Why pirate games?

A bit of elaboration on yesterday’s post.


Ever since the original Playstation, I’ve been modding my game systems. Part of the attraction was the whole idea of “something for nothing,” sure, but there’s more to it than that.

I like a challenge.

I modded my Playstation on my own, with a chip I’d bought online. Did the soldering myself, made my own backups and had a good time. Most of the games I copied (or bought, once I got stationed in Korea) I never finished. I just wanted to try them out, see what they were like and move on. The PS2 mods were more complex, and until the Slim Kit Pro (for the slimline PS2), they were a real pain. It was easier to just pay somebody to do it (Yongsan market in Seoul is heaven for this kind of stuff) than muck about with it myself.Same for the Xbox. Why bother with getting and installing the chip and putting in a new drive when I could get somebody else to do it on the cheap?

Of course, the Xbox brought in a whole new era of modding.

Yeah, the Dreamcast had lots of cool homebrew code for it, but nothing on the scale (or functionality) of the Xbox.

Xbox Media Center is reason enough to mod your Xbox.

I never even bothered with Xbox Live on the Xbox (though I love what it’s matured into on the 360 and was happy to pay for a year’s subscription), since the benefits of modding far outweighed anything I’d gain from gaming online.

Then came the Gamecube mod.

(I mentioned this in my post, back on the first of the month.) Modding the Cube was more of a “can I do it?” exercise than anything else. I bought the chip on a whim in Australia and it was a bit of a bitch to get soldered in right. Then there was the matter of flashing the memory on the chip to run backups, which I finally got done. And yes, I’ve since downloaded (and burned) a fair number of games.

I just haven’t played them.

I guess modding’s about options, really. Kind of like, “if I do this, I can then do that.” But I always seem to be doing more of the “this” than the “that.” I love the challenge. Can I make it work, or am I just going to fuck up my system (and the chip I forked out for)?

I’ve not fucked up yet. ^.^

Getting the M3 for the DS was definitely about options. Movies, games and more all on one memory card? Who wouldn’t want that! Of course, most people wouldn’t spend the money to do it, or risk turning their system into a paperweight, which is why console mods have always been a fringe thing.

But for those willing to take the risk, there are rewards. ^.-