PS2 CD-R/DVD-R (Prototypes) CDVDGEN Metadata?

ehw · Post by **ehw** » Sun Jun 21, 2020 9:54 am

Hey everyone, I wanted to bring this to your attention as it seems pretty interesting to note.

We've been dumping a bunch of PS2 prototypes recently, and some of them are almost perfect matches for the final retail version. The only difference is that all the DVD-R based prototypes contain CDVDGEN metadata in each dump that contains product code, CDVDGEN version used, publisher/developer, burn date, and even information about the specific burner model that was used to author the disc (including bios version and date). This data seems to start at $7000 in each .iso dump. For instance, in the Silent Hill 2 v0.10 prototype (https://redump.info/disc/65658/), the disc contains this information starting at the offset mentioned earlier:

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SLUS-20228                      KCE TOKYO                       KCE TOKYO                       20010713PlayStation Master Disc 2

Then at $7300, there's this:

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HOEI    DSR-8000dp      2.8fDVD-R   DVR-S2012.12CDVDGEN 1.20                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    SLUS-20228                      KCE TOKYO                       KCE TOKYO                       20010713PlayStation Master Disc 2

I figure maybe this information might be important to note?

CD-R based prototypes seem to have something similar in a different location. For instance, in the European prototype of Polaroid Pete (https://redump.info/disc/53336/), there's this at $80b8:

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SLES-50557                      IREM SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INC.  IREM SOFTWARE ENGINEERING INC.  20020109PlayStation Master Disc 2.0.

And this at $83B8:

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SONY    CD-R   CDU920S  2.0c18 Jan 1996 CDW1.01 CDVDGEN 1.31

Incidentally, we discovered a second copy of this same exact prototype on another CD-R and dumping that with DICUI produced the same exact dump, byte for byte, with identical metadata as well.

Although I'm not sure if it's always CDVDGEN metadata, since I assume you could author prototypes using any kind of tool. From what I've seen, this seems to only affect PS2 games but I suppose PS1 games might be worth checking as well.

I thought I should bring this up as this might be important to note.