Sega Saturn news update: Console's DRM cracked after more than 20 years

It may be more than 20 years late, but those who are into retro gaming are surely excited to know that there is finally a crack to bypass Sega Saturn's copy protection.

Released back in 1994 (in Japan) and 1995 (in North American and Europe), the Sega Saturn was a direct competitor of the Sony PlayStation and was the successor of the Sega Genesis.

It did fairly well and sold around 9.26 million units, though most of those numbers reflected Japanese buyers and it was ultimately discontinued around the year 2000.

The console uses a CD-rom to run its games and has always had digital rights management to keep hackers at bay. While it was great for security back then, it heavily restricts people nowadays to use the console given that the disc drives could very easily be damaged due to time.

However, engineer James Laird-Wah, also known online as Dr. Abrasive, finally cracked the security code of the famed console, allowing users to now use a USB drive to load games to the console.

According to Digital Trends, Dr. Abrasive is also responsible for the "Drag 'n' Derp" modification that allowed games to be loaded on the Game Boy via USB.

Dr. Abrasive was quick to admit that it was difficult to bypass Sega's security, as it was through a wobble in the CD while it was being read by the console that determines if the game is readable or not.

Still, he claimed that his new method is reliable. He said: "It actually works quite well. It detects the little wobble in the outer rim of the CD when it's trying to read the protection data. And that's not something you can do with a CD burner."

Basically, Dr. Abrasive tricked the console by using his own circuit board to help reveal the game's entire code on how the system operated.

After that, he found a way to bypass the system and the CD drive, loading the games through a peripheral slot where he can load and save the games.