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elmuerte

capcom doesn't want my money

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http://dvice.com/archives/2011/06/capcom-tries-to.php

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35476/Capcom_Used_Sales_Not_A_Factor_In_The_Mercenaries_Save_System.php

It's not like I replay games that often these days (quite a bit of backlog). But a DRM scheme like this degrades the game even more.

I for one will not buy anymore capcom games (not sure if I even "own" capcom games). So capcom is now on the same shitlist as ubisoft.

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There is already a thread for this, and I don't understand how this is "DRM" or at all offensive. In fact, this isn't DRM, calling it DRM is wildly exaggerating the issue.

Mercenaries is not a game with a campaign, there is no story-progress you might want to unwind. Literally all that is being saved to the cart is unlocks and score data.

This is also far from the first time this has happened, i have been playing handheld games all my life where incidental bits of information are saved and not able to be erased, it is entirely normal for cartridge based games.

One enthusiast blog speculates that Capcom is doing this to prevent used game sales, and now the internet is blowing up over it, AND I THINK I AM GOING CRAZY.

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For the sake of posterity, can you give examples of cartridge-based games that lack ANY reset functionality whatsoever?

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One enthusiast blog speculates that Capcom is doing this to prevent used game sales, and now the internet is blowing up over it, AND I THINK I AM GOING CRAZY.

The thing is there's no technical reason why they couldn't reset save data. The only natural conclusion is to curb used sales, unless somebody has a better explanation.

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For the sake of posterity, can you give examples of cartridge-based games that lack ANY reset functionality whatsoever?

Egh, you really want to make me go do this? Dig through the literally hundreds of handheld games i own? I know i've seen it, it's usually smaller games from smaller publishers.

There's games like Advance Wars that will let you do some weird button combination to clear the cart, but some games will let you delete progress and not high score data, some games will have just a permanent quick save slot that you can never get rid of, only over-write.

I saw it more on the GBA than i saw it on the DS.

If you really want me to go dig up some examples, i will.

Edit: Oh, hey, there we go, i just remembered an example. My Fire Emblem GBA cart has a corrupted save, and since there's no way to completely clear save data on that game, i can't really play it anymore. (You can erase your quest progress of course, but there's a lot of special-circumstance/post-game unlocks that you can't reset.)

I don't think you can get rid of high-score data on Bangai-O Spirits for the DS.

I have an old shmup on the GBA that has a quick-save slot you can't delete...

Uhhh... I could keep looking.

The point is made though, this stuff is not new.

Edited by Sno

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Santa?!

used-video-games-thumb-550xauto-65388.jpg

For the sake of posterity, can you give examples of cartridge-based games that lack ANY reset functionality whatsoever?

I don't really have any opinion on this except it's a bad move to take away user options. To answer this though, Metal Gear Solid on Game Boy Color had VR Missions that were unlocked permanently in the cartridge. So if someone finished it and sold it who had completed all missions, you could not go back and start at 0. But you also just picked the missions from a menu and the actual main storyline had eraseable saves and all.

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I'm with Sno on this one. For me, this news was met by a big fat "meeeh." For one thing, I can't see resetting being a very major thing for a game that is essentially a series of challenge levels where you're trying to get the highest score and unlock more cool stuff. There's no plot to miss out on by coming into it halfway through. If you put it down for a year or two and want to come back to it (the reason I would wipe a save file), you'd be going in in the same situation you started the game, just with a bit more shit unlocked. Fine by me. As for used sales or whatever, if DRM is a function that makes it slightly irritating for someone to pick up the game used rather than new but doesn't actually hinder retail sales, you'd better have a vendetta against every publisher out there. EA has their thing where you get bunch of free DLC for buying new, Mortal Kombat had that thing where you can't play the multiplayer online without buying a code from them (that they included free with new copies), etc. If you do most of your gaming on the PC like me, the concept of used games is already pretty alien, so this is even less frustrating. It just seems like a totally weird thing to get upset about in this case.

Capcom will not get my money for Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, but not because of this. It's because I don't care about Resident Evil. If I did, this would not stop me at all.

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Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to align myself with the people who are outraged about this. I just think it's kinda lame to not give the option, as it seems at least from my perspective that they could allow full resets. So... basically I agree with syntheticgerbil.

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Sounds like a pants-on-fire lie that this is not some way to prevent used sales. Sounds like them testing the waters for new schemes. It's utterly ridiculous and I can't think of a single reason why it WOULDN'T let you start a new save game.

The point is made though, this stuff is not new.

It's still fucking stupid. So yea, I agree with syntheticgerbil and Jon here.

You know, their explanation in that article doesn't exactly help to explain why it is the way it is AT ALL. :blink:

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For the sake of posterity, can you give examples of cartridge-based games that lack ANY reset functionality whatsoever?

All games I know let me start a new game where everything is in its initial state. And from what I understand this capcom game doesn't provide that "feature".

Imagine playing Super Mario World, once you finish all special levels you will unlock an alternate tileset. Of course when you start a new game the original set is used. But with this DRM the alternative tileset will be permanent.

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You know, their explanation in that article doesn't exactly help to explain why it is the way it is AT ALL. :blink:

Yeah, their excuse pretty much totally jumps over the explanation part and goes straight to the "live with it because it's nbd".

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I really don't believe there was any nefarious ulterior motive to this, they probably didn't even give it that much thought. If i had to guess, it's the way it is because they didn't think anybody would be bothered by it. Pure and simple. I mean, the point to make by saying it's not something new is that, of course, it's happened before and nobody made a big deal out of it all those other times.

I'm generally in agreement with more options being better, but I can't really raise any ire over this. If i was planning to buy Mercenaries 3D, this wouldn't be the thing that kept me from doing it.

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I'm sure I've seen people complain about this in cheapo DS games in the past. I bet quite a lot of games do it but it rarely gets any attention. The only reasonable theory I can come up with is that developers don't bother adding the function because Nintendo don't specifically require it. Or maybe they can use crappy cheaper memory that can't be completely wiped.

Using this to deter reselling just doesn't make sense to me. 99.9% of people would will never know/care about it until they've already bought it used.

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For the sake of posterity, can you give examples of cartridge-based games that lack ANY reset functionality whatsoever?

Mario Kart GBA. There was no way that I could reset what was achieved.

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Yeah, a lot of games will have some weird boot-up input like this to do a complete save clear, you can usually find it in the manual. It's still game by game though, many games won't have this kind of feature.

I'm aware. Much like you, I've played a lot of games. My point is that many games that appear to not have ways to reset them in fact do, so this isn't nearly as regular as you purport.

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I'm aware. Much like you, I've played a lot of games.

Hey hey now, don't take it the wrong way, i was simply reinforcing the point you were making to Kolzig.

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For what its worth, I have no idea how to reset Nintendogs.

According to its manual, Nintendogs also has a save clear function.

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I did try something like that when I used to have it, I propably pressed also A so that might be why it didn't work. I gave the game as a present to a friend last year so I can't try it anymore.

EDIT: I asked the friend and he tested that with Mario Kart GBA and it did work. I guess I did something wrong when I had the game.

Edited by Kolzig

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