Ok I admit it, I used to buy and play pirated games for my beloved console the Sega Saturn. But I never got it mod-chipped (even though that would’ve been the long-term cheaper alternative) – I used to use a “spinning-disc” technique. What this involved was:

1. Opening the console

2. Taping the CD door sensor thing so that you could open the lid and the console wouldn’t reset

3. Loading a “real” game disc to start, then

4. Quickly changing the real disc with the pirate disc as soon as the real game was about to start and manually spinning the disc within that split-second window of opportunity (which involved great timing and precision)

As with all dodgy methods, doing this had some disadvantages. For instance with number 1 and 2, I was doing this at a mate’s house when I accidentally placed my hand on some power source on the motherboard inside the console when it was still plugged in and got an electric shock (it was stupid yes, but I was young and forgetful). When I regained consciousness it felt as if I had been knocked out for at least an hour when in fact it was only a couple of seconds – my very first thought was that my mate had hit me with a baseball bat. We didn’t even play baseball. For a couple of years afterwards you could see a black line on my finger – the path the electricity took as it rushed up me, but it’s gone now.

With 3 and 4 it was an often frustrating process as you had to listen closely to the sound of the disc loading before quickly switching, and I found that every game was different in terms of when to switch. Sometimes it took up to 50 tries before getting it right. My preferred “real game” was Die Hard Trilogy, which for some reason worked better than the other real games in my collection. In hindsight it would have been SO much better to have just gotten the bloody thing modded for a couple hundred bucks instead of going through this painful (and almost deadly) process OR just shelling out for the real thing. These days I don’t get my consoles modded, neither do I have any interest in buying pirated games, and I sure as hell don’t open the console myself anymore.