ODE, or not ODE?
Piracy. It’s about piracy. People want ODEs- optical drive emulators – and their ilk
because that means they can download
games illegally, put them on an SD card
or a USB stick or whatever, and then play
them in the original hardware without
needing the original disc. Let’s not ignore
that factor – let’s put it right here at the
beginning of this braindump. Anyone who
claims an ODE isn’t used in the most part
for piracy is wrong, or a liar. But with every
month, year, decade that passes, the
claim these fine feats of engineering are
solely the purview of those who love grog
and pieces o’ eight actually loses a bit of
truth, and the disclaimer everyone puts on
their eBay auction about ‘this device isn’t
for piracy’ actually becomes a bit truer.
Because we’re losing our games. Slowly
but surely, the inevitability of atrophy – or
disc rot, or just catastrophic data loss- means little-known gems, well-known
classics from formats nobody cares about
anymore, mediocre things you’d not care
about if you even did remember them:
they’re all going extinct. The hardware
tends to be a) more robust, and b) easier
to actually fix if something goes wrong:
that’s not the problem here. The problem
is the actual data storage mediums – right
now, floppy disks and tapes are dropping
left and right (so floppy disk drive/tape
emulators, rather than ODEs), and it won’t
be too long until CDs and eventually,
DVDs, go the same way. We’re losing our
games, we’re losing history, and optical
drive emulators can actually provide a
genuine archiving service – something
far better than what you get through PC-
based emulation.
For now, I think ODEs will remain the
preserve of a tiny niche of the retro
community – flashcarts, like the Everdrive,
Mega SD, and so on are better known
I’d guess, but are still niche. And popular
opinion will remain on the side of the
Good And True gaming companies with
regards to the legality of these hardware
modifications. But slowly, the tide will
turn, and we’ll have to wonder: were they
legitimately meant as preservation tools
all along? And the answer will still be no.
It’s about piracy. This safeguarding of
history aspect was a happy little accident.Superstar hero
Did you know there is an ongoing effort to
update Sensible World of Soccer each and
every year? You did? Oh. Well, I didn’t, and
it’s blown my tiny mind. Bringing modern
squads into Sensible Software’s Amiga (and
PC, I suppose) classic is step one, but then
there’s making it work on modern systems
(and the Amiga), and then there’s making
it work online too. SWOS 2020 is, in short,
brilliant and everyone should be aware of it.
wfmag.cc/SWOSWRITTEN BY IAN ‘DYNAMO’ DRANSFIELD64 / wfmag.cc
Backwards compatibleRetro