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Hawq
July 7th, 2004, 12:18
Well its not quite that simple really or is it? it seems Sega only copyrighted up to last year, in a quote from an email:
'At this time, Sega no longer recognizes the GiriGiri emulator. The GiriGiri team author Shinya Miyamoto is the original Copyright holder of 2001. After he left the project and Sega took over, the emulator was short lived. Sega took over the copyrights up to 2003 and never renewed them after the theft of the unlock code to the commercial release and the project was canned.

Sega does not have any future plans for GiriGiri at this time, and as you point out, the recent take over of Sega, will not likely even consider emulation, as Sammy will be focusing on arcade systems.'
You can read the full mail at emufanatics here (http://www.emufanatics.com/news.php?func=view&id=432) in light of this theres people working on reverse engineering it and making it open source, will this be the start of free & legal Saturn emulation with which you can play games? time will tell

Hola
July 7th, 2004, 12:55
I know this isnt really on topic but I know a coder that has done much reverse enginering to GiriGiri Comerical and added several new features.

The list includes

Video CD support(Now you can play Lunar weee)
2d Support ( Fix's 98% of all 2d games that GiriGiri had problems with )
Save state ( very buggy )
Auto Frame Skipping ( Makes games fun much smoother )
Optimization for Geforce 4 video cards.

Ohh and if you dont believe me I could post videos and/or pictures of these things.

Saoshyant
July 7th, 2004, 13:57
I think people would prefer a link to the cracked emu Hola than mere videos, but that's just me.

Hola
July 8th, 2004, 12:39
It would be illegal to post a link to a comerically avaliable emulator for download for free.

Hawq
July 14th, 2004, 12:35
Time is telling it seems and the emu sites are being slightly split, though the better ones recognise the dodgyness and aren't havin it up or posting about it. Emufabnatics have a large thread in their boards about it & even the forums of the people that have done the hack have a thread about it, though its full of glaring dodgyness, an extract from it:

This is Team Cassini's present disclaimer:
Legal Disclaimer:

1. You may not sell or in any way finacially profit from this project.

2. GiriGiri is no longer supported by Sega. It is considered "Abandonware". While Sega may no longer exist as it has been bought out by Sammy, and they did not renew their copyrights, and the laws are those of Japan, it is still unclear as to the actual legal condtions of GiriGiri. As such, to avoid potential legal issues, I have taken the project down a differnet path. Having changed over 40% of the code and at least 3 major features, this project is now known as "Cassini". Cassini is an exploritory probe of Saturn ;) From here on the people working on this project will be referred to as: "Team Cassini"

3. You can not distribute any games, or bios with this emulator.

4. You must own a Sega Saturn to legally posses a Saturn BIOS. We do NOT distribute BIOSes UNDER ANY CONDITION, so please don't ask.....

5. At this time, all rights to this project are held by Team Cassini. However, as many people contributed to get it this far, and as much more help will be needed, anyone may contribute.
So right from the start they're on shaky ground as 'abandonware' doesnt exist & is just another name for warez, later on they also say:

Now, as to the claims of it being "just another illegal hack"...

1. Some of the sites launching complains about Cassini had no trouble hosting GiriGiri [hacked], so really, is this about your morality, or being biasly trendy?

2. Hacked... even the US congress can not yet agree entirely upon how to definatively declair what is or is not a "hack".
Many countries have no laws pertaining to computers or software.
To my knowledge, the original GiriGiri final commercial release (which is what is typicaly being refered to when used in conjunction with "GiriGiri Hack", was not itself modified. Rather, a loader was made that allows it to run without the "need" for a code.
Since the first law went into effect making it illegal for a person to gain entry to ones home by entering a door without permission, burglers used the window, as it was not technically illegal. (not saying it was moral mind you) Point being, a loader is itself, not considered illegal. That isn't to saying using GiriGiri without paying for it isn't illegal. Of course, have you tried to pay for GiriGiri lately? Of course not, you can't.

3. No, this is not an original work, and it is based heavily on GiriGiri, no doubt about it.
And, from that perspective, yes, it is a modification of GiriGiri.
So they admit its a hack of the commercial one, & apparantly try to refute it at the same time very odd, it all ends on this highly dubious tone:

So, article II, subsection 4, sub paragraph iii is what needs be looked at in detail.
My interpretation (and mind you I am no legal eagle, but it seems clear enough)
is that (if such laws apply to you) the release of a program that has 3 major changes and at least 30% of its code altered, and still give original credit, IS LEGAL.
So with that logic I can take the latest Spiderman game change the music & hack some gfx maybe add a new sound effect to the webs & its a legal new product. These people surely will get darwin awards at some point in the future

Ghaleon_EME
July 17th, 2004, 00:39
NO WAREZ REQUESTS. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Alexvrb
July 17th, 2004, 13:12
It's illegal. There's no question about it. It shouldn't be discussed. Asking for it is no better than asking for ROMs (or Saturn ISOs to feed this warez ::)).

guymelef
July 17th, 2004, 15:27
I found the whole article through a link on zophar.net it was concerning the new saturn emulator. you should still see it on the main news page for zophar.net. interesting stuff. and as far as legality goes. the zophar team is top notch when it comes to not overstepping it's boundaries. but they will never host the giri giri emu because of the legal concerns but have no problem hosting all the other emus no bios of course. if haven't check out zophar then you need to.

quzar
July 17th, 2004, 15:55
its not a new emulator. its a hack of girigiri. as far as im concerned, this is just as illegal as the first hacks of the commercial emulator. If they were reverse engineered hacks of the original free emulator then it might be ok, but this is just warez.

curt_grymala
July 17th, 2004, 18:57
its not a new emulator. its a hack of girigiri. as far as im concerned, this is just as illegal as the first hacks of the commercial emulator. If they were reverse engineered hacks of the original free emulator then it might be ok, but this is just warez.

I think that guymelef was referring to BlueCrab's emu when he said "new saturn emu". I may be wrong, but that's the way I read it.

Alexvrb
July 17th, 2004, 20:04
I think that guymelef was referring to BlueCrab's emu when he said "new saturn emu". *I may be wrong, but that's the way I read it.
Looked pretty obvious to me, he's talking about "Cassini". People think it's new, because they renamed it. It's still the hacked GiriGiri emulator. It's still illegal. Zophar USED to be all that - back when Zophar himself was still part of the show, years ago. They're hosting Cassini now at Zophar, and that's too bad. I mean, look at what they say about it in their saturn emu page, they seem to actually buy into that "new emulator" crap too:

"A new Sega Saturn emulator, Cassini is open source and its initial release has fairly high compatibility as far as compatibility is concerned. The commercial games that are playable run rather slowly, but it's still a relatively advanced emulator. If you're a Saturn fan, download it. There are separate source files for the core emulator and the frontend part of the emulator. Remember, as with all Saturn emulators, a BIOS is needed."

What a joke! I don't even care at this point what The Scribe has to say, because that kind of argument is full of holes. It's ok to distribute it because they don't object?? So if Sega doesn't object to me distributing their DC games (Sega-made games), it's legal, right?

Now, one final thing - if Sega OKs it, then and only then will it be legal. They're finally going to ask SOJ, too bad those clowns released the emulator all over before they asked!

Eric
July 17th, 2004, 21:26
Was Giri Giri a released emu ?

Hola
July 17th, 2004, 23:26
Yeah Cassini isnt even the hack of GiriGiri I'm talking about in fact its still a hella lot worse than my friends hack. Hell this thing doesnt look like it has any improvements at all over the orginal release of Cyber Disk.

At least is has some source code which i might look into to see what they claim they've done for the emu.

Alexvrb
July 18th, 2004, 01:26
Yeah Cassini isnt even the hack of GiriGiri I'm talking about in fact its still a hella lot worse than my friends hack. Hell this thing doesnt look like it has any improvements at all over the orginal release of Cyber Disk.

At least is has some source code which i might look into to see what they claim they've done for the emu.What do you expect? It's just a cheap hack! Have fun looking at their "source". :D

quzar
July 18th, 2004, 03:00
Even if sega says its ok, or that they dont care, there is still a chance it is illegal, just less immoral, because it may require permission from the original author.

Hola - There is no source code. *There is dissasembled assembly. This is pretty much non-significant code that just so happens to run the game.

Eric- Giri Giri was originally an emulator just like any other. After some time, and it seemed to be the best saturn emulator out there, Sega contacted the author and bought it from him. In japan they planned to (and i think actually did?) release the emulator as a commercial emulator ( think bleem) for the saturn. HOWEVER, somehow someone leaked a copy and it got hacked to not need authentification from Sega and such and this is what is known as the Giri Giri hack( or Cyber disc which is apparently what Sega was calling it).

This new Cassini is either a further hack of the Giri Giri hack (which is probable since the non-hacked commercial version is impossible to find/use), a hack of the pre-Sega Giri Giri (doubtable, because it wasnt near as fast at that time, and they mention many times stuff about "Sega Code", or in an extreme situation it is also possible it is a branched hack of the actual commercial software, as opposed to a hack of the previous hack.

So, by my theory it is most likely:

GiriGiri (free) => CyberDisc/GiriGiri (commercial) => GiriGiri Hack => Cassini.

Yea. its 4am. night.

Eric
July 18th, 2004, 05:55
hmm thats pretty interesting i am now screwed right up in the head so do you think quzar that GiriGiri would be illegal to work with?

Alexvrb
July 18th, 2004, 13:54
hmm thats pretty interesting i am now screwed right up in the head so do you think quzar that GiriGiri would be illegal to work with?Currently, yes. As I said before, it is irrefutably illegal. However, if Sega allows it, that changes everything. If you check out Cassini's homepage, you'll see what I mentioned earlier about them emailing Sega. But like I said before - it's too bad they released Cassini before they heard from Sega.

quzar
July 18th, 2004, 13:55
yes it would be. also there is no source code. their "source" is just a copy of the exe but translated from pure binary into assembly. 'disassembled' source.

Eric
July 18th, 2004, 21:08
oh thats interesting so would this mean that people in the dcscene would be allowed to make a port of Giri Giri to dreamcast just a question i am not smart in this area?

quzar
July 18th, 2004, 21:26
Giri Giri has no source. if sega were to release the source, then maybe it would be possible, but with the "source" from the cassini team it would be impossible.

Eric
July 19th, 2004, 09:17
okay lol now i understand i told you i was dumb in those areas lol

Hawq
July 24th, 2004, 11:15
Cant beleive it took me so long to get round to moving this into here, anyway theres slight further development on this situation & by slight I mean very slight, he's been told to contatc the legal depertment, heres what was said in the email he got:
'Dear Mr. Barnito,

Thank you for your email.

All copyrights are held by SEGA Japan. You can request permission by contacting them by writing to:

SEGA Corporation.

1-2-12 Haneda

Ohta-ku

Tokyo 144-8531

Japan

Best regards



Thomas Taudien

SEGA Customer Service
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> *
Internet help line 09066 544 544 (premium rate)
All other enquiries 08456 090 090 (local call rate)
http://www.sega-europe.com

-----Original Message-----
From: James Barnito [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 15 July 2004 18:36
To: [email protected]
Cc: ; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject:


To whom it may concern,

* *I am interested in the legal rights that Sega Enterprises holds on the GiriGiri Saturn Emulator Project. Considering it being a dropped commercial product, the recent takeover of Sega, and complete lack of it as a commercial emulator, we were wondering if in fact it is legal or not to reverse engineer it as a free emulator project. We would also like to inquire as to whether we might request a Source Code for it. After all sega has no use for it anymore, and the emulation community would love to get their hands on it and work to make it run 100% of Saturn games. Please keep in mind we in no way want to profit from this, we just want to keep the Saturn Emulation scene alive. We have been having legal debates with emulation sites all over the net, all of whom are claiming this emulator illegal. We understand the burden of proof is on us, and we absolutely don't want to continue this without a definitive answer to the question of it's legality. Please forward this to the SOJ legal department, as our project depends on a definitive yes or no answer as to whether we can continue legally.

Sincerely Yours,
James R Barnito,


Cassini Emulator Project - *Reverse Engineering the Girigiri Emulator by Shinya Miyamoto and the Girigiri Team


NOTE: We do not advocate piracy. The emulator is intended to play legal backups of games people already own...'
All info regarding the site has been edited from this

curt_grymala
July 24th, 2004, 11:26
That's actually pretty interesting. The email could have been worded a little prettier, but I am actually somewhat surprised that the guy got any response at all from Sega. It will be interesting to see what type of response he gets from the legal department of sega japan.

Eric
July 24th, 2004, 11:44
LOL i was trying to tell you guys that it was even posted on methinks we can do without mentioning where it is

quzar
July 24th, 2004, 12:21
Wait... It is intended to play legal backups... Can it not play real games?? :P

Hola
July 24th, 2004, 12:29
Yeah I dont think he should of said "legal backups" he should of said originals.

quzar
July 24th, 2004, 12:33
He couldnt have said originals. The thing is, there are ways to lock out any non-original saturn games, unlike most systems. Had he said originals then that would have been brought into question why they dont use those methods. I think there was an emulator Titan that only played original games.

Hola
August 10th, 2004, 09:58
You can emulate the saturns system protect without it being illegal.

Alexvrb
August 11th, 2004, 11:46
You can emulate the saturns system protect without it being illegal.
Yes, but they didn't - which is Quzar's point.

Hola
August 11th, 2004, 12:22
Well they probably dont have enough skill with reserve enginering to add it to girigiri as thats no simple task.

Mental2k
August 12th, 2004, 08:23
Methinks theres not really any point. Sure morally its the right thing to do. And I agree with that, but if they release the source, witihin 30 minutes, someone'll have hacked out the "original saturn disc" verification and we'll be in exactly the same situation. Well I guess it would give us an option.

If sega permit this, I could finally get to play all me old saturn games again(I've ran out of connectors on the back of my tv)heh an excuse to buy X-men vs Street fighter and SFA3 for the saturn from japan. W00t! :)

quzar
August 13th, 2004, 00:04
You can emulate the saturns system protect without it being illegal.

why must you ressurect something that had died nicely a week ago?

anyways alexvrb defended my honor, so yea, that says nothing about the point i was making.

Saoshyant
September 21st, 2004, 23:02
At the time I posted in this thread, I did not know what Giri Giri was. Now, I even know James Barnito former head of the Cassini Team, The projet as far as I know is dead... Sadly, there won't ever be a better saturn emulator... Still, the legal or ilegal crap is a cute paradox. To learn how to make homebrew for Dreamcast many dirty things were done, so to repel Cassini for being ilegal is quite a crap ideal. Nothing replaces a Saturn, but we need a decent emulator for Saturn when all models go to hell and only Cassini proved to be worth the title saturn emulator. Project dead, no real source code to keep it going and I just hate all saturn emulator authors who all make new projects instead of teaming up to finish one. Don't flame me, I have the right for my opinion, though I found quite comic when a friend of mine Gosseney said someone will end up grabbing the pieces of Cassini when the Saturns on ebay will become $400 without control pads... ;D

quzar
September 21st, 2004, 23:33
deja vu

"must you ressurect something that had died nicely [now get ready for the twist!] a MONTH ago?"

Mental2k
September 22nd, 2004, 16:04
And dont hate emu writers, unless you are one. GiriGiri is illegal therefore should not be used or backwards engineered ( and i refer to the commercial version only.) now someone lock this thread.

Saoshyant
September 22nd, 2004, 20:50
Bite me ;)

Alexvrb
September 22nd, 2004, 21:03
Sigh, since someone decided to resurrect this thread: I'll have you know that the authors of Satourne and Saturnin have cooperated a good bit, and they have come pretty far with no signs of stopping. The authors just don't always have a lot of time to work on them, after all THEY didn't hack a commercial emulator where people were paid for their work. :P It is still rather bold to state that there will never be an emulator as good as "Cassini".

Saoshyant
September 22nd, 2004, 23:21
Oh well let's hope there will be a rightheous and quite decent Saturn emulator in the newar future then.

If you feel better, do lock the topic. Sorry for the problem.

Christuserloeser
September 23rd, 2004, 11:26
deja vu

"must you ressurect something that had died nicely [now get ready for the twist!] a MONTH ago?"

OT: The good thing about message boards is that you can ressurect old topics, which is a lot better IMO than reopen new topics about things you'd like to say, that basicly already have been discussed.
That isn't exactly meant towards this topic (or your person or whatever), but I felt like posting it anyway :P

quzar
September 23rd, 2004, 12:49
its just funny that it had died before right after someone trolled it up, and now its happened again =P.

LyonHrt
September 24th, 2004, 16:53
same old same old.