A timeline of RE15's history and the hunt for it (1996-2013)

[Eteponge]

You know, Eteponge, I keep running into scattered reports of an RE15 ISO image that's been floating around the web "in highly private circles" ever since the early 2000s. I gave your account because it's the best one - lots of good details - but it's not the only one. Most of them are in the U.S., but I've got a couple from France, one from Germany - even one from Japan, of all places! The bulk are from the mid to late 2000s - yours is the earliest - and it's my guess that if any of them are true, they're all probably of the 40% PVB. Frankly, I'm not surprised, given the nature of this particular rare beast. I'm sure that would have been a highly swappable and sought-after item in those "private circles" back then. I didn't give much credence to most them because they're almost all of the "hey, i've got RE15 - yeah, sure you do" variety. There's a few in the History to "round out the corners," so to say ... but your account was different ... very different.

Maybe I need to go digging through the old Usenet archives sometime ....

I remember, despite being so frustrated that the three of them on #psxtrade wouldn't trade the game to me, I always thought "Surely, with *three of them* having a burned iso of the game, it's gotta leak sometime." But not for another 12 years apparently. One of the three (the non-op channel regular I talked to) even told me he is such a huge fan of Resident Evil, so I thought, "Wow, at least this guy might leak it for other fans." Nope.

If it helps your search, I still very clearly remember the online nickname of the guy who had the game, who sent me the screenshots, and who traded those burned isos of RE 1.5 to the other two channel members, he went by the online nick name AlRooker. (I always remembered it, because it sounded like AlRoker, that guy on TV, but it was spelled AlRooker, with an extra o.) I seriously doubt #psxtrade exists anymore, but I wonder if IRC logs could be found somewhere online? Worth a search. Hell, recently I've searched and found IRC logs of myself in the emulation community channels from 1997 and 1998 on certain websites.

[Carnivol]

...black-bottom CD-Rs were commonly available; I've personally used them and still have several leftover.

I remember Memorex being heavy on the rainbow colors and black CD-Rs, but I don't think those went into common circulation until like 2002-2003 or something. 90s CD-Rs were usually limited to golden/green-ish colors, later expanded to the Verbatim-ish shade of blue/green - blind guess is that the early laser tech didn't really work well with certain dyes or something in ye olde days or something.

I haven't seen them available for purchase, in quite some time.... then again, I don't particularly keep an eye out for them. Who the hell actually burns data onto discs, anymore?

The local "all sorts of office crap + gardening tools" shop recently replaced all their rainbow CD-Rs with Memorex' "vinyl" collection, which are basically CD-Rs that look like tiny 45" vinyls

[Graco]

Thanks for posting that. It was a fun read.

[MeganGrass]

LOL

I had forgotten that the PlayStation dev units used by you guys back then could handle standard CD-Rs without any special tricks or modchips. Makes perfect sense, and I've actually ran across that paper sleeve bit from another source. That still doesn't explain the black underside to the RE15 disc seen in the Goromacida video, though. I had to go with what data was available.

...black-bottom CD-Rs were commonly available; I've personally used them and still have several leftover.

I haven't seen them available for purchase, in quite some time.... then again, I don't particularly keep an eye out for them. Who the hell actually burns data onto discs, anymore?

[RMandel]

LOL

I had forgotten that the PlayStation dev units used by you guys back then could handle standard CD-Rs without any special tricks or modchips. Makes perfect sense, and I've actually ran across that paper sleeve bit from another source. That still doesn't explain the black underside to the RE15 disc seen in the Goromacida video, though. I had to go with what data was available.

Well, I'm still trying to wrap my head around some of the seeming contradictions in the public data. I'm beginning to think that it's either as you guys have said, or Capcom USA must have burned additional copies of their own. That would make a lot of these seeming contradictions go away, if it were true - and it does make a kind of sense. There's all kinds of talk and speculation in the old posts about "press copies" (plural). A lot of this was debunked at the time, but still ... what would Capcom USA have done if that one disc shipped to them by Capcom Japan had gotten damaged somehow? Their making additional copies would neatly explain not only the "three copies" that pop up from time to time in the old posts, but also some of these isolated "sightings" that don't appear to fit anywhere - as well as both the tale of the Curator AND how the Team supposedly got its original disc.

You know, Eteponge, I keep running into scattered reports of an RE15 ISO image that's been floating around the web "in highly private circles" ever since the early 2000s. I gave your account because it's the best one - lots of good details - but it's not the only one. Most of them are in the U.S., but I've got a couple from France, one from Germany - even one from Japan, of all places! The bulk are from the mid to late 2000s - yours is the earliest - and it's my guess that if any of them are true, they're all probably of the 40% PVB. Frankly, I'm not surprised, given the nature of this particular rare beast. I'm sure that would have been a highly swappable and sought-after item in those "private circles" back then. I didn't give much credence to most them because they're almost all of the "hey, i've got RE15 - yeah, sure you do" variety. There's a few in the History to "round out the corners," so to say ... but your account was different ... very different.

Maybe I need to go digging through the old Usenet archives sometime ....

Thanks for the older PS1 devdisk images, Mikhail. Zombie_X ... you wanna do the graphical honors, or shall I fudge it up again?

[Borman]

Besides a Suikoden master disc I have somewhere, I don't think I've got a single PS1 title on an official Sony CD-R - This is mainly because devs simply chose not to use them for anything but Sony submissions (or until they ran out of whatever amount they'd accidentally got from Sony), since they were probably more expensive than most off-the-shelf brands at the time (and a lot of pubs even started utilizing their own recordable media, rather than buying from Sony)



If the origin truly is the same source as some stuff Dot50Cal had in the past ... it was probably just a typical 90s golden/green CD-R with a writable surface with someone's sloppy handwriting on it + an enclosed A4 folded around it with some basic controller instructions and a brief "product description"-esque text to inform the uninformed of the fact that "Yes. This is a video game. Yes. The company you are working for is making this at one of the other branches. Yes. We'd like for you to see this shit. Yes. It's a work in progress. Yes. It will be finished soon. Yes. Your job is to make sure we can sell this in your territory. No. You may not share any of this."

That's pretty much what I figured, thought I was missing some hidden image of the original.

[warren]

I don't think Curator owned the original devdisc, but one of the copies. DarkMoon did say the source Team IGAS got the game from was someone they knew had it from many years back (so it could have been any of the early sources your history points out they were talking about on the forums years ago), he also said that before they put up their money for it, this individual, early last year, had to make a RE 1.5 video for them to prove for sure this person had RE 1.5. Now, had that been Curator, then the PlayStation Museum videos from 2007 would have been all the proof they needed, no need to make a video to show he had the game. I pointed this out in DarkMoon's thread, that from what DarkMoon posted, it couldn't have been Curator they got it from, and all he would say is "I'm not naming names".

well it could be that they didn't know that it was the curator, after all he could've used another one of his many nicknames for the sale.

[Carnivol]

Besides a Suikoden master disc I have somewhere, I don't think I've got a single PS1 title on an official Sony CD-R - This is mainly because devs simply chose not to use them for anything but Sony submissions (or until they ran out of whatever amount they'd accidentally got from Sony), since they were probably more expensive than most off-the-shelf brands at the time (and a lot of pubs even started utilizing their own recordable media, rather than buying from Sony)

Was there any evidence that the original was on an "official" Playstation CD-r?

If the origin truly is the same source as some stuff Dot50Cal had in the past ... it was probably just a typical 90s golden/green CD-R with a writable surface with someone's sloppy handwriting on it + an enclosed A4 folded around it with some basic controller instructions and a brief "product description"-esque text to inform the uninformed of the fact that "Yes. This is a video game. Yes. The company you are working for is making this at one of the other branches. Yes. We'd like for you to see this shit. Yes. It's a work in progress. Yes. It will be finished soon. Yes. Your job is to make sure we can sell this in your territory. No. You may not share any of this."

[Borman]

Was there any evidence that the original was on an "official" Playstation CD-r? There is no actual need for that, and many companies chose not to use them. That said, I havent fully read everything, so thus asking a question

[Enigmatism415]

Many doubted the PSM curator's ownership at the time; some said that he had borrowed the disc for a limited time for his review. The videos could have even been sent to him by the real owner. That being said, I always believed that he owned it, but some people were trying to take the heat off him. In light of these doubts, it would have made sense to request a specially-tailored video just to be absolutely sure of ownership.

[Eteponge]

Supposedly, according to one of my (unverified) sources, the actual devdisc (the Curator's version, anyway)

I don't think Curator owned the original devdisc, but one of the copies. DarkMoon did say the source Team IGAS got the game from was someone they knew had it from many years back (so it could have been any of the early sources your history points out they were talking about on the forums years ago), he also said that before they put up their money for it, this individual, early last year, had to make a RE 1.5 video for them to prove for sure this person had RE 1.5. Now, had that been Curator, then the PlayStation Museum videos from 2007 would have been all the proof they needed, no need to make a video to show he had the game. I pointed this out in DarkMoon's thread, that from what DarkMoon posted, it couldn't have been Curator they got it from, and all he would say is "I'm not naming names".

[Eteponge]

WHOA, I just read this in your RE History Part 1 ...

Capcom USA's RE15 disc falls into the hands of one of its own employees. This
employee [name withheld] will simply walk out the door with it. Sometime
afterward, he will make at least two copies for friends of his. These two
copies will eventually end up in the hands of private collectors. These are
the "three discs/3 copies" of RE15 that you hear about so often in old data
regarding the first ten years or so of the hunt for RE15.

Remember I said there were TWO people on that #psxtrade channel in 1999 / 2000 who told me they had gotten their burned copies of RE 1.5 from a specific personal friend there, and they both gave me his email, and he confirmed this and then he sent me RE 1.5 screenshots being played in his living room, but refused to trade me a copy?

I'm starting to think I may have rubbed elbows with all three of the original sources back then and didn't know it, hahaha.

[Mikhail]

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?45063-PS1-Dev-Review-Beta-Discs-Crash-Time-Crisis-Coll-Boarders-More

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?45220-FOR-SALE-PS1-BETAS-REVIEW-GOLD-DISCS-DEBUG-PS1

[RMandel]

@RMandell - Great work, you may want to adjust something, though. Someone feel free to correct me (Gemini?), but I don't think that LibCrypt was available to developers at the time. Furthermore, it was only used on an extremely small amount of titles (Bio3, and a couple other non-CAPCOM games).

Thanks, Mark. Unfortunately, I've only been able to find images of two slightly different versions of official PlayStation CD-Rs. One is what I showed, and the other has lines 4-6 on the bottom area of the disc instead of to the right side. Both have the LIBCRYPT indicator. I guess they're both later versions, and that older ones wouldn't have the LIBCRYPT indicator?

Supposedly, according to one of my (unverified) sources, the actual devdisc (the Curator's version, anyway) doesn't even have the "CAPCOM" line. It just has the name BIOHAZARD 2 (in Japanese) and a burn date - "11/6." Nothing else - IF this (unverified) source is right. I added the "CAPCOM" and version number (for "era 4," ha-hah) as my own "watermarks," if you will.

[Deathlygasm]

I remember that 'Umbrella rising' image... Isn't that Norman Bates/Psycho?

It's difficult to believe that players were expecting to take down Umbrella, at the time - talk about a kick to the gut.


@RMandell - Great work, you may want to adjust something, though. Someone feel free to correct me (Gemini?), but I don't think that LibCrypt was available to developers at the time. Furthermore, it was only used on an extremely small amount of titles (Bio3, and a couple other non-CAPCOM games).



Ah, one of my favorite scenarios from Final Fantasy 7.

was so fucking pissed that Umbrellas fate as......an audio opening scene for a game!

Also I still find it funny that Cloud gets mentally retarted on disc 2 on FF7