Why do ripped versions of old games usually have videos taken out?

Panzermann11

Panzermann11

Member
When I was small, I used to have some old games on my hard drive. Most of the game I used to play were ripped versions. Game files taken out of retail installations into one portable file, sometimes came with additional cracking tools.

What I hardly realize is that the games I had usually would have came with FMVs but like I said, since the games I have were ripped/cracked versions, they usually have the videos taken out of the files, sometimes replaced with something else and/or have the whole in-game music removed. The version of Age of Empires I used to have has the Microsoft intro was replaced with a THX-styled logo video and the game's intro was replaced with an apparently viral GIF converted to WAV. I didn't know I was missing out the fun stuff since then.

Now, why do people usually decide it'd be a good idea to take out the videos (and the music) in old games when ripping? I don't have any clue exactly, but I laid a theory to that. They took out the videos in order to save some disk space. Some PCs don't have much disk space and they prolly don't have much cash to buy a new hard drive. We live in the future now however, there are a lot of PCs out there that has hundreds/thousands of gigs and you can install lots of games from the 90's without worrying about running low on space.

But sometimes videos can be crucial to the game, either understanding the plot so you know what's going on or some other stuff. Take Twisted Metal 2, another old game I played for example. In TM2, most of the story stuff comes from cinematics such as the intro or when you finish the game. So if the videos are removed from the game, you're pretty much missing out on a lot of it and you're not gonna know what's going on.
 
i believe its to save bandwith and space on hdd. Not needed as much now days but was helpful back in the day
 
lol that just reminded me of this

343.png


Me: "Oh come on! for real?!
 
Seriously?
I guess you don't remember what is a 56k modem?
Personally I liked a lot of those rips, because GAMES AREN'T MOVIES, something most companies fail to understand.
For instance you will see 90% of most game data is movies, something like the game final fantasy 7, comes to mind.
I can do without most of those dumb movies just my opinion.
Yes WAREZ and ripping groups such as *(forgot his name)*,
and there is one guy still ripping called K***.
Also a working rip is much harder to make than you might think.
 
Dildo_Schwaggins said:
Seriously?
I guess you don't remember what is a 56k modem?
Personally I liked a lot of those rips, because GAMES AREN'T MOVIES, something most companies fail to understand.
For instance you will see 90% of most game data is movies, something like the game final fantasy 7, comes to mind.
I can do without most of those dumb movies just my opinion.
Yes WAREZ and ripping groups such as *(forgot his name)*,
and there is one guy still ripping called K***.
Also a working rip is much harder to make than you might think.
Click to expand...

I don't see anyone in my country that has modems that slow IIRC. And I didn't know there are some people out there that has slow modems like that and they didn't wanna waste any time waiting for the long download to be done.

Like I said, videos in games sometimes can be helpful or cruical like understanding the story and context of the game or something else.
In Twisted Metal 2, the in-game story most of the time consists of videos. So pretty much saying, without them you might not get some of the stuff in the game and you might not even know what's going on. Like for example, the intro of the game explains why there are cars fighting each other around the world.



Another example of this is Maximum Pool. The objectives of each game mode uses videos from the game files.
Without them, you're not gonna know what you're supposed to do.
 
One right question, many answers
- early obscure video codecs, that sometimes make difficult start the game too
- as already said size matter, to help user with crappy internet speed to download the bloody thing

but as correctly you say sometimes this can take to 'shitty too much' releases that can ruin in part the experience
Discworld 2 i.e., there was a version with ALL the talked videos completely removed, and due the fact that this game is like a book to read, you miss part of the fun

i dont like also when there is an abyss in audio/video quality from the original fmv and the 'compressed' one (Grandia 2 for the Dreamcast is an example, ok i know due to the gdi/cd size differences), if used correctly video encoders can grant a big size reduction with zero/little quality loss
 
Of all people, you guys are telling me they were taken out mainly to help people with bad internet connections to download the game? OK, I get it now. I didn't bother Google searching to an answer I couldn't think of what to search for so I posted this.
 
Well firstly the topic kind of sounds like a trolling question.
But if you are serious, then the answer is everyone used to use 56k. Through the telephone line, for like 6 years.
Actually those were considered "normal" internet connections at the time, lol. Because it was all you had at the time. They were not bad or cheap, its just all there was.
And we had AOL and Netzero and other horrible dial-up companies, lol. And then came napster and then all this adware crap, it is a long story really.
I can remember when looking at a nude girl image it would slowly render down the screen. It was slow.
Hey I remembered the rippers name it was MYTH
 
I'm not trying to troll people here. I couldn't bother to look up an answer because I couldn't think of what to search for, so I posted this here. So yeah, I'm serious.
 
Just what DS mentioned

early 2000 times, true most of us had crappy dial up

So a ps1 disc would have been 2 or 3 days download @ 500MB

20MB games were an hour, Win updates was a set and forget thing, come back tommorow.

Rips became commonplace and were welcomed by most

I have a box of PS1 rips here from then, Mortal Combat Trilogy @11mb, no intro, no music, no sound, just kill!

Old Mega went down....my flag is still at halfmast

long live Kim.com
 
Yeah I am an expert on trolling,

Aside from that if you remember these "warez" game rips then you must remember how you downloaded them?
Am I missing something,
your dad downloaded them?

yeah I remember to play starcraft without the music lol

Actually we all had 56k modems for like 5-10 YEARS
dude where were you? lol
 
I didn't download the rips back then, they were on my old, long gone hard drive for years now. I asked my grandpa and he said the files most likely came from a hard drive he bought years ago and he also had the files on a portable USB hard drive he originally had in Ha Giang. He couldn't remember exactly where he bought that hard drive though.

I forgot to mention though, of course I didn't download much back in the years when and after I have my first internet IIRC. Adds to reasons why I didn't know the videos in rips were removed until now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top