The Sega Saturn first launched into the market back in 1994 and while it didn’t last too long with competing consoles Nintendo 64 and Sony’s PlayStation, the console still had quite the following. There was plenty of great titles for the system, but now as these consoles grow older and older, there are concerns that gamers won’t be able to use these systems reliably. That is until a hacker was able to crack the Sega Saturn DRM.
It’s been his longest project to date after James Laird Wah, otherwise known as Dr Abrasive, as he started his journey of cracking the Sega Saturn DRM back in 2013. Now, years later, James was able to figure out a solution that will allow gamers to enjoy their titles through USB.
Sega had a pretty tough DRM to beat for their disc-based console and it took quite a bit of digging to discover ways that would allow gamers to enjoy their Sega Saturns long after their disc drives failed. In fact, that was one of the main goals for the hacker after quickly noticing his own Sega Saturn disc drive was starting to fail.
This new system would allow gamers to load their CD ISO’s onto a USB and simply play it on their Sega Saturn without an issue. In fact, one of the best aspects of the Sega Saturn CD games is that there are no encryptions that would prevent gamers from reading the content on their disc.
Essentially, a gamer could load their disc into their computer and rip the content onto a USB flash drive. Check out the video documentary above that shows how exactly James was able to break down the code and work out a way to bypass the console DRM.
