Nintendo's Old School DRM

Nintendo claimed the lockout chip was required for quality control in the post video game crash era...
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Sources / Further Reading:
- www.nesdev.org...
- en.m.wikipedia...)

[@PoisonedAl]

You can bypass it by overvolting it. Unlicensed games smack it with too much power and it would rollover. This was fixed in later version of the NES tho.

[@zachoman420]

A famous example of such was colordreams, but Nintendo threatened to remove licensed games if distributors didn't stop selling colordreams games

[@jasonblalock4429]

I don't believe they ever fixed it. They just ended up removing the lockout chip entirely from the NES 2 redesign.

[@thePalindromeCrafter]

That's what some old bible games I had did! It just fried out that chip so it wasn't a problem :P

[@Eduardo_Espinoza]

damn that's smart!

[@nunyabeezwax6758]

Overvolting it of course, fried the cart and possibly your board too. Thanks Tengen... looking at you. At least Zelda II was the replacement game...

[@TheCode-X]

I soldered a wire from psu to that chip to bring that pin constantly high, and got the same result

[@JSTMelon]

How don’t make sense, how would giving it power help? If needs to be connected to the motherboard and why tf would you need to solder

[@chrismofer]

Your solution, pulling it up, is more stable. Floating it could randomly fail half the time or be sensitive to static electricity

[@sasabarisic8864]

@@chrismofer i doubt they float, it probably has an internal pulldown

[@100brsta]

@@sasabarisic8864very unlikely

[@joemann7971]

​​@@sasabarisic8864depends on how its made. The pin could be connected to something else internally but without a schematic, you have to assume it's floating. Connecting it to the PSU eliminates any guesswork. Not to mention, cutting a pin is irreversible. Desoldering a wire is not. If you just want to remove the pin, would at use the socket method with the pin cut on the socket. At least that's what I would do.

[@Dave01Rhodes]

I thought the reason cutting pin 4 worked was because that’s the pin the chip uses to reset the console. So the cartridge still fails the CIC handshake, but the chip can’t do anything about it.

[@tehbloch]

That is what the 4th pin does

[@KitsuneGB-hc9zb]

So the CIC chip is basically doing that one FNaF meme where it’s pounding on the glass and screaming for the NES to stop to no avail?

[@tawagotoCage]

basically, yes, also, it is on the right because most unlicensed nes games suck, so the chip is just trying to save you​@@KitsuneGB-hc9zb

[@autotec-20]

​@@KitsuneGB-hc9zb DON'T PLAY THAT GAME MICHAAAEEEEELLL IT'S NOT OFFICIALLY LICENSED MICHAAAEELLL

[@elrichzann]

@@KitsuneGB-hc9zbor a holocaust victim

[@landstrider6304]

I had no idea that was a thing. When I was young we would go to the market and get a single cartridge that had 100s of games on it for the same price as a single game.

[@sh0sh0n3]

Nowadays you can download an emulator and every game made in less than an hour 😎

[@lyianx]

@@sh0sh0n3 emulators which are not 100% accurate. But that only matters with like 10% of games out there.

[@Alacritous]

@@sh0sh0n3 And buy USB game controllers for NES, SNES, ATARI, etc from the usual sites.

[@myria2834]

​@@sh0sh0n3 for the NES, less than 5 minutes.

[@anunnymous3222]

@@sh0sh0n3 Nowadays = Late 90s... Emulators have been out a long time bro.

[@HerecomestheCalavera]

And just like all DRM it was easily bypassed and in the end only effected legitimate customers.

[@dr_birb]

How did it affect legitimate customers playing legitimate games?

[@massivive]

​@dr_birb your console or cartridge has a defect due to dust, age, or an electrical fault in a way that messes with the lockout chip? built-in DRM kicks in and needlessly locks you out of booting the game

[@dr_birb]

@@massivive sounds like physical mediums degrade over time. Can't relate :3

[@dr_birb]

@@nisonatic If by dispute you mean making a game for their console without their permission, and it doesn't work, sounds like a you issue

[@dr_birb]

@@nisonatic and you don't need to, just buy the games that are approved lol.

[@bucky5869]

I had to snip my lockout chip because it wouldn't accept any carts. It likely had gone bad but now with that pin cut it works just fine.

[@chrisevil7012]

and when this chip malfunctioned and your game stopped working, you were left wondering why it never worked. nintendo has been doing the customers dirty for a very long time.

[@SterileNeutrino]

I remembered something, namely the fight between Atari and Nintendo about the "right to interface": February 1990: "Interface Specifications, Compatibility, and Intellectual Property Law" by Pamela Samuelson in "Communications of the ACM", Volume 33, Issue 2 (freely available at the ACM digital library): "Perhaps you have read about the lawsuit currently pending between Atari and Nintendo in which Nintendo claims intellectual property rights in the interface between its video game console and cartridges designed for use in the Nintendo console as a basis for blocking Atari’s right to develop and sell compatible video game cartridges for the Nintendo machines. The outcome of this lawsuit may have profound implications for competition in the software industry, as well as for the price you will pay for game cartridges for your child’s Nintendo machine (which you may have noticed are not at all cheap)."

[@TatsuZZmage]

Also very funny since the Nintendo entertainment system was using a unlicensed implementation of the 6502

[@Mrshoujo]

Tengen pretty much won because soon after Nintendo implemented its "Seal of Quality" mark on "licensed" products and alleged unlicensed games would "damage" the NES.

[@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785]

Also, on a related subject...The entire Anti-trust lawsuit against Nintendo finally panned out...but not until potential competitors had been virtually destroyed (R.I.P. TurboGrafX 16)

[@hitkid2456]

@@pex_the_unalivedrunk6785 Truly a shame it couldn't have happened sooner. I also hear that they prevented SMS from being carried by retailers (it didn't help that it was Tonka of all people responsible for the NA operations at the time).

[@BlackEpyon]

That does explain why if the game cartridge doesn't sit correctly, the power LED will just endlessly blink at you.

[@AdrianSchwartzmann]

The only explnation I found for this is the CIC chips data rate was alot higher than the CPU and PPU. This means a bad connection between the cart and the console would be more likely to affect the CIC chips ability to cominicated than the CPU or PPU ability to read the ROMs in the game cart. So you ended up with the blinking LED more often than it not working or scrambled picuter that would happen if the CPU or PPU couldn't read the rooms correctly.

[@Zer0Blizzard]

Nintendo wishes they could beat people with bricks legally

[@user-gw2vz5gh2n]

The most hardware system penetration ever

[@Vtole65]

Nintendo, the original Apple corp

[@Cheez-It92]

Sooooo many innocent CICs and 72 pin connectors have died as a result of people being too lazy to clean their games.

[@TheTurnipKing]

the CIC chip was the WORST thing Nintendo did when they revamped the Famicom into the NES. The chip has ONE job, and it is to increase the likelihood of your game not working.

[@Wflash00]

@@TheTurnipKing Wow ok lmfao If your cartridge couldn't handshake with the 10NES, then it was probably too dirty to run properly regardless of the 10NES. Nintendo would never spend millions of dollars to invest in lockout security for *no other reason* than to cause people to not be able to play their games; just keep your cartridges clean and youy won't have any issues

[@TheTurnipKing]

@@Wflash00 probably but its an engineered failure state that doesnt need to be there, it adds several pins to the Famicom edge connector that exist ONLY for the lockout chip and if any of them dont make a proper connection your game wont work EVEN IF EVERYTHING ELSE IS FINE, and despite the NES having more pins than the famicom it results in expansion audio being moved from the cart slot to the bottom expansion connector, so no better music. Everything about 10NES is a fucking abomination and the NES is immeasurably improved when its removed.

[@lyianx]

@@TheTurnipKing Like it or not, console manufactures are making consoles to... *gasp* make Money! And how do they do that? Not by the console. They make pennies off of it. Its by licensing games. Its why most console makers sell consoles AT A LOSS because they expect to make up for that in game sales. But they cant Do that if people skip over them entirely and not give them a licensing fee. They dont exist to provide YOU with entertainment, they exist to make MONEY! And in any case that chip is easily bypassed today even without cutting it.

[@AiOinc1]

Who cares? They're DRM and do nothing else.

[@bland9876]

Imagine if you know about this back in the day and disabled it on every used system that came into your store. Then you just told people you fixed the blinking light of death.

[@TheGlitchyMario]

Just wondering, how does the console behave without the chip?

[@kakarlsen]

Perfectly fine (and you never get the the reset loop if the game needs a blow). Oh, and it removes the region lock.

[@TheGlitchyMario]

@@kakarlsen sweet

[@lyianx]

@@kakarlsen dont... blow.. on the cartridge! Omg why do people still think this is smart?

[@BitHappyy]

@@lyianxwhy not?

[@MaximNightFury]

Could cause corrosion, just reseat the game and it'll likely work better that way ​@@BitHappyy

[@KeiNova]

I actually never knew this. Extremely interesting!

[@jamesturncliff5960]

The Seal of quality left Nintendo it's all about quantity now

[@FrightF]

The cartridges would become being called Asian games in my small home town where piracy was no big deal and no-one was making profit. Im told even the old rental outlets like at Lytton road had these cartridges with heaps of games on them. Even my dad had a mate whod just do alll this stuff and give them to us. I have a modified and non-modified NES rn 😊

[@tetsusiega2]

It’s the main character in Space Station Silicon Valley!

[@trpstrincllc4866]

2nd best 64 game ever.

[@the_Lime]

Yoo first time seeing people acknowledge this game!

[@pentarax2]

I have a very early produced Nintendo, when 101 games cartridges started popping up they worked fine on it. My cousins bought a Nintendo a few years after its initial release... 101 games cartridges never worked on their machine. Obviously something was added to the console a year or two after it's release, I wonder if early versions didn't have this chip.

[@Snicketbar]

I used to know a kid, whose older brother worked for a repair shop. That used to do this. Showed us both how to do it a few times, except he used a set of jewelers pliers.

[@KabirWorld]

I love old times where anything can be possible with just simple solutions.

[@TheRavenArchon]

I did the 4th pin clip on my NES years ago, because the reset issue got really bad. This video doesn't cover it, but over time the NES gets really bad at reading the key chip in carts, and even legit games start reading as locked by the NES. Sometimes this is due to bad connections and cleaning/replacing the 72pin connector can help, but in my case even this didn't help all the time, and I would have to reinsert games two or three times to get good enough connections. Finally got sick of it and decided to clip the chip. Haven't had any issues since, and my NES still works to this day.

[@dougieh9676]

I used to do this in my cable box so I could watch Playboy Channel at my uncles house.

[@silverroddo1468]

Is that why my nes games always took forever to get started, even though they were licensed carts? Man, seeing the blinking grey screen was so annoying, it was a chore just to start up a game.

[@geminate]

That chip resurrected the video game industry.

[@bradburnett7576]

I used to blow sweet nothings into the carts until it read the 0 I was putting in XD

[@flooferjay3245]

I acctualy appreciate the effort to make it repairable dispite not really needing to

[@MarkDanielLouwe]

That chip is now a monster in Ragnarok Online.

[@duketogo1027]

Yall remember when someone would walk in the room and the nintendo would reset? I hated that.

[@boboften9952]

" Went from being a Chip to being a Twistie . "

[@TwZlr.]

I'm just happy that I still have my original NES

[@confirmhandle]

I remember running a small wire from that chip up my butt it created just the right amount of resistance when holding the controller with aluminum foil

[@nihil1]

And that's how I got to rent a game in which MegaMan was Darkwing Duck.

[@pseudotasuki]

Fun fact: The same chip is used in both the console and games. That significantly reduced manufacturing costs.

[@DaltonKevinM]

That's what half of the chips I try to put back in their stupid holes look like

[@Cyntaria]

I've never heard of the CIC chip being referred to as DRM but I guess the term didn't exist back then even if the CIC chip performs the same function. You also forgot to mention the CIC chip is used for region locking and the SNES and N64's CIC chips perform other various checks which enabled it to be used for antipiracy. Earthbound probably being the most famous example along with Rare's N64 titles (I know Spyro 3 is another big one, I'm specifically talking about cartridge based systems as that's what the video is talking about)

[@sirflimflam]

I knew the moment I saw the 4th pin on both sides snipped removed you cut the wrong one.

[@chhakchhuaklalmuansanga2423]

I still have a nintendo but the controller is all broken..i miss the times i used to play it all day

[@Pain_train_wielder]

Dude, you just found a frozen CIC lockout chip, it was walking around before succumbing to the coolantalanche of ‘83. That’s a really rare find

[@MichaelRobacker]

So, that explains why the NES keeps resetting when you're trying to get a game to work properly. We've always blew into the game cartrage to make it play right.

[@Marines_Memelevolent]

Nintendo really has always been insane about their DRM

[@Billyjoebob420]

I see components like that in my electrical class

[@chaosjoey123]

Ah yes the chip that when working correctly makes your console not work some of the time, and when working incorrect either lets your console always work or never work. Very cool innovation

[@GabrielShroyer]

You could've soldered the cut pin, and just cut the right pin, but your end result is nice to look at.

[@andreasu.3546]

So what exactly is this chip? - It's dead baby, it's dead.

[@qa4057]

I love the old computer days ;)

[@alexsullivan2957]

You earned my subscription today big pimp

[@PikaBolaChan]

i’ve only ever seen this chip animated to dance

[@DisgruntledPigumon]

Rather than destroy a part of a classic console, you could almost as easily just desolder this, pop it out, bend the pin up, and then place it back in a resolder it. Yeah it’s not lazy, but it keeps the system intact if you or someone later wants to restore it to actual 1980s working order.

[@OwenWerts]

you can also remove the chip, and rewire the console to work that way

[@waxblast7528]

"to prevent people from having fun"

[@screenapple1660]

Unreal Engine did the same.. They didn't allow google to to make their own game engine that uses UE compiler.

[@se7ense7ense7ense7ense7en]

finally someone that actually knows what theyre talking about and isnt just pumping out content desperately

[@generositygamer7971]

I wonder if this chip was the reason so many of my games did that blinking, and not the "dust"...

[@FYCY]

So that's why my console did that when I was a kid because there was something wrong with the chip. Damn DRM.

[@collectthemall]

Nintendo did not give that chip to anyone. Unlike Japan in the rest of the world only Nintendo was manufacturing cartridges. What is funny in India they were selling NES officially but with removed DRM chip.

[@dlite6999]

Omg I didn't know there was a reset button on the underside 😂😂how many new ones we bought and it just need to reset! Funny fact!

[@tom940]

I socketed mine too but just bent the pin out so it wouldnt stick in the socket so i could easily return it to stock functionality

[@Kansika]

It's all fun and games until you snip the wrong pin.

[@imaginoss2468]

Nintendo: puts Anty piracy measurements Everybody else: how about no?

[@RealJoBUFF]

im glad im not the only one to destroy one of these

[@suitandtieguy]

Nintendo should have been sued over this.

[@greatnew_products7436]

So many good memories...😊

[@bobhsohi704]

I'll take your word for it a bit over my head

[@jasongooden917]

Explains why some games just worked like crap

[@iplaywhatiwant3738]

Leave Tengen alone. Nintendo broke their contract with them. No contract = no rules.

[@eraserrainlantier3040]

When I do hardware installation for the NES I unsolder the chip leg and cut it off. I don't charge for it, It's just a very annoying issue later on and removing the leg doesn't effect the system.

[@Gerbert67]

Why would anyone ever have an NES in 2023? Not only did the games absolutely suck, but you can emulate NES on literally any device if you really want to play those games.

[@shona-sof]

Great video, but one detail is a little off. Nintendo didn't "give" the lockout chip to developers. Nintendo manufactured the cartridges, themselves.

[@jiraiyagoketsu5092]

Hmm. I would have removed the chip, put in a socket, then bent out the fourth pin out on the chip, and put it in the socket.

[@DDavEE]

I don’t quite understand how the socket makes any difference? Unless the pin holes themselves need to be soldered regardless of whether the chip is there or not, that seems like it was completely unnecessary.

[@colt5189]

This chip is to blame for most of the white flashing you'd get that caused people to then blow their cartridge to try and fix it.

[@shinjiikari5174]

God, I love piracy... 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

[@Solnoric]

This is why your cartridges didn't work. Pulling the cartridge and blowing in it didn't do anything, just removing and reinserting it was all you needed.

[@thisone98]

Wrong. It wasnt about meeting requirements. It was maiiiiinly (And wow so surprising from ninetendo) a money matter. It cost a fuck ton to have the seal of approval.

[@volumegamer8310]

0:50 is a jojo refrence

[@ianblythe1992]

You dont need to do this all you need is 2x jumper wires if you google it you find it i did it and it works well and not tampering with the cic chip and you csn also be reverted back 👍

[@DeeDee-pw9pm]

Color Dreams enters the chat!

[@ipaqmaster]

Why would you do that to the poor chip > snes drm Oh that one.

[@Freedom1776usa]

No wonder blowing into the cartridge didn't work! 😅

[@Bagadeso]

Und deshalb hatten unsere Konsolen immer diesen restbug und wir haben die Spiele ausgeblasen wie verückt

[@alieander]

That poor thing! How could you hurt it so!! 😂

[@elrob20]

I did that 20 years ago

[@RonPerillo]

Do these chips exist only on the NES and not on the Famicom?

[@Joshinken]

Yup! Its the reason why nes cartridges actually have more pins than famicom.

[@The_AuraMaster]

Now play Staying Alive near the chip

[@scp-953]

8t was a test but Microsoft shut it down even if it was efficient,reson idk

[@EtherealDragon]

Is the chip the reason that the NES would randomly just power cycle even with legit games? I remember back in the late 80s we always blew in the carts to get them to work, but I suspect just removing and inserting the cart again would solve the issue.

[@Trustee-of-The-Most-High]

Hacking 101 Hardware busting and bruising 😅

[@daveh3975]

It also made their own games not work in their console, thats why people blow😂

[@JPs-Channel]

They did say to cut the 4th pin.

[@tee1up785]

So what games can you play with the chip removed?

[@XtreeM_FaiL]

If you remove the lock, you don't need a key anymore.

[@Trumplican]

I bet LJN hated that chip lol

[@isaultra3405]

clever LAZY hack ❤ respect !!!⚘😀

[@thomasjames7568]

So you’re telling me if I really wanted to I could produce brand new NES games exclusively for nerds who mod old consoles?

[@BunkerSquirrel]

Meanwhile on pc: “just do whatever bro 😎”

[@drkcobra]

How did you cut the wrong pin!? 🤦

[@vsolyomi]

Nintendo, the og Apple

[@cjvan713]

Great solution.