Hi, I have newly registered here and have really enjoyed reading the old posts here and watching some of the Youtube vids. Great site. I wanted to present one of my two EA beta discs I hold (the other is NBA Live, but I need to find that one in my storage again). I don't have a modded Saturn to read CDRs so unfortunately have never fired it up. However I can view the files on my PC and presumably if I took time to find an emulator could I try it out. However I wondered whether this was of interest to the community? I know it is a EA title, and not the most exciting one I guess it was used by a magazine/press for reviewing purposes? Uploaded with ImageShack.us
It's certainly of interest to me - if you ever consider selling it (and the other if it's for Saturn), let me know
I'm not really interested in it but I'm sure many people would be. By the way, you don't need a modded Saturn to play that disc. Just do the disc swap. It WON'T kill your CD drive as long as you're not heavy handed.
I am not particularly excited by Madden, given I prefer football! I tried it on an emulator last night and it does boot up. I may get my [spare!] Saturn out and try the disc swap method - good suggestion. Thanks for the replies, I was particularly interested in whether this is "rare and obscure" and fits in this forum! The other disc for the Saturn and looks the same, except being for NBA Live - I must try and find it tonight. The thing I found interesting is that the CDR is EA branded and the label on the jewel case uses the old "EOA" style artwork. Are these things common and floating around? I would not want the data lost if these are the only ones in existence. I am happy to help or take advice on preservation.
As it is a shitty sports game you may as well sling them in the bin A CD if stored correctly will allegedly survive for 100 years under extreme preservation conditions. A normal collector will take good care but it will probably be somewhat below that, as even the pull of gravity on the spindle will warp the disc over time. the only way to preserve every last bit s to dump and distribute it, though that is not what I am advocating here. Do a high res scan (at least 600 DPI) and save it with a seemingly lossless form of compression such as PNG. Make an ISO of the disc using something like Alcohol 120%. Put a copy on each of your hard drives or solid state storage. Maybe share the number of files, size and CRC for comparison with retail. Job done. FYI betas are rare and obscure enough for discussion but as this is a rare and obscure forum they are pretty common hre, but perhaps rare elsewhere
Common - no, but they're likely to be the same as the release version as said before. CloneCD worked fine for Saturn games. Well, most ISO tools will!
I had a feeling 100 years was for pressed discs but you never know, a good CD-R may outlive a crap CD and I also mentioned in extreme preservation condittions... I never knew Alcoholo 120% dsynchs audio in BIN/Cue but to be honest I've never had an interest in those formats anyway. Works fine with .iso and I did state ISO so
I've never seen the boil away within a year dyes but I did used to have some shitty CD-R on the reccomendation of a friend where the foil peeled off - that sucked. Since then I rarely purchase discs for backup purposes. The days of £1 per HDD Gb are long over and high capacity storage is cheap so it isn't much effort just to keep everything of interest on HDD. I purchased and have been using Alcohol 120% on CD with .iso for years and no issues though so maybe I'm imagining it works? When I am feeling lazy though I tick most of the boxes and it uses the .MDI format which also works for me with no issues.
