The DC did have copy protection, it would’ve made no sense to release a disc-based console in the late 90s without it considering CD burners were becoming ubiquitous (some early CD-based consoles like Sega CD didn’t have copy protection because nobody really had the means to write CDs at home). Sega believed their proprietary GD-ROM format would prevent piracy, but ironically it was another format called MIL-CD Sega introduced with the DC that allowed it to be exploited and cracked games to be run without the need to modify the console. Info here.
Am I remembering it wrong? I was huge on DCEmulation back in the early 2000s. Also I’m too lazy to read that link. I recall having to burn a weird music track… partition? To have my CD read. But I was able to play NEA/GB/SNES (with frameskip, unfortunately) and the only way my young broke butt could play Ikaruga was to pirate it and burn it to a CD.
The DC did have copy protection, it would’ve made no sense to release a disc-based console in the late 90s without it considering CD burners were becoming ubiquitous (some early CD-based consoles like Sega CD didn’t have copy protection because nobody really had the means to write CDs at home). Sega believed their proprietary GD-ROM format would prevent piracy, but ironically it was another format called MIL-CD Sega introduced with the DC that allowed it to be exploited and cracked games to be run without the need to modify the console. Info here.
Am I remembering it wrong? I was huge on DCEmulation back in the early 2000s. Also I’m too lazy to read that link. I recall having to burn a weird music track… partition? To have my CD read. But I was able to play NEA/GB/SNES (with frameskip, unfortunately) and the only way my young broke butt could play Ikaruga was to pirate it and burn it to a CD.