Not sure if this is true at all, but I was talking to a friend of mine, and he started talking about Super Smash Bros.: Melee. I asked him when he picked it up, and he said that he had it on his computer with an emulator - is this possible? I know computers can read disks as small as GCN disks, but I didn't expect and emulator so soon.

Don't know, but I predict this thread will be closed soon.

Well, I tried doing some searching but due to the tremendous amount of pop-ups encountered looking for something like this I gave it up. There are some sites claiming to have Gamecube emulators for download, and others warning not to download them because they might me Trojan Horses. That said, an emulator is certainly possible, and inevitable.

There are several N64 emulators out there, however. Perhaps your friend is confused and is actually playing the original Super Smash Brothers?

I can't see how this thread can be useful, but for now, we'll leave this thread opened, as it is still just news-worthy. Please do not participate in any illegal discussions (how-to or where-you-can discussions).

The small discs wont stop emulation. They only stop pirating games that will play on your cube.

Maybe you should ask your friend for more details? This is fascinating.

Not in exsistance, yet.

Must have been playing the original.

Well until a disc image can be made, there won't be emulation of the commmercial games (of course, there are a ton of more limiting factors than that, but it still is a limiter).

Still fits and loads in a DVDROM. No more limiting than any other proprietary boot disc. The real advantage to the small discs is piracy prevention, it doesnt make emulation any more difficult.

A lot (perhaps most) people that emulate things want to download roms, rather than play the actual discs, so in that sense the proprietary format affects people who want to use an emualtor to play games they don't have. I guess that would be called emulation piracy or something.

But the discs don't have anything to do with whether or not someone can make a GC emulator, unless they have to crack the encryption to get the PC DVD-ROM to read the games. In which case they would be able to make roms I would believe, but I'm not very knowledgeable on this stuff.

Maybe someone who knows more can verify that idea, or correct it.

Last I checked (2 months ago), there was no available emulation or cracking or ripping tools available for GCN... it was on the verge of coming out though, so it's possible.

We don't buy that for a second, Josh, you are a 1337 ha><or if I've ever seen one.

If I may qoute Alucard...

WHAT?

He said something about the GCN disks being able to be read by computers, just no tunderstood, and what was needed was some kind of thing that could properly read the disk code - don't really know if that's possible or not, I'll ask again on monday.

If that's the case, I guess I was right. For an emulator to work, they'd have to crack the encryption of the game discs, and then design an emulator that could deciper it and run the game smoothly.

I really hope it doesn't happen anytime soon, as cracking the encryption will open the door to piracy. Though it still wouldn't be a super huge issue as not that many people have DVD burners yet. Plus I'm guessing you'd have to find a way to get the burner to copy the encryption onto the disk or the GC wouldn't read the pirated game.

But again, I'm just thinking out loud, as I'm not a tech buff by any means.