea of copyright.

Or if you believe that modern copyright law is the best we've been able to come up with so far, and that it is more ethical to support authors within the current system than to use the (admitted) flaws with copyright law as an excuse to not support authors at all.

elvis wrote: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there are days when I feel like ringing Cave and saying "look, can I just send you a cheque in the mail and we'll call it even?".

Have you tried actually doing this? Even a babelfish'd email should be sufficient to convey your point. I've never had a musical artist turn down $$ via paypal.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:05 pm

You know I see similarities in this Cave saga with working in my own jobs.

There are people in this world who do things based on a system. They are so stubborn and will not change their ways for nothing. If I didn't know better I would say Cave is trying to singlehandedly save the arcade business.

djvinc · Post by **djvinc** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:53 pm

btw, If you want figures of the sales and costs of Cave, you may read the financial report on their web site.
Sales tend to soar, and I think it will be worse with MuchiMuchiPork...

About the CPS-2 suicide, the first suicidal-PCBs I know of are Sega's System16, so I think Capcom's suicidal system is basically just a replica.
Sega is much more mysterious to me : sometimes the sound is suicidal, sometimes the code, and sometimes no suicide at all...and for games of the same time period.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:10 pm

Also, why did Segas system 16 not use the Jamma connector? Just to be awkward? 1987 was after the standardisation.

djvinc · Post by **djvinc** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:16 pm

And since the shape/pinnumber is the same as jamma (without the key)...
Even when you plug a jamma harness on it, the PCBs suicides !
Highly depressed hardware IMO.

elvis · Post by **elvis** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:03 pm

cody wrote:Or if you believe that modern copyright law is the best we've been able to come up with so far, and that it is more ethical to support authors within the current system than to use the (admitted) flaws with copyright law as an excuse to not support authors at all.

You make it sound as if I've given up on paying for anything anywhere ever.

I still play within the confines of copyright law. I buy copious amounts of software every year (some that is utterly superfluous to my collection - TreasureBox collection on PS2, for instance, despite having all the original cartridges for MegaDrive - ditto for Taito collections 1 and 2).

While I believe modern copyright law is severely lacking, I certainly don't use that as an "excuse". Again, I've bought some things more than once just to show my financial support to developers.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 8:48 pm

On the subject of copyrights.

We all have choices to decide what to buy and what not to buy. Its my opinion that authors make 90% of their income from people that actually use the software. Most people who copy software are greedy people who seem more obsessed with how much they can get rather than actually using it.

I have several friends who have CDr's and DVD'rs stacked to the ceiling and the modems lights are still flashing, but are they using any of that sofware? No.

But if you look deep in the depths of shiny discs, you will almost always find the persons true heart. A few origonal DVD's or games stuck in the corner. To me thats a sign of selective buying, much what Elvis is talking about.

I am currently watching Afro Samurai anime that I downloaded, if I like it! I will buy it.. simple as.

elvis · Post by **elvis** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:35 pm

neorichieb1971 wrote:Most people who copy software are greedy people who seem more obsessed with how much they can get rather than actually using it.

I have several friends who have CDr's and DVD'rs stacked to the ceiling and the modems lights are still flashing, but are they using any of that sofware? No.

I call these people "Pokemon gamers". Because they "gotta catch 'em all!".

We all know people like this. As you say, DVD-R's piled high full of software they'll never even use. Pretty sad.