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.
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).
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.
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