Paradox hacks Red Steel, releases the ISO into the wild

With Xbox 360 and PS3 games getting ISO-dumped right and left, it's about time the Wii got a little taste of hacker-dom. The famed "Paradox" group of hackers did the honors this time, and went so far as to upload the ISO of Red Steel for your DVD burning pleasure. Of course, you still can't actually play such burned discs on the Wii -- though Paradox seems to think such a hack is right around the corner -- and then there's always the whole illegal part of this equation, but if you already own a copy of the game and are just looking into modding your Wii for, erm, educational purposes, we don't really see what's stopping you. There is the fact that you'll probably need an in with these folks to get ahold of the torrent at the moment, but that shouldn't be too terribly hard to do.

[Thanks, Bob T]

[pixelbender @ Dec 21st 2006 6:38PM]

Neat thing that can be done, kind of a shame it'll boost piracy. I mean, with Sony and MS we hate them, so piracy is ok. But the Big N, come on....

[Cowboy Bob @ Dec 21st 2006 6:51PM]

aw man, not nintendo...

go ahead and screw Sony and Microsoft... they can afford it, but not Big N, they need all the support they can get right now with their 2 lawsuits and them replacing the wriststraps for free :'(

[chirs @ Jan 3rd 2007 10:49AM]

well if you realy think about it that more people will buy the console if you can download the games off the net but nintendo have only produced 2 games for the wii so they are not losing any realy

[Josh Clark @ Dec 21st 2006 7:00PM]

Way to go, Engadget. That must be the single worst Photoshop ever.

[Sergio @ Dec 21st 2006 10:37PM]

Who the **** cares? Its a freaking blog post not Worth1000.com

As for the ISO, it was only a matter of time before someone uploaded it so I don't see the big deal. People need to stop stroking the "big N's" knob.

[Peebert @ Dec 21st 2006 7:08PM]

Reports on the resultant sales losses must have estimates in the dozens of dollars. Next time, hack a game that doesn't suck.

[Nate @ Dec 21st 2006 7:16PM]

Hah, I agree with Peebert. Why didn't they hack a good game like Metal Slug Anthology?

[Matt @ Dec 21st 2006 7:19PM]

Paradox rocks my socks.

[Geoff @ Dec 21st 2006 7:40PM]

Those PARADOX bastards! This is nothing short of a direct, frontal assault on the Great Nintendo and everything it stands for!!!1!11!!!1one!@22@!!!!11!1

Quick! Everyone! Join in solidarity, for, only together shall we raise the great pyramid... er... I mean, ginormous profits in the name of our Great Corporate. Above all, remember: WE ARE NOT SLAVES! Glory to Nintendohhhhhh!!!

[Dave @ Dec 21st 2006 8:11PM]

"Reports on the resultant sales losses must have estimates in the dozens of dollars."

The same reports also mention that over 50% of all Red Steel sales were lost in those dozens of stolen dollars.

[Matt B. @ Dec 21st 2006 8:28PM]

oh hell, I own the game - maybe I'll just snoop around the ISO for educational purposes...

[Alexander @ Dec 21st 2006 9:33PM]

If you will look at the trends of being able to copy something, it has typically increased sales of whatever that item was. Not to mention, the fact that it still takes some fairly dedicated hardware to do it, along with a fairly sophisticated mod--either hardware or software.

And, piracy doesn't really detract from sales of games anyway--the people who were going to buy the game have already done so. So now, the only people who are going to pirate it are the people who were never going to purchase it anyway.

The argument that "Piracy == loss of sales" only holds water when the method of piracy is EASIER than the method of purchasing the original item. And even then it's never really been proven... The music industry sales went up the following months after Napster came out: and have been steadily increasing every since.

Piracy is just as easy as it was then, but sales continue to go up. Why? Because it's still easier to walk into a store and pickup the CD or buy it off of iTunes than it is to pirate it.

[Matt @ Dec 21st 2006 11:44PM]

Sony and Microsoft lose money on each console sold so they need to make it up in games. Whereas Nintendo MAKES profit on every console, so the games sold are basically icing on the cake. This really isn't a huge problem.

[pickleman77 @ Dec 21st 2006 11:52PM]

I dont think Engadget should be telling people about this... do they WANT people stealing games? Surely there are more hacks coming, so this may become a major problem.

[Sinbios @ Dec 21st 2006 11:59PM]

So you think Engadget should start censoring its news now?

[Eric Iberri @ Dec 22nd 2006 12:21AM]

That's now how the news works. Unless, of course, you also ridiculed the New York Times, Washington Post, and L.A. Times when they reported on hidden CIA prisons...

[sean @ Dec 22nd 2006 1:20AM]

Alexander:

"The music industry sales went up the following months after Napster came out: and have been steadily increasing every since. "

Source please?

[soopergooman @ Dec 22nd 2006 2:43AM]

Sheesh its about time. Yeah that pic kinda sucks so I made a better one. Same concept with the gun but with a better "O" and "N" and some blood splattered to show that nintys gonna be spillin' it soon. Iso heaven or hell???? for the pic goto: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v701/SooperGooman/red-stolen.jpg

[Jay Hash @ Dec 22nd 2006 4:55AM]

I'm kinda at a loss here:

Didn't Nintendo (with the GameCube) come up with some ingenious way of Reverse burning their discs which enabled them to have very little piracy of their cames due to near impossible backwards compatibility? Why would Wii be any different?

And even if there was a hack, how effective would that be versus just buying a new game each time than having to constantly burn the game in a difficult method with a modified burner, get the mod for you system which includes voiding the warranty, and then possibly trying to play a coaster, for which you'll have to do the whole process over again?

I can understand pirating easy to burn games like cd and DVD-roms for PC or a pop-top PS2 , but we're gamers for godsake. We don't like having to put much effort into anything except our hand/eye coordination...

~JYH

[moofree @ Dec 22nd 2006 10:48AM]

"Didn't Nintendo (with the GameCube) come up with some ingenious way of Reverse burning their discs..."
No. They spin clockwise, like normal cds and dvds.

The main copy protection of the Wii and Gamecube is a holographic decryption key at the center of the disk.
Regular DVD drives can't read this data.

However, on the gamecube, you can use a Gamecube mod chip or Phantasy Star Online 1&2 to load anything you want, including various programs that rip games and load backup games.

[Danzotron @ Dec 24th 2006 1:49AM]

The reverse disc method was a myth, grats on being dumb and falling for it.

[BillyJoeBob the third @ Dec 22nd 2006 7:12AM]

It's all about the fun of it, you know, for them it's probably the challenge, for others it's about modding, everything's not about gamers when it comes to consoles, sure most of it is, but not everything.
Besides as Matt said, nintendo is making profit on the consoles. Anyways they deserve it for naming it wii, what kind of sick joke was that, they had a perfectly good code name Revolution, but no they went with wii. I hope nintendo goes the way of sega.

[Tech^Cellfish @ Dec 22nd 2006 4:49PM]

Paradox doesn't use torrents - Look up Topsite_(WAREZ) and such on Wikipedia

[jej @ Dec 24th 2006 8:28AM]

yes

[Bawheed @ Dec 26th 2006 3:03PM]

"is the fact that you'll probably need an in with these folks to get ahold of the torrent at the moment..."

Woo! Nevermind topsites and all that jazz, apparently Paradox RLS straight to torrent now. Nubs rejoice.

[San @ Jan 11th 2007 10:47AM]

Well it was bound to happen Wii hacks have been going since day 1 with Wii Mote hacks www.wiiscript.co.nr and people putting custom lights on there wii!
But nothing as major as this.