Program/utility to find disc manufacturing/burning date

[LuxKiller65]

Is there a program that manages to tell when a disc has been manufactured, or when data has been burned, or basically any info that helps me find a date at all? Or even if it manages to give me some codes to find the manufacturer. This would help to pinpoint an approximate date (based on when the company started to operate).

I've had this Dracula X disc for the PC Engine, supposedly a fake "sample" that a seller sold several copies of a few years back. The guy had lots of other legit PC Engine games he got straight from Japan, so it seems strange he would make fake samples to sell for cheap. I'd expect he would advertise this one heavily, and try to get as much money as possible, but he didn't. So I think they were probably fake but he just got hold of them without knowing the origin.

In order to put my mind at rest, I'd like to see a date like 2006 or something like that, so I know it's fake. I have the disc in a different place so I can't take pics of the ring at the moment. Will need to find it back one day.

[Jedi QuestMaster]

I wish something like this exists. Ever since I've been looking into PC Engine games, I noticed sometimes certain games would be completely new, unopened for cheaper than their used counterparts.

I soon discovered these were PCE Works' doing: https://pceworks.wordpress.com/

I know they purposely alter something on their artwork to differentiate from the real product, but one would have to know what they're looking for. (ie. Strider is missing the 'AV' on the top left corner of the obi.)

[LuxKiller65]

I think Dracula X is one of those where they copied everything, with no way to tell. There are surely small details, but from a glance on a photo of the front/back, seems you can easily get cheated with a sealed copy.
I despise people who do this kind of 1 to 1 repros, and seal them with a tearstrip too. Way to confuse buyers and to flood the market. Imagine all the manuals, cds and back inserts you can swap with original to make a big fu**ing mess.

anyway, i keep looking

in your case though, if you just need to verify the disc, i read that the inner ring on the pceworks repros are different, so it's pretty easy to verify. granted, it's probably much easier if you have an original cd on hand. you should be able to find photos on the internet, or ask around for original owners.

this is hurting the market in a way we don't fully realise yet.

[Toad King]

Stuff like master creation date or press date aren't in any CD standard so there aren't really any tools that can do that. I think your best guess would be seeing if the plant that pressed the disc puts a date somewhere in the CD matrix area. But I've seen recent bootlegs with fake matrix text in them so even that may not be a surefire way to know for long.

[LiquidAcid]

ISO9660 stores something called "volume modification date and time" in the primary volume descriptor, see: https://wiki.osdev.org/ISO_9660

If this information is correct, then this at least gives you an indication when the disc was manufactured.

[LuxKiller65]

That's cool, thanks! Will be sure to check all I can when I get my hands on the disc again.