Can someone explain the appeal of "ripped" games?

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Rekrul
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Can someone explain the appeal of "ripped" games?

Post by Rekrul »

As I look through the 3D Shooter Legends pages, I see that many of the games don't have an ISO available, only a "full-demo", which the FAQ describes as a ripped copy of the game, usually missing the movies, music and sometimes even the speech.

What is the appeal of playing such a version? I also notice that some of the games have movie and/or music add-on packs to put the missing content back into the game. So first the game is ripped, leaving out all the multimedia, then someone else makes a pack to (hopefully) add it back in.

Why don't they just make a complete ISO in the first place?

Personally, I refuse to play any ripped games unless there's absolutely no other way to get a copy of that particular game. Would you watch a movie that had no sound and no subtitles/closed-captioning? Would you eat food that had no taste or smell?

I can't imagine playing Jedi Knight without the FMVs, or American McGee's Alice without the music and movies.
Lifeforce
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Post by Lifeforce »

Hi Rekrul,

thanks for you post and suggestions.So basically people here get the abilities to TEST games.Thats why they are called DEMOs and uploading ISOs is not of interest in first place.

greets
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Xeon
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Post by Xeon »

(god...i almost had that :P)

anyways i could prefer rips for the size alone (and if i cant find the game on the shelves - pirated or not) especially if they end up being complete due to the addons. hell, its all free (addons, etc.) and still making them as small as possible so no complaints from me :)

some of the gamerips however, are already complete by themselves. Megaman Legends and Typing of the Dead are examples.
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Post by Rekrul »

Lifeforce wrote:thanks for you post and suggestions.So basically people here get the abilities to TEST games.Thats why they are called DEMOs and uploading ISOs is not of interest in first place.
Well, I was speaking about rips in general, not just here. I know most Abandonware sites post rips instead of full ISO copies, and I've seen them on the eDonkey network as well.
Xeon wrote:anyways i could prefer rips for the size alone (and if i cant find the game on the shelves - pirated or not) especially if they end up being complete due to the addons. hell, its all free (addons, etc.) and still making them as small as possible so no complaints from me
Most of my software collection is store-bought. I only have less than legal versions of a few games, mostly really old ones, or ones that can't be bought at a reasonable price. (try checking eBay for a copy of Wing Commander, The Kilrathi Saga)

Most of the time I prefer to buy a used copy, since I can get it cheaply and I know that I'll have a complete copy of the game.

However, when I do download something, I look for the most complete copy I can find, even if it will take me hours or even days to download on dialup.
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Post by barev »

You're right: ISOs are much better that RIPs and that is my opinion, too.
But you have to keep in mind that abandoneware sites are free but bandwidth isn't. So it is much better to have RIPs available for download as they won't generate too much traffic. In addition back in those days bandwidth and access to internet wasn't cheap at all and exchanging ISO images over a BBS wasn't an option. So most warez groups released only RIPs. Last but least the warez scene does not have a goal to please the casual user, most nfos say: if you like the game and want the full experience you should buy it from the official vendor.
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Post by Rekrul »

barev wrote:You're right: ISOs are much better that RIPs and that is my opinion, too.
But you have to keep in mind that abandoneware sites are free but bandwidth isn't. So it is much better to have RIPs available for download as they won't generate too much traffic. In addition back in those days bandwidth and access to internet wasn't cheap at all and exchanging ISO images over a BBS wasn't an option. So most warez groups released only RIPs. Last but least the warez scene does not have a goal to please the casual user, most nfos say: if you like the game and want the full experience you should buy it from the official vendor.
Buying the game is no problem for recent games, but it can be hard to find a copy of games that are 8-10 years old, especially if they're more obscure.
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Post by dead-meat »

Well, there's a lot of games no one has the ISO of or the one who has it, won't share it. So as stated before, all games here are strictly ment to be used as demos... and you don't play a demo and tell ppl: that demo sucked, it missed the other game levels, do you? ;)

Can't understand why so many people are complaining about rips. You all get it for free, rips take less space (upload ;)) and most of them are kinda a work of art somehow.

Hmm.. I'll stop at this point ;)
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Post by Rekrul »

dead-meat wrote:Well, there's a lot of games no one has the ISO of or the one who has it, won't share it. So as stated before, all games here are strictly ment to be used as demos... and you don't play a demo and tell ppl: that demo sucked, it missed the other game levels, do you? ;)
No, but poor demo performance has affected game sales. For example, the demo for the game SiN had such incredibly long load times that many people expected the game to be the same way. Personally, I played the demo once on my old 233Mhz system and never touched it again. A patch was released to speed up the loading times, and fix most of the bugs, but by that time, SiN had a bad reputation. I actually passed up a complete, shrinkwrapped copy in a store for $5 because of my bad experience with the demo. I finally ended up buying a used, CD-only copy from EB Games for $1.99 and found that it's a pretty good game.

One of the things I really liked about it were the exchanges between your character Blade and his hacker buddy JC. If I had played a "full-demo" without the movies, music and speech, I'm not sure if I would have considered it worth buying.
dead-meat wrote:Can't understand why so many people are complaining about rips. You all get it for free, rips take less space (upload ;)) and most of them are kinda a work of art somehow.

Hmm.. I'll stop at this point ;)
Even for free and as a demo, rips suck.

Let's say that you download a rip and because of the changes made to omit the movies, music and speech, it doesn't install as smoothly as the original, or it crashes in some places where the original would normally play the media. Then you try and add the media back in, but that doesn't work as smoothly as the original either. So you're left with the impression that the game is a pain in the ass, even though the original doesn't have these problems.

Let me give you an example; I loaned my friend my copy of Freespace and he loved it, so he went looking for Freespace II. Apparently not too many copies of it were made/sold, so it's kind of rare. Copies on eBay normally get bid up to at least $50 or so, and I've seen them go higher. He finally found a ripped copy for download. Then from another source, he found the movies, music and speech packs. Some time after that, he was able to download ISO copies of the three CDs. When I went over his house, he asked if I wanted the version he originally downloaded, then he started describing the install procedure (install it, copy the movies/music/speech over, edit this file, replace these files, set this to -1, etc). I tooks copies of the original ISOs instead.

I still haven't gotten around to playing it though. :)
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Oyn
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Post by Oyn »

Actually for the record, the final final version of SiN had horrendous load times also, until it was patched.

Now, some people prefer rips, some people prefer isos. If you don't like them, don't download them, it's that simple.
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Post by grupof0091 »

i prefer the rips too. But for your happyness latelly 3dsl people are uploading entire isos and it seems that this will be the trend for future years on the site.
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Post by barev »

Yes, what I wrote above was a simple explanation about why RIPs have been so popular back then. Nowadays all warez groups release mostly ISOs because sharing large files on the net is not a problem anymore. For the record I also love ISOs, one of my favourite game series is Westwood's Command and Conquer which is a good example for games that just should never be played as RIPs.
By the way I live in a country where less than 5% of the people have Visa/MasterCard/AmEx credit cards, PayPal and other online payment services do not accept members from my country and buying a new game is not a good idea as it costs about 1/3 of a monthly salary.
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Post by hfric »

thats why we URGE our members to post some games.... if you have a ISo of a game we don`t have post it on free hosts ....... like Megaupload , Come2store and others
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germo
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Post by germo »

RIPs are significantly smaller than ISOs. This is the main reason of their existence. Not all of us have 256+ dsl/cable/other connection to dl an ISO. Besides uploading an ISO takes much more time.
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Post by Rekrul »

Oyn wrote:Actually for the record, the final final version of SiN had horrendous load times also, until it was patched.
In case I wasn't clear, that's what I meant in my original post, not that the demo had been patched. :)
Oyn wrote:Now, some people prefer rips, some people prefer isos. If you don't like them, don't download them, it's that simple.
Yes. It's just that some games are only available as rips.
hfric wrote:thats why we URGE our members to post some games.... if you have a ISo of a game we don`t have post it on free hosts ....... like Megaupload , Come2store and others
Right now, I only have dialup. Hopefully, I'll be able to get a broadband connection soon. If so, I'll see what I have that I can upload. I know I have several games that this site only has rips of, however I'm not sure I can create working ISOs from most of them without people needing to use a NoCD patch.
germo wrote:RIPs are significantly smaller than ISOs. This is the main reason of their existence. Not all of us have 256+ dsl/cable/other connection to dl an ISO.
Neither do I right now. However, like I originally stated, I'd rather spend a couple days downloading a complete copy of the game than to download it in only a few hours, but have half the game experience missing.
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germo
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Post by germo »

Use addons if they're available. In most cases you can assemble whole ripped content this way + some members have made few addons that wasn't released by the scene groups (me for example :D ). Downloading rip and all addons will take less time than ISO for sure. That's why RIPs are better in MOST cases - I don't claim that there are no exeptions :wink:
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