There's something that's been bugging me for a while now. According to many websites, the official release date for Silent Hill is January 31th 1999 for the US. But, when I put my original «black label disc» in my computer, the dates for the files are February 9th 1999. How come the dates are later than the actual release? Does it means that there are two prints of the original Silent Hill game, or maybe they messed up with the date when they burned the game?

Shouldn't the date be before 1999-01-31 ? I'm confused



Those are the dates for the Trade Demo, they make more sense:

The dates on a disc are created when the disc is burned, not when the files are made

I agree, never said otherwise. But how can a game officially released on January 31th 1999 be burned on February 9th 1999 (10 days later)? They must have burned the game before January 31th or there's two releases of the (original, black label) game.

That depends on when you bought the game.

There are not just two shipments of the game worldwide of the "original" and "greatest hits" versions. Products are manufactured and shipped in waves.

I understand all this, a game can be manufactured later after it's original release date. Some of these releases are sometimes called «revisions» when little changes are made to the game.

But I have yet to find an original US Silent Hill game disc with dates lower than January 31th 1999, and I wonder if it exist at all? It must exist, otherwise, it makes no sense. How can you release a game on January 31th, but manufacturates it only on February 9th? A game with lower dates must exist, that's what I wanna know.

To some people, the lower the dates, the more interesting the game is, because it's more likely it is untouched.

It is also entirely possible that (for some reason or another) the machine(s) that were generating the discs were operating on an inaccurate date/time setting.

The simple answer is that the game was not released on January 31st. I don't know exactly when it was released. I tried to figure this out about 9-10 years ago, and found references from January to March of 1999 as the American release date. Nowadays January 31st seem to be accepted fact all over the Internet, but it couldn't have been. Primarily due to file dates on the discs...

Regarding file dates, there are lots of false information in this thread. The date stamp on files on discs are from when when digital files were created/edited. It is NOT from the time a factory manufactured disc is molded (or pressed, or whatever you want to call it). Molding a disc is just plastic being molded with pits and.. well, no pits. How would molten plastic know the time? The process only replicates the exact same data that was already mechanically etched into the pressing plate.

The date is also not from when a CD-R is burned. This is also a physical process, which again, only replicates the exact same data that was already there. A laser burns away a dye inside the disc. No new file dates are created. (However, the computer burning the disc could perhaps generate new dates if it creates a temp file to burn? I'm not sure.)

The retail game and the Trade Demo as shown above are factory manufactured discs. The file dates, which are the same for all files on each respective disc, are most likely from when the files were transferred to the computer which was used to create the master CD-R (which was later used to create the glass master, then metal stampers, then discs).

There is also a third disc, which is a little earlier than the Trade Demo. A review code on CD-R (for those that are not aware, CD-Rs/DVD-Rs etc were and are used by the industry to send out previewable and reviewable game code to magazines (and a lot of other purposes). The file dates are from January 6th. So this was was sent out for review, as was the Trade Demo a little later, from the 16th. If the game was releases on the 31st, nobody would have had time to review it before it came out. Remember this was in the days of magazine deadlines.

Considering the dates on the review disc and the trade demo, February 9th sounds perfectly sensible time to start creating the master disc.

I can also add that January 31st 1999 was a Sunday.



To answer some specific points:



I just want to stress that this is not certain. Try to burn some old files to a disc yourself.


Absolutely, but if they use the same master to create pressing plates for each repress, a disc manufactured five years later will still say 1999, because disc molding does not change the file date. With music CDs they often seem to create new masters each time they re-release it, but games were usually reissued using the same master.


Nopes, as mentioned, that has nothing to do with file dates.
The computer which changed the file dates could of course have been on the wrong date, but we also have the Review code and the Trade demo from the 6th and 16th respectively. They wouldn't send those out so close to release, they would have done it sooner. If February 9th is the wrong date on the retail disc, then the Review and Trade demo discs have wrong dates, too.. Which is unlikely.

How can you comment that JAPAN release of SH was: March 4, 1999
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill_(video_game)
And exe date of JAPAN original edition is: 1999-01-26
http://redump.org/disc/134/

so em... Japan version was created in first, but comes in market second after USA release... why?

The game was developed in Japan, so it's no wonder that they would have that mastered first.