That said, the encryption and security schemes on ringwide and ringedge are lightyears beyond what the TypeX and X2 used(hint: you can partially "break" the encryption just renaming a fucking file...it's that pathetic, and to fully remove it, all you do is edit a few lines to remove the reference to the USB dongle, to put it in laymans). Saying it had any security is intellectually dishonest at best.
RW and RE however are *likely* to be much more advanced, if anything like the Lindbergh, they may have auto-launching bootsector code for masking data files(i.e. reading them in anything but the arcade board will mask the files at the root level, and tampering may trigger an auto-format), and remember well RW/RE use Windows Embedded instead of Linux, the reason TypeX/X2 was so vulnerable was because they didn't remove any of the standard includes that come with Windows Xp Embedded...
There's a good chance SEGA wouldn't follow the same mistake and would build their version up to have absolutely only the necessarily included files, which would make it very difficult to casually interact with(you'd have to actually find a vulnerability to get in).
etc.
Who knows, maybe I'm wrong and we'll see a day 1 leak of MBAACC(which would suck, since I'm planning to buy it), but SEGA has a proven track record of making arcade hardware designed not to be broken very easily, took forever to break the Naomi, we're barely there with the Lindbergh, and AFAIK, we've made 0 progress on breaking the Ringedge which has already been out for awhile.
As someone who's pretty into emulation (although a system as powerful as RingWide/RingEdge wouldn't be emulatable in realtime anytime soon) I pretty much know Sega's encryption stuff is fairly tough to crack. I'm 100% certain the encryption won't be broken on day one.
That said, there is still the fact that this is, essentially, PC hardware inside the cab, running on a fairly known OS. For what it's worth, NAOMI was a dedicated, non-standard system compared to PCs. Lindbergh is PC-based, but it runs Linux as its OS, which is considerably less "known" than Windows would be.
That said, of course, this is all easy in theory, as a lot of things are. In practice, I am sure it will be fairly hard to crack, but eventually it will be done, pure and simple. It's mostly a matter of figuring out how the system data is encrypted, and figuring out how the OS decrypts it. Not an impossible feat by any means.
So all in all, it's really just a matter of time until we have a PC version - either ported, which would be preferable, or decrypted/loaded, since by the time that's all done pretty much most PCs in existence will be running at RingWide's specs, if not considerably higher.
Nice post, Celestein. Guess if we are lucky, we'll see a (region free!?) PS3 port then. I don't think we'll see a PC port until the same version has been out on console for a while.
For all intents and purposes, MBAA:CC is a back-to-arcade port of the PS2 version of MBAA with some minor rebalancing and tweaking, and some new visual effects and such. It's very unlikely it'd get ported "back" to a console again - there was no console version of MBAC Ver. B, but the PC version was based off of that, of course.
I'm pretty sure that unless sales are ridiculously high, if we ever do get a PC port, it will likely be within 6-12 months. Porting from RingWide to PC would be fairly straightforward, I would imagine, even if they didn't add a tick to it other than the usual extra modes. (Practice, etc.)
Not sure if related, but the guys at FrenchBread posted this on their blog along with the note that the master copy of MBAACC is finished, and their thoughts on what it was like working on MBAACC.
Maybe someone with a good grasp of moonspeak can check it out to see if there are any interesting tidbits.
Wow, some of those designs look... really fucking generic. REALLY fucking generic. A few are mildly interesting, but some of them... just... wow.
French Bread have their work cut out for them - Melty is essentially all they're known for. (Those of you who've played Ragnarok Battle Offline, hush.) They have to step out of the shadows of Melty Blood, essentially, and create a game that surpasses it not just visually, but in gameplay as well - no small feat as Melty is obviously one of, if not the, most complex fighters out there. I honestly hope they can pull it off, as I'd love to see a name other than Arcsys and Capcom and Namco make it big in terms of fighting games (the minority of you who play MK are noted as well) but realistically, just going off those sprites... my opinion is less than enthusiastic.
Remember kids, just because the sprites are fluid and HD, it doesn't mean the game mechanics can't suck.