wanted to make this earlier but I broke my phone at mcdonalds and had to wait till it gets repaired lol reupload - forgot to showcase what happens when you swap discs during the race
this is actually the very first method to have aerith alive in ff7 without a gameshark or similar. you would swap out ff7 with xenosaga in the world map, and manuever your way towards the start of disc 2, its quite interesting.
Discovered some interesting stuff doing this back then as a kid. The one that sticks with me was when I was playing Spyro 3 and I swapped the disc to CTR. The music cut out and after a few seconds I heard Ripper Roo speaking in perfect english rather than his typical "crazy" voice
That's sick. You must've run into these confirmed unused lines: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oi2X6HH3Lb8.html. Getting cross-disc audio on PS1 games was easy to trip given media was stored in their STR(Video) and XA(SFX,voice lines, music) formats as audio tracks of data on the game discs.
I think I found some really cool glitches doing this before when I was young. I remember when I would do this with xgames peo snowboarding. If you opened up the cd tray, parts of the level wouldn't load and you would jump off into a free fall with no ground and you could doing tricks forever. Then if you closes the cd tray, the level would load and you could land your huge trick.
@@scottrich976 It would probably be more complicated than renaming, I'd guess it needs the right file size in a specific memory location, maybe not though.
@@dylanharding5720 Not something I know about personally, I've heard it was tricky but I guess not. Modding the data I was only going by what experience I have of the of fetch/execute cycle processes.
crazy, i learned this when i was like 13, but it was on psp. I was doing A “shareplay” on psp with 2 other people and we all played metal gear portable ops plus online against each other using this technique. I’d put the game in and load us all to the home menu, put the disc back in my psp (host), start A private match and once the private match starts you can take the disc out and put it in another psp and that person can join once they join get the other(s) to join and bang, three people playing the same game as if you all bought it and only one person needs to have the game: save some time and money. This is cool A refreshing memory
@@joemama-bu5ue holy crap i didn’t know that was illegal 😅 oh well, not like i modded it or jailbroke it it’s just an exploit they never fixed. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t find out? Wish they still made consoles like that! 😭
@@NoMoneyAfterTipping Not really it was probably because the console itself, and when they found it, it was too late they would need to replace the ones that already existed if they didn't want it being abused, or implement some kind of new check to make sure all players owned the same game, its illegal but nothing serious you would hardly even get in trouble for that xd
Very interesting, I would have never guessed that PS1 games were able to load so much of the levels and graphics into RAM/VRAM, I would have guessed it had to constantly read from the ROM. What might be more impressive yet is just the sheer resilience that games from that era had in terms of not crashing when moving data around. The code was built really sturdy compared to Windows 95/98 equivalents that used to crash if a fly landed on a nearby desk. lol
Back then it was common to load whole models into the RAM and it was common practice. The PS2 changed that though by significantly reducing the amount of RAM avaliable for use
That glitch was very common in the Test Drive series..I remember I had a very bad Test Drive 4 CD and saw the same behavior. what I believe that is happening is that the background is loaded in VRAM, but then the game tries to load road textures/collisions/etc and fails so it leaves you with just the BG, but in fact it is not "misbehaving" because the other game is being read, it is just not loading anything else in memory. If you would like to test that, you can just open the CD cover and see if the same thing happens.
The PS reading speed from the CD is 300Kbps, so U can't relay on the ROM and try to squeeze as much code and vertex as U can on the 2MB of RAM and all the textures on the VRAM.
Hehe, I used to do stuff like this on my Commodore 64 back in the mid-80s with multi-disc games like Ultima 3 and 4. You could induce some amazingly glitched out worlds including stuff like unlimited respawning treasure chests, just stand on the tile and pick the lock or cast the unlock spell, harvest unlimited gold and occasional weapon or armour drops. Then restore the disc and enter a town (if there is one on screen, you better hope!) and all was well again, except you were rich AF. Good times, good times.
The results make sense. Anytime it looked for new data, it couldn't find it because the internal file names and/or some of the structure is different. Songs probably are numbered rather than named, hence why they are swappable. Textures and level data are much different between the two.
@@not_noah69I am not sure, but my speculation is it is trying to read the wrong data. Maybe it read a level as a texture, who knows? But my guess is it is not reading in the right place because the ROM changed after the read calls were made. First game says "read from x sector to find y data" games are swapped, second game says "x sector has some b data and some j. Nothing related to y" game console doesn't know this and just displays b and j as if it were y. Again, simply a theory. But I'll bet I'm close.
This is incredibly fascinating. But also makes complete sense since the console doesn’t seem like it does a reset or anything when opened, it literally just uses what it’s given, even reading and displaying stuff that line up in similar points (like how it displays loading screens from the other game since they’re both in the same place in the code most likely) It’s really neat seeing stuff like this ngl
@@Arirezz homeboy sleeping at 9 pm?? I'm jealous of this man. If I wanna have a little bit of time to watch nonsense like this I get to sleep 3/4 hours a night lol
Kiss pinball kinda used this technology. You could eject the game, put in a regular music cd, and still keep playing kiss pinball with the music playing over the game even the game disc was no longer in the console. It works I have tried this. I think what happend here was the disc stopped spinning at one menu and even with the disc gone, it had still kinda buffred some of the disc info but not enough to load the levels. That was pretty cool.
Well, as stated in the video, the games use the same engine. It's interesting to see how it actually affects the way the game loads since the engine was processed properly, but since everything else was a bit different, it doesn't load correctly.
@@tyisafk yes, exactly, and this interesting concept was used to make Vib-Ribbon, which relies on really basic graphics in order to let the game be loaded into RAM and allow you to use a CD to play whatever music.
RGMEx made a really cool technical demonstration of swapping Super Mario Bros and Tennis on the NES. The result is a specific location used for counting steps is the same for the world restart flag in SMB, making it possible to access glitch worlds by simply swapping cartridges out at strategic times
I can see why this has happend. A ps1 disc will actually stop spinning when it has finished loading that part of the data on the disc. E.g. a menu with all the cars and music swapping. However, the ps1 will read the disc for the next bit of the data. Which would be the race or scores. The reason you can still play while you have swapped the disc is that that part of the disc is already loaded. You can actually try playing the game when you have taken the disc out. However, the music might automatically stop. The game will crash if you go past a part of the game that needs loading. Therefore, forcing you to restart the ps1 console.
Some Games Will Still Run Even With Another Disc, Because On Most PS1 Games, Most Of The Already Loaded Data Will Be Stored In The RAM Until New Loaded Data Will Overwrite Some Unnecessary Loaded Data, A Press Of The Reset Button Or A Turn Off Of The System. There Are Also Some That Store Literally The Entire Game Into The RAM Such As Vib-Ribbon, That Uses The Disc Swap Technique For Playing On Tracks Of An Audio CD For Example. Though It's So Simplistic Graphically And There Is Simple Sound Effects Because Then It Will Work. (Also It Doesn't Have Loading Screens Because Of It)
basically, demolition racer doesn't stream data, it loads the map and runs, while test drive streams data during play. Removing the disc could have similar effects. You could try swapping GTA games on the PS2 around.
One time when I was younger, I was playing the Italian job game on ps1 and I took out the disc and put it back in again and my car started falling through the floor continuously for like 2 mins and I eventually spawned on a normal road, just thought I should share this.
I was playing crash bandicoot and did the same and I got flung into the sky and fell for an hour when I hit the ground the enemies had glitched textures and the music was glitched and earrape. I had nootmares for like a week
@@weirdanimations76 Since the games are old they are using Lod textures!The game got confused and didnt know what to load the lod or the original texture!Im a dev and I wanted to share this
What I believe is causing the glitched textures is that during loading the code is still loaded from the first game and the code is loading in data from specific addresses off of the CD and loading it into memory, however when the code attempted to display the images, the bytes it was reading from those addresses that were loaded into memory maybe isn't even image data causing that issue.
Unfortunately even on the same engine, things will get shuffled around so everything won't end up loaded the same way. If you DO want to try datamashing games like this though, it's always a better idea to try and get a later title to load an older title's data, since the newer title will have data the older game wouldn't even know about, but the newer one may have failsafes/fallback data for. Also as Nick points out below, some PS1 games like Vigilante 2 used this to let you play content from the previous game, although in cases like that it was the developer setting up the later game to just check a disc ID. The V8 levels are actually on the V82 disc, iirc.
Another nice example of PSX games handling data mashing "correctly" is the Theater Mode in the Tekken Series. In Tekken 3, after you complete the game with some (or all characters, don't really remember) you unlock the Theater Mode and if you replace the Tekken 3 to Tekken 2 or 1 disc, it will allow you to see the Cutscenes of those games. Pretty neat if you ask me :)
There is something very eerie about the startup sound. Yes, it brings back memories of the good ole days, but the darkness associated with it bitter sweet? Maybe in 10 years I'll have a better grasp of it??
The part at 7:40 where he begins to drive over nothing kinda reminds me of nfs underground on market street where the ground never loaded in the chinatown section
It reveals they've saved render-time by not clearing the screen buffer in between frames, instead relying on the track graphics to completely over-draw the last frame. With no track graphics drawing, the car leaves a trail.
You can unlock vigilante 8 levels in vigilante 8 2nd offence by swapping the discs. It literaly says that the levels for the first game are now unlocked.
mutalix Damn, kinda makes me wish I played it as a kid. I didn’t even know there was a second one when I was little. But I remember playing a digital only remake of the first game on Xbox 360 and it was terrible
Loved demolition race! My friend and I called it "death from above game" haha. One of the tracks I would land on the same car at the start of the race.
It's probably Redbook audio, or a similar format. It's the thing that causes the games to act like a normal CD when you stick one in a regular CD player.
Quantum Sandwiches! Actually, even simpler: Data was track 1 and everything else was CD music tracks like any other music CD. So, if the game was supposed to play “track 3”, it would play whatever audio file was there. On some games you could swap the game with an audio disc if the game data was all loaded into RAM.
What really happens is that now your dreams will forever be haunted by Historical Rome Circuit with all GT40. Insert Yello - Oh Yeah song to add that extra layer to the curse
Thicc Chungo That feeling when you finally plucked up the courage to speak with a therapist only to find a none other than GT40 painting on a wall in his cabinet
You could cast "Regen" in FF7/8/9 then open the disk lid. The game wouldn't load anymore of the battle but your health would keep going up. Once it was full, pop the lid back down and the battle would continue. Now fully healed
There's a simple explanation for all of this. A) the part of the code needed to run the menu is loaded into memory, so the disc does not need to be in the drive. B) the audio tracks are stored separately from the game data (the disc can be played in an ordinary CD player). Therefore, there's not much mysterious or impressive about the fact that you can play music from one disc in another game. C) The game crashes when you try to do anything that requires loading data off the disc, for many reasons, the primary one being the game does not know where to seek on the disk to find the data it needs / the data at those locations is not what it was expecting.
Hence the weird colors. The loading instructions executing from RAM don’t care if the data is good, just that the data is there. It’s likely just random data stored on the disk. Stuff like this fascinate me, like the Super Mario Land out of bounds data.
@@od3stroyer771 it’s because the CPU instructions that load the image data don’t have the correct data. When the first disk is loaded, those load instructions are loaded into RAM. Those load instructions are looking for a specific place on the disk where the image is stored. When the disk is swapped, that location no longer contains valid image data. However, unless there is a redundancy check programmed into the game, it will just load whatever random data is in that location on disk in that location as though it’s an image. Since it’s likely random data, the image is literally just random. You should watch Retro Game Mechanics Explained’s video on MissingNO. It goes into incredible detail on how this works. And it’s probably similar to what happens here.
Not the same, since while GoldSrc might be a similar engine to quake's, it's still HEAVILY modified. It's why old versions and new versions of Source aren't compatible.
I think there is a way to hear different music with the older releases of the pc version. It is possible to load music tracks if you have another disk in the cd drive.
@@lightning1116 On the PC, GoldSRC should be able to load many of the files from Quake, but it's likely that the game will just outright not be able to find the files on the filesystem because even similar files won't have the same name, and will therefore error out. On the PS1, there are likely further platform specific modifications to the engines that will just outright break compatability.
There is a video somewhere of quake levels being played on GoldSrc. The easiest way is to load Quake BSPs into Hammer and start a debut play. IIRC you have to replace all the lights and the textures have some troubles, but it does work.
I love this stuff. Driving out to the void was scary. That loading-screen kind of outcome is common with this stuff where everything in ram early enough is fine (Perhaps even some gameplay) with future reads for map data, textures and their decompression being borked and potentially crashing given the mismatch between discs. I've been trying to remember for years, but there was a disc for one console which could boot in another because the architecture was the same - despite not being unplayable. I'd love to remember which game and two consoles that quirk was on.
Basically anything that was already loaded into RAM when you swapped discs will still work fine. The issues arose when it tried to actually read new data from the disc into memory.
You could try this with Tomb Raider games, because these games have same engines and very similar data structure Same data structure: Tomb Raider 1, 2 and 3 Same data structures (but different than Tomb Raider 1, 2, 3): Tomb Raider 4, 5
So what about.... Death Stranding, and Horizon Zero Dawn? I only pick those two because they're the same engine, and I have both. Surely by PS4 they've changed games construction so much something like this wouldn't happen on a modern game, right?
@@nignamedmutt7270 from what i know, ps3/xbox360 to current gen consoles completely close the game when the disc is removed so its a cool thought, but not on modern games :(
Interesting that Demolition Racer loads the entire track into memory at boot, but Test Drive 5 streams it off disk. This is why it bugs out; it's looking for track data in some random bit of the Demolition Racer disk, doesn't find what it's looking for, and gives up. Also interesting that Test Drive 5's skybox doesn't fully encompass the world. Makes sense at least; never gonna see down there in a racing game, why devote the RAM to holding it and the rendertime to draw it?
I once put Rockstar’s ‘Bully’ into my PS2 halfway through a Star Wars Battlefront 1 match. It kept playing, and eventually all of the in-game audio was replaced by garbled versions of tracks from Bully. Even some NPCs had their lines replaced by Jimmy Hopkins yelling “Move, bitch!” My brother and I went mental.
Fun fact, you can actually play as jak from jak 2 in jak and daxter the precursor legacy for the ps2 with this method. I guess the memory pointers are similar enough that the game still remains semi functional when you swap the discs.
I knew there was a glitch that let you wonder around the starting area because of the intro cutscene taking place there. But you can just swap disks and characters change?
Memory pointers can't be similar enough, it must be loaded into RAM into exactly same places. Also pointers must be same datatype (i.e. char can't be int because char is smaller (1 byte) than int (4 bytes)) and pointers must point into memory with same size (in case of arrays). Otherwise program will be shot for segmentation fault (for reading from memory not allocated by program in better case, in worse case it can read his own memory with different data in it). If what you described works, then both games must use same game structure with same engine which allows to read and load data from CD. In another words, all characters have some ID only and are defined by some structured data so game engine can read models and textures from CD event that model have for example 5× more polygons and textures are 2× bigger than original.
@@iselink Very correct explanation, just a small note, though. In these older consoles that had no real OS (especially the PS1), you can't really have a segfault. You can do whatever you want, because your code is running in the equivalent of kernel ring on a modern platform. It's just that you need to be careful because e.g. you could accidentally write to a memory mapped register and cause something that shouldn't happen
@@dudearnav yeah, the way memory may be stored on a demo disk as to where things are located relative to other games will inevitably not line up and fail when you hit data not loaded to console memory. However, if you had like an e3 or public demo build disc that was used for conferences or development, it might very well somewhat work, granted games can still frequently fail after removing the disk at all.
@@creepypato3984 I don't believe I personally own any demo discs like that, although I have most playstation magazine discs otherwise. If I owned one though, I would test it, there's a slim chance that might partially work (depending on how the demo worked)
I am editing this comment because my obnoxious 12 year old self annoyed me 2 years later. I am now interested in this video and apologize for being an annoying nuisance.
What you're seeing at 3:51 is actually byte data (likely code) interrupted as an image. I made a project a while ago that turns any file into an image and they all resemble this. Likely whats happening is its reading from some address on the disk that it expects to be an image or similar, its hitting a chunk of code instead. and trying its best to render the code as an image. Then promptly gives up and some exception is thrown. really cool!
is the project mentioned perhaps something i could learn to do myself or find online (i am very curious and also iwant to get myself some wild as hell overlays and stuff for my art)
That glitched loading screen looks like it loaded the wrong part of memory as the image (well the right part with the wrong content). I wrote a program before that would let you convert any file to an image, and loading executables often gave you the same sort of image. Especially those blocks in the middle, they look like some sort of object in memory
this is very cool, we need another shot at the old consoles and see if someone will make a set of games you can mix n match the assets of by disc swapping
Since racing games rely heavily on culling, it makes sense that the game plays relatively the same, minus textures and graphics, since the console can't cull those in off disc. As for the music, it's standard Redbook audio, wouldn't surprise me if the discs can be played as music CDs. Try all your PS1 games in your CD player, you'll be pleasantly surprised!
@@sarcasticmcspastic If the Tomb Raider games used Redbook Audio for the music, then yes. If you're going to be putting PS1 games in a normal CD player, just make sure you don't play Track 1 as that's the data track and not all CD players are smart enough to "mute" it. It does sound like an old modem if the track does play, but the sounds can potentially damage audio equipment. Games like Final Fantasy VIII (and probably the others in the series) used PS1 MIDI for their music so don't play on normal CD players. So your mileage may vary.
You can even do it on the PS1 if you load the inbuilt CD player application before putting in the disc. I seem to recall one of the Broken Sword games had a song on it for the credits.
Used to swap out disc two and disc three when I rented Final Fantasy VII (because of scratches). It actually worked really well. Bought the game that Christmas.
I think it's due to how the two games handle loading maps. The first one loads the entire map (models and textures) at the beginning, so removing the disk does nothing until the end, when it needs to load something else. The second game loads the models, the hitboxes but not the track textures, those load procedurally, so removing the disk prevents it from loading textures, but the map is already there so it's perfectly functioning, just invisible. The game does not know how to fill in the void space so it glitches around the things it already loaded
And if it’s OK if I correct your grammar again, it’d be best if you put a comma between right and OK Also, those exclamation points should be replaced with a question mark.
I'm 3 years too late to this vid, but as soon as you mentioned changing the disk during the race. I knew nothing would happen. I used to take out the disk when doing endurance races in grand turismo. I'd put in music cd's so I could have my own soundtrack. Then, on the last lap, pause and put the game disk back in.
