After losing hundreds of pounds playing dance dance revolution (seriously, over 300 pounds down!), it was discovered that this game had suicide DRM - when the hard drive dies, it's game over; You could not get it repaired! Two friends set out on a journey to tear the game apart and find a way to keep dancing after the components have sunset. This is the story of how this game (and others that used the same protection scheme) was saved without fully needing to break their entire DRM scheme!
This talk will go over the hardware and software combination approach we used to combat a notorious DRM scheme and preserve a series of arcade games. The protection is employed in commercial and consumer environments and this trick has been used to preserve not only these, but many other digital games from extinction.