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EDIT: With paypal fee's taken into account the total left to fund is: £1,125.38 it's costing roughly 5% each transaction.
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Well that didn't last long.. After seeing what we released recently we were given first dibs on the largest haul of SEGA Saturn discs ever listed for sale, least with the chance to get all released in one go.

While I personally don't want to deal with more dev stuff or group buys, this one is easy to manage due to no reshipping. Myself and OG's staff, and a select group of users decided this was too important to turn down.

To date under 80 SEGA Saturn prototypes have been dumped and released. (We released 13 earlier this month.) If this goes to plan we will increase this to over 150 released SEGA Saturn prototypes.

This lot contains 78 discs, one is an xbox disc, one or two maybe PS1? all we know is there's some high profile games. Some of these may have released in the past, but haven't been dumped to redump.org standards meaning all will require redumping. (Which depends if they're good, due to age.)

All will be dumped with Plextor CD drives meaning higher chances of saving any bad sectors on the disc. Most drives blank out data or insert random data in place when bad sectors are found.

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The discs are sold as is due to age. I guess being too busy to close the museum side to OG yet was a bonus now, which'll mean by UK law all discs will remain in a UK based museum or charity going forward, meaning they won't be lost to time. Due to how we're setup the law means if OG ever died, any items under ownership would be transfered to another UK museum/charity with similar interests. We're unable to sell, or give away anything donated minus data.

Just a few of the titles in this lot, Tomb Raider, Gex, Golden Axe Duel, Guardian Heroes, Duke Nukem, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, Panzer Dragoon Orta (XBOX), MK Trilogy, Quake, SEGA Rally, Werewolf, Theme Park, Virtua Cop 2, Mystaria: The Realms of Lore.

Some of these are extremely early, Virtua Fighter 2 is marked as 30% completed, While many are 60%, 65%, 70%, 75% complete.

While our last buy took time, these are already UK side and ready to be driven over once Covid restrictions are lifted here. If this doesn't happen they'll be delivered next day via courier with insurance.

On our last lot, the average disc price was £43.69 to £109.22 per disc (converted from USD at todays rates), this lot has a set cost of £4500. This works out at £57.69 per disc. Atleast two in the lot are unreleased games, possibly others as we have no means to check region until dumped. (These appear to be NTSC.)

We've already had 2 donations upfront, meaning this is already 7% funded. Meaning it's now less than the total.

We have Plextor's ready to dump for the SEGA Saturn, And a Kreon drive ready for the xbox disc.

You can see some of our past group buys/releases below,
https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/Data_Design_Interactive_Lot (Still being worked on via Discord)
https://builddb.obscuregamers.com/Steven_Pattullo_Commodore_Lot (To be released later on)


All donations are via Paypal, Which is via Ko-fi https://ko-fi.com/obscuregamers or via our inbuilt donation system.

FAQ

What is the total?
It's £4500.

Can I buy anything for myself?
The discs will be donated to a museum if our company side closes. UK law prevents us selling due to the nature of our setup. This group buy is for data only, to be released once all is dumped/scanned.

Can I be credited in the release if I donate?
Yes you can, We will need your forum name or Discord ID for this please.

What if you don't reach the target?
Donations will be refunded to the paypal account they came from if no deal can be made with the seller.
 
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Return to: Preservation News
Any questions feel free to fire away on, can be via pm or can sort a time to discuss on discord?

Ok. So the server is not for the website but for hosting all the builds being released? Do some of the donators require this?
The server is more an internal archive of all we have saved/preserved such as images of discs, scans of them/artwork and so on. There was never a plan to host a public version of this unless we had remote staff. But in those cases it would locked down. Due to legal reasons we couldn't save data from other sources. We would have to own whatever is on the server or have dumped ourselves.

This is incase of a worst case scenario where data is lost online or sites shutdown. We feel relying on third parties for hosting would only lead to more work long term and add an ongoing expense. The Backblaze we have is owned outright.

The other issue would be if a third party was hacked/compromised it'd lead us into issues. The Backblaze would be an offline network with no wifi etc.

Wow. Never heard of FakeSpace. Interesting! That will definitely be a historical piece if VR finally takes off.
This is really an odd system. We're missing the goggles and the PC, but we have the base unit/programs and possibly source on data tapes meaning it should be able to be emulated/modfied to work with newer goggles. This one would have been one that is fixed to the ground and moved to you. It was used mostly by the US gov / nasa etc. We have the base station/proto cpu's and data tapes etc. We think this was made early 90's to mid 90's.

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This was one of their early systems.

With OG, IA, and HP, and probably others, operating in the same field, it scatters the effort and it's very confusing.
Are OG, IA, and HP working together somehow, or are the builds OG acquire not being released on HP etc?

Personally, I feel like the public's perception of OG is still being AG's little brother and the dev/proto knowledge center, while HP is becoming the new HUB for prototypes, and IA being a more expansive, established, and respected platform, just not very organized and user-friendly.
Each platform has its pros and cons so people don't turn to one place for each of their needs or inquires... And it's hurting the whole process just as much as collectors.
Sadly, from what I've seen HP want to do their own thing. We tried working with them on this but they didn't want to wait and proceeded with their work which I respect. Multiple times I've mentioned groups need to work as one and not be fractured. It only causes more work/expenses for people.

We've tried being pretty quite with existing as prototypes/releasing them is really a grey area, there's no legal or illegal side to it unless it's something new or something that could harm a developer. I do agree it hurts the scene as a whole. Some people don't wish to listen or work which stings really. We should be one group focused on saving instead of doing bad behind the scenes like some. Such as one group connected to hackers or groups connected to hacking developers, or trying to buy illegal access to sites and so on. Yes, it's even happened to OG. People have tried buying staff access and been refused.

This would be ideal for the eventual digital, especially physical museum - but who would that be? To not offend anyone I bet that would result in all three platforms offering more or less the same, which in turn could offend one platform who felt it was the first one out...
That's where a real museum would hopefully change this. Having multiple platforms doing the same isn't helping anybody. the same goes for museums/groups that lock everything down without sharing unless you sign NDA's and so on. There's atleast 20TB of history locked down right now and only a measly 2mb of that was released.

I started collecting around 2008 and neither cart nor disc protos were $5. DreamTR, MrMark etc., used to charge thousands. Disc-based prototypes were cheaper, but even BuyAtari charged a premium for lots that he sold.
Good deals are still out there, as you just experienced with the Saturn discs. I would've paid more than OG's average for a few of those discs f.ex.
The main reason why the prices are up is the rich people, influencers, etc., pushing what was a hobby over to becoming a market for investing during the turbulent times in the western world. But prototypes will never reach the prices of retail games because they're not based on nostalgia.
Regarding the Sonic proto - I don't judge him. He won one of life's lotteries and got it for cheap. I would have sold it for every penny it's worth myself.
This is basically how I can keep collecting these days. Buy to sell, to buy.
Ah, I meant discs and via ebay in this case my bad. I should have clarified better. Back then most auctions went for $5/$15 even for really rare bits. The AG price was often much higher.

The likes of social media/Discord hasn't helped also as more eyes see stuff now.

The rich haven't helped for sure, or companies like WATA/HA who shillbid stuff to get higher prices, or such as AG's owner who was exposed doing it. Shillbidding wasn't even major, as WATA were caught grading fake prototypes which ruins trust.

I don't dislike the Sonic guy at all, but it could have been better, more so the news story. The way it was advertised made it sound like some wild fantasy story but it was literally an ebay auction he got super lucky on. I cannot complain as he, unlike some did release the data which had eluded the community for almost 30 years.


This is absolutely a problem and is one of the reasons I keep a couple cards close to my chest. I've been burned many times and I can only imagine how many counterfeits are out there... With today's tech, if you have an eye for protos, you can make believable fakes very easily.
Especially scary knowing all the blank dev format being sold, be it PS1 master discs, GB dev carts (which I know have been used excessively to create counterfeit Pokemon distribution carts) and so on...
There's too many fakes as is. Repro's should be marked as such, I've seen tons of retails listed as real which can be proven fake instantly. On the prototype front, it started with the dreamcast when fake Shenmue builds were sold. In 2017 a german seller sold like 15 copies of Sonic Adventure 2 The trial on GD-R and people believed they were real.

The Dev-Mod guy had blank N64 carts and flashed retail roms to N64 dev carts and tried selling as real. I think there was a Banjo build or something with a ton of fake printed labels.

We've had fake GD-R's, Fake cart protos, builds loaded up onto RVT-H kits. It's already out of hand more so to the uneducated. The sale of blank media poses greater risks agreed.

This is literally why I cannot release this means to create Wii RVT Drives for PC. Some idiot will try cashing out like always. I'd really love to release, but it's simply too risky.

Yahoo Japan auctions is another place fake cart protos often turn up. It's really out of hand.

Phew, made it to the end. This one took time to think of a suitable reply too 😂

The Saturn discs will be here in under 7 hours. I wonder if a poll could be done on whats dumped first.
 

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