Super Nintendo Games with Anti-Piracy - Part 2 | MVG

[@ModernVintageGamer]

Thanks for Watching - Part 1 is here kzbin.info/www/bejne/gX3cfGR8gtyWbrM&t

[@MidnightMechanic]

Ooo, about time Demon's Crest gets some love!

[@NintendoChampion]

I once had my Hudson Super Multitap connected to my snes in the 2nd player slot when powering on Tetris/Dr. Mario, and I got a piracy screen somehow

[@lexluthor3890]

Woohoo for Part 2!

[@nashismox3]

Hey Modern Vintage, seeing you are the best in porting emulators and even games for the OG Xbox, have you considered helped Marty finish his Half Life 1 port? www.emuxtras.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=188&t=5278 He just have to fit everything inside the 64mb and he is almost ready, maybe he needs a little push? My regards! You are the best MVG and the most honest.

[@JoseMedina-hs9st]

The PlayStation one if you play Spyro 3 The Year of the Dragon if you have a bootleg copy you could only play through the first levels when you're done beating the first levels and you talk to the fairy the fairy tells you that you can not continue cuz your copy is a illegal copy

[@Harie0]

It is kinda funny seeing a video where someone hacks the games to activate the anti piracy messages on purpose.

[@EllySensei]

Eh, it's not hacking the games, well, he changes the emulator system.

[@hilfemajster4234]

And sometimes cannot trigger the message.

[@nebulouscat5477]

I do not like getting error screens in real LIFE 😡😡👺😡

[@LinnaeusOSM]

@@nebulouscat5477 okay

[@trixter192]

Implementing chips like the fx chip were also great anti piracy.

[@zuccx99]

Yeah the cic too.

[@BigOlSmellyFlashlight]

*sa1*

[@StriderVM]

Wouldn't be cost effective to duplicate the special chips just to play a game. Even applies to bootleggers too.

[@BuickGeek24]

@@BigOlSmellyFlashlight The SA-1 is supposed to speed up the CPU though

[@launchedkode]

That’s why there are not many homebrew or unlicensed games. Nintendo made the snes so it required external chips for its games to run instead of just implementing them into the damm thing. Nice way of ripping you off also as them fx chip titles were sometimes as much as the console in some cases.

[@BinaryCounter]

3:40 32 megabits is not 8 megabytes. It's actually 4 megabytes, which is the maximum cartridge size you can have in LoROM memory map. So this is probably not a piracy check, but your emulator doing all kinds of wierd stuff with the memory map, causing a crash. Maybe it switches to HiROM or the completely unsupported and unofficial ExLoROM. Maybe it causes FastROM ($80xxxx) mirroring to fail. Who knows. But extending any SNES ROM that's under 32 megabits to over 32 megabits does all sorts of stuff to the memory map detection in emulators that will most certainly cause problems.

[@stilles342]

Yes, 32/8=4...this should get pinned, because of extra information given.

[@MarcellDAvis1103]

Nice name checks out

[@thaddeusmcgrath]

I bet you could really make me smile doing my income tax return Binary

[@ezg8448]

The man can program but can’t divide by 8, Ops!!

[@ModernVintageGamer]

correct on the math. my mistake

[@rpdasilvaa]

Running Chrono Trigger off an SD2SNES recently, whenever I would use the in-game hook to save state, I found that while the game ran fine in all other respects, I was no longer able to accumulate EXP and so my characters would never level up, even after saving via in-game menu and rebooting. I’m convinced this was some sort of anti-piracy measure

[@fieratheproud]

Huh, that's pretty cool tbh. The only thing I can think of that could make it not be an anti piracy thing is if you has the Workman's Wallet equipped, but you would probably know that you had it if that was the case.

[@dustin202]

Philip Da Silva cool I will look for it

[@StriderVM]

Its a flaw of save states of rom dumpers. For some reason they are all faulty.

[@LambdaCalculus379]

Add-on chips like the SuperFX, Nintendo's DSP line, Capcom's Cx4, SA-1, and SDD-1 were effective anti-piracy measures as well, since without the presence of the chips, or without accurate emulation of them, any games utilizing them would be broken beyond belief. Example: Until Cx4 emulation was implemented in most of the popular emulators, I remember Mega Man X2 and X3 would display backgrounds but no sprites of any sort, and even if it did, it would be only portions, which led me to believe that the Cx4 chip was responsible for drawing all of the sprites on screen, and not just the wireframe graphics. I wonder how many pirates tried dumping games with extra hardware on them, only to find the games were absolutely useless without the hardware in them.

[@MaxwelThuThu]

The Nintendo's DSP line was pirated too. But it's really hard to find. The board has a 7 MHz crystal just like the original DSP clock. And yeah, the Cx4 was used in some boss to do scaling and rotation. But they didn't used so much as Yoshi's Island.

[@Keiffer01]

Flintstones Treasure of Sierra Madrock has an antipiracy that makes it impossible to finish because the level timer goes down way too quickly. Learnt that on a real copier I found!

[@Porygonal64]

Fleenstones?

[@madden8021]

That’s not on the Cutting Room Floor so please add it. tcrf.net/The_Flintstones:_The_Treasure_of_Sierra_Madrock

[@samuelthecamel]

Time to speedrun!

[@SkyeHDD]

Ah yes, who could could forget Earthbound's final boss: "Gary Giygax"

[@dgamer5075]

That explains the prayer aspect of the fight! You need to pray for a crit.

[@LordOrwell]

nobody said "gary". It's his lesser-known brother Fred. Fred Gygax.

[@SMAAAASHTV]

Damnit, this was my thought and I read this after I posted my comment.

[@epicpotatofiend]

Yeah, I heard that and went: "What the Freud?"

[@teddyroo12]

Or BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

[@sbleed]

Demon's Crest. Massively underrated game. It's Megaman X with Demons. This brings back memories.

[@ShadowFox178]

That piracy screen on Chrono Trigger is used on the DS to detect if its booted from a R4i device

[@armyofninjas9055]

Never worked lol. My r4, r6, acekard 2i, and cyclods all played it perfectly.

[@ShadowFox178]

@@armyofninjas9055 There was a patch that came out to fix the issue, but for a time it didnt work when it first came out.

[@johnnydabs4855]

@@armyofninjas9055 because u had a patched ver If u tried without an unpatched copy, you'll never get past the time travel tunnel

[@LouisTheSEGANerd]

I used to think I had a dodgy ROM file 😂

[@MARCSLASH]

When the game just became available the flash devices didn't had a patch implementation so the game couldn't run correctly with a clean rom.

[@PaulMeranda]

just when i think theres no more uploads before bedtime- boom! can always count on Modern Vintage Gamer for a fun video before sleep. thank you, sir.

[@MrMnko]

monday 10pm is something i look forward to for MVC

[@stonedsavage7814]

Your comment was posted at 1pm here in the uk. Lol

[@pewgayisracistandusesbots2211]

@@stonedsavage7814 I was talking about when the vid was posted not my comment

[@PaulMeranda]

lol MVG always publishes stuff at like 5am California time @@pewgayisracistandusesbots2211 .. who *are* you.. ??

[@shiftyz_]

@@PaulMeranda I could use that extra hour of sleep but MVG! 🤣

[@PhaaxGames]

I remember getting an infinite time travel screen in Chrono Trigger on my SNES with a Super Wildcard DX!

[@mark.matthews73]

yes me too

[@jakeg7190]

Yeah I experienced it too... Where does he get off calling us all liars! Then again, who wants to listen to someone who think the earthbound big bad is "GUYGAX" *HEAD DESK*

[@Oceanandskylinevidss]

Seeing that screen when you played thru the game must have been devastating.

[@mrflamewars]

I had a Mario All Stars cart and I triggered the anti-piracy message once. Pulling out the cart and reinserting it fixed it though. I remember it well because I was like "Why is my Super Nintendo mad at me?"

[@optimalprime3895]

I got that one on my Wildcard 32X and was gutted haha. Managed to borrow a friend’s cart eventually not long after and go through it, however I never did play DKC2. The first one never had any issues with it.

[@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853]

This happens to me whenever I try to play my PAL copy on Super Famicom. I can't figure out why, it's not like it's reading the wrong SRAM size or anything. Same with Yoshi's Island, so those games feel sluggish to me compared to the rest of my library, which I happily use with a Games Master for that sweet, sweet 60Hz speed.

[@hollylester2000]

@@hostiusasinhostilityhostil7853 i think the SNES/Super Famicom has region checks as well. You mentioned having a PAL cartridge, is the system PAL as well? If the system is USA or JPN then that could possibly be the issue.

[@catboydale]

This made me cry and gave me nightmares. I thought I was going to jail.

[@Awesome_Dawson_Films_Official]

I got one in Donkey Kong Country 3 with a dirty cartridge.

[@wallacefung]

You don't need to play the game. Just see the Demo play. If megaman jumps into the gap and dies, the anti-privacy measure is triggered.

[@PerMejdal]

When I bought a Super Everdrive, it had Tales of Phantasia. I ask the seller about it, and he told it was used for testing the Everdrive, because of its anti piracy features.

[@j4n1x19]

I remember playing megaman x on an really old emulator and thought that the behavior of it was super strange, so I changed emulators and it worked. Now I finally know why it didn't work.

[@thesoosbois3303]

I hope you'll consider making an episode on the interesting history of the Nintendo DS/3Ds's security and how some companies enabled piracy without giving anything for the Homebrew community to work with.

[@empoleonmaster6709]

The SooS Bois he has made a few videos on it but they’ve been delisted because Nintendo has a stick up their ass about the subject

[@flatfingertuning727]

Onesy-twosy piracy doesn't worry Nintendo nearly as much as would the possibility of a company selling games without paying Nintendo a cut.

[@MrMario2011]

What an awesome rundown. 😃

[@Noxedwin]

_Psst!_ *Giygas* was the end-boss of _EathBound._ Gygax was the guy who invented _Dungeons and Dragons._ It's okay, though. I really love reading about weird and devious anti-piracy countermeasures, and this video scratches that itch for today.

[@LNSLateNightSaturday]

Nerd Proxyglossariosis: Saying the NEXT nerdy word in the nerd dictionary, instead of the one you intended

[@DoomRater]

Also known as content copyrighting, so that others can't steal your work (according to Larry Bundy Jr, anyway)

[@JeebusCreebusOG]

e a t h b o u n d

[@fieratheproud]

I can't believe Earthbound was just a DnD campaign

[@reagandow850]

It was nice to see you on the Spawn cast the other night. I love your show btw.

[@Dozerduncan]

Gary Gygax, last boss of Earthbound

[@dustin202]

Dozerduncan not to be confused with gigayas

[@bruh-gn5kc]

@@dustin202 still not editied from gigyas, and it's Giygas.

[@urielc918]

Skype group disbanded now its gigayas!

[@BusterMachine1]

0:55 "The final Boss Gygax." I don't remember Gary Gygax being the final boss of Earthbound.

[@DarkPuIse]

He's actually the final boss of everything, you just don't know it yet. Life is merely a massive D&D campaign run by Gary Gygax, and we're just the villager mobs.

[@Metalwario64]

Maybe he meant the animation studio Gainax? :p

[@bruh-gn5kc]

fake fan

[@carolinehusky]

One of the funniest things I ever read was about the ingenious methods Gameboy pirates (!) used to prevent other pirates from copying their games. Maybe you should do an episode about that!

[@ArtemyMalchuk]

Also true with bootleg famicom games! Hammer team was known to implement anti-piracy measures in their SNES to NES demakes, like developing proprietary mapper chips, which other pirates circumvented by messing with the game code.

[@nathanstrik]

The NTSC-version of Mega Man X also had a nasty check in place for us Europeans trying to import the game. We used NTSC to PAL converters to do this back in the day and if Mega Man X detected some older type converters the game would boot you straight back to the intro sequence after you finished the opening stage of the game. Newer converters managed to fool the game, but it was a right pain in the butt.

[@KevinTwiner]

Always great to see ya Brother!!!! Happy Labor Day

[@zachsteiner]

God I love Mondays simply because I know there be another badass MVG video ready for me to watch, right when I get off work!

[@cube2fox]

Your video is so much better than those other ones which are supposed to show anti-piracy measures, but end up only showing the effects, but not how the piracy detection works.

[@lazerusmfh]

I have to say I really love these drm videos a lot

[@TylerSteven9]

Loving these anti-piracy videos. Can't wait for the N64 one.

[@ReaperX7]

I've been in the emulation scene for years and Chrono Trigger was never a heavy issue game as far as antipiracy went. However, it was known if you attempted to patch the game in any way, such as any bug fixes, retranslations, or ROM hacks there would be some issues getting the game to work. I think this is why so much effort was made by Square-Enix to stop the Crimson Echoes and Flames of Eternity fan games because they figured out how to circumvent the antipiracy measures.

[@xyntec]

I may add another (copyright?) protection for MMX: I remember trying to play the NTSC cartridge on a PAL console via an adapter. You may start and play the game but you won't be able to beat the first encounter with Vile. It should trigger a cut scene once you almost run out of energy. But he just kept killing you instead. I also remember I managed to get pass that protection by using an action replay and some code. Unfortunately I don't remember what it changed.

[@destroyer4416]

This guy's voice alway's calms me down after a long day

[@benjaminbrady2385]

Ah yes, the embodiment of evil itself who also invented D&D

[@SMAAAASHTV]

Proof that D&D is satanist material! 😂

[@autobotstarscream765]

Is the Mani Mani Statue his miniature game piece?

[@CarbuncleMotha9]

There's a total of 146 games officially labeled "Copy Protection: Yes" for the Super NES.

[@Preinstallable]

good

[@mikekazz5353]

8:12 chances are your not gonna have a booklet to check out copy law 18 USC 2319.

[@n2n8sda]

I seem to remember some games having a 50/60hz check (perhaps Mario Cart?) not so much of an anti-piracy (but i guess it could have been used too) but to prevent region swapping.... I had a switch on my Euro snes to switch between 50/60hz speed and usually left it to 60hz but a few of my euro carts wouldnt boot at 60hz and displayed some message about not being deisgned for this region (if i remembr rightly.. it has been 25 years ago)

[@AurynTwo]

You remember correctly. There was games that had those 50/60Hz checks and actually games that had multiple checks on it as well. Well, the switch on the SNES was intended to remove the black stripes generated from PAL/NTSC difference more than a copy protection work around but yes, it helped us playing games ahead of time or even play games we could never play with an official release on the right region.

[@danielespeziari5545]

Yes, I tried to run a Japanese Mega Man X2 cartridge on my PAL SNES and I could only play the opening stage. Then, I was sent back to the title screen

[@noop9k]

PAL Castlevania: Dracula X does this. I just flip the switch after it does the check.

[@MorbiusTheMenace]

I can't even remember part 1 Senile gamer logging out

[@bs_blackscout]

Don't worry, I'm fairly young and I also couldn't recall much from the first video...

[@Rhyten]

Time to rewatch it then ;)

[@kenrickkahn]

One of My favorite channels! Always have the content I'm attracted to.. Thank You..

[@cbennet1]

Your videos always seem to fly by! A sure sign of great content that never gets old.

[@BennyBsolo]

Fantastic , i had no idea about these measures being used back in early days of gaming. thanks MVG

[@JemaKnight]

The Chrono Trigger anti-piracy measure you just mentioned is something I absolutely experienced in the DS version (on an OG R4). I wonder if your sources got the version mixed up.

[@RAMChYLD]

Jema well, A number of people including myself encountered it back when emulators were still in their infancy. So it must’ve relied on some sort of inaccuracy in the emulation to Trigger. However I was still able to set off the protection consistently using pro action replay codes (I have a set of codes to give the party infinite HP/MP as well as make certain attacks like Frog’s Frog Stomp and Ayla’s Dino Tail do a consistent 9999 HP damage) when emulators matured enough, so there’s a possibility that it’s more of an anti-cheat mechanism than a copy protection one.

[@LiEnby]

@@RAMChYLDjust a guess but homebrew has SD card access on the r4 so retail games can check if SD card access is there and if it is it knows it’s an r4,

[@LiEnby]

@@RAMChYLDjust a guess but homebrew has SD card access on the r4 so retail games can check if SD card access is there and if it is it knows it’s an r4,

[@StaticVapour590]

How about Nintendo DS anti-piracy? But in such way presented that Nintendo will not send their ninjas to your door

[@Code7Unltd]

I don't think Nintendo cares about the WiiU or DS anymore. It's that the Toddler-wranglers are more worried about pirates on the Switch. Not that it matters, as Nintendo just clones conventional videogame formats (Balloon Fight=Joust, the Mario games=[Platforming game of choice here], Zelda=[RPG franchise of choice goes here]) and most people play on PC almost exclusively anyways. Making consoles in the 2010s is like mining gold in a supernova.

[@SMAAAASHTV]

There's so many antipiracy measures on DS games that the video would take several hours to watch, to see them all.

[@StaticVapour590]

@@SMAAAASHTV i would watch

[@SMAAAASHTV]

@@Code7Unltd balloon fight=joust is the only thing that holds water, which is why you couldn't think of a game Nintendo cloned to creat Mario or Zelda. Nintendo popularized those game styles, if not invented them.

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

@@Code7Unltd "making consoles in the 2010s is like mining gold in a supernova. " riiiight, that's why the ps4 has 100 mil sales and the switch is selling quite fast too

[@SirWhiskersThe3rd]

Please tell me that I'm not the only one that still gets Goosebumps when the opening of Chrono Trigger plays

[@perpetualcollapse]

Same.

[@mondruner]

Same x2

[@Gerenocidiac]

Now this is some unique content and it shows how knowledgeable you are in this area. Keep these coming, very interesting!

[@xcoder1122]

I'm really surprised that the vendors of the disk copy machines would not just offer a simple switch that allows you to change the SRAM size, so you can adjust it to the size within the cartridge (which would then be listed somewhere or you just try to find it by playing around with different sizes, after all the number of typical sizes is very limited).

[@VictorCampos87]

10:15 Man! This message comes to me when I was a child and it really scared me.

[@cobrce6093]

"Why is Megaman X not saving my upgrades?" - Me, 15 years ago

[@phillipmcmahon5949]

Great content as usual. Eases the pain of a Monday afternoon at work 😂

[@kordru]

GRAND DAD 7 was a good game in my opinion.

[@CasualCodeChannel]

FLEEENSTONES?!!??

[@GonzaloAFR]

i see a man of culture right here

[@Kolyasisan]

Where did that come from?

[@ka9d00d3]

Kolyasisan Joel from Vinesauce.

[@Kolyasisan]

@@ka9d00d3 nonono, I get that, praise be to uncle Jobel, but afaik there was no reference to him or 7GD in this video. Hence my question: where did that come from?

[@PhinioxGlade]

Demons Crest also has an annoying region check. You can get to the end of the first level and then it tells you it’s only for US systems. I imported the cart for use on my AUS Pal system, only to find this

[@sullivangate]

The Super Mario All Stars method would trigger when using a Game Genie occasionally. The SSF2 method often occured on legit copies. That game was kind of a mess.

[@zulnoth]

love your videos mate, great production value and interesting topics. keep it up

[@DrewPicklesTheDark]

I remember getting a false positive as a kid and being scared since I thought I broke the law or something. Ironic since I pirate most things now...

[@alakani]

Haha yup, that's called the backfire effect. Same reason I smoke weed like Snoop Dogg ever since D.A.R.E.

[@mrbisshie]

Wow, the last one was a bit of nostalgia. I remember getting that message a lot, while trying to get my DKC3 cartridge to work as a kid.

[@FalkPLAY]

I do have a memory when I was a child to get stuck on a infinite time travel scene on Chrono Trigger. My rom was a fan translation to Portuguese, don't know if this helped to trigger the anti-piracy method on the emulator.

[@awdrifter3394]

I don't know if something like cheat devices were available back then, but theoretically a lot of these annoyances could probably be fixed with cheats. Like the Megaman checks they could maybe have a cheat were you're regening health when climbing walls. It would've been funny to see something like Datel making a "perfect cheat" package to counter the anti-piracy.

[@CoolJosh3k]

Would neat to get your take on some the most clever/involved/complicated anti-piracy used back in the old days.

[@anonnone9355]

On my super wild card on Megaman X every SECOND JUMP was tiny you had to do a tiny jump first before jumping any hole ONLY every second jump was a real jump SERIOUSLY made the game unplayable (love the channel)

[@TheInkyCraft]

always love the vids MVG, very informational!

[@rubencentro4974]

I was literally driving a boat and stopped to watch this when I saw the notification (yes there's 4g in the ocean)

[@AwesomeHairo]

Cool story but a flex, nonetheless

[@slobodanlang7135]

Yeah I gotta say, you've got a lot more energy and fascination with this than me. Triggering anti-piracy on emulators. It is interesting though because you do teach us about games and their history that a lot of us wouldn't know, so thank you.

[@tylerellis4576]

Love theses videos! Please keep up the great work!

[@silentfanatic]

Love the Super NT and OSSC in the background!

[@notGeist]

I had Chrono Trigger on the SNES freeze up at the time travel thing for me when I played it on ZSNES years ago when I was in middleschool.

[@RST]

Another thing to note is that in donkey kong country on my original SNES, when i powered it on with a turbo controller connected it triggered the anti-piracy screen.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

Likely by now every game has been patched. I remember how the Suite PrettyCure DS game was dumped and mere hours later a set of anti-copy patches went out. There was a check every time the screen changed (like 5 of them) to see if it was legit but it didn't take long to remove them. It was surreal to watch this happen in real time.

[@davidmcgill1000]

Patching games to bypass anti-piracy isn't the best approach. Only want clean ROMS for preservation. The emulators and flashcarts are what should be improved to appear authentic.

[@ahoihoi87]

Demon's Crest is a sequel to Gargoyle's Quest II.

[@mattfahringer148]

ahoihoi no

[@danieldavis2055]

@@mattfahringer148 - Yes, it is. There's an entire series that started on the Game Boy (with the original Gargoyle's Quest) starring FireBrand, the Red Demon. Demon's crest is the last one in the series.

[@InsaneFirebat]

Super Metroid has some anti-piracy measures that can be triggered on original hardware and emulators. Resetting during some major loading sequences (such as starting a new game) can trigger the "It is a crime to copy video games" screen, but usually just wipes all your save files instead.

[@Raphael_De_La_Ghetto]

Wow so Capcom really was up on they’re ish in the 90’s i see👀

[@JobeStroud]

I really do love your videos on the anti piracy and security. I think someone bricked my SNES version of Chrono Trigger or the backup battery is just dead. Saves just don't update on it but it keeps the saves it came with on it.

[@TylerSteven9]

Nitpicking with semenatics here, but if the game is still playable then it isn't bricked. Bricked would imply it is totally unusable, like a brick.

[@gwenmichigander277]

In the comments on the previous SNES Anti-Piracy video, someone mentioned that they adjusted a pin on the SRAM chip one of their friend’s games so the sister couldn’t delete the saves. Maybe that’s what the previous owner did?

[@Sentarry]

Ok, You lost me @7:40 lol My little puny gamer brain cant handle it 🤣

[@freemonk3]

You should also look at Region Locking as well. A lot of Capcom games had (like SSF2 and Bonkers), amongst a lot of Nintendo IP games.

[@10p6]

If I was a developer back then, I would have used timings to check for Piracy as not all Rom / SRAM chips are created equal when it comes to speed.

[@AchiragChiragg]

Wasn't that mentioned in part 1?

[@10p6]

@Inareth Not the way I would have done it.

[@DaGlitchMaster]

Was that emulator written in C? Were you recompiling it everytime you wanted to test? Anyway, awesome video.

[@Fender178]

I know with Earthbound there is a GameGenie/Action Replay code that adds the copy protection measures back into the game so players could see what happens with pirated copies of the game. Also there also some modern games that use the Demon's Crest Copy protection where they have an enemy that is impossible to kill because the players are playing a pirated copy. I think Serious Sam 3 is one such game. Never knew that Super Street Fighter 2 had Anti piracy that disabled the controls. The closest thing I have seen as far as anti piracy methods that are close to Mega man X and Super Street Fighter 2 is where the game's graphics get blurrier and blurrier as you play until you can't see anything and can no longer play.

[@Fishsta]

This got me thinking... Back in the day I was a CB Radio user, and I seem to remember pressing the talk button on my handheld radio would have a variety of effects... Sometimes pausing the game, other times triggering these kinds of messages. I'm 100% sure NBA Jam was one of these games, it would lock up mid-match with a warning about an unauthorised device connected.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Keiji Inafune never programmed anything and Mega Man was not created by him either. His job at Capcom was mostly as a designer (he is credited with creating Zero's design for Mega Man X), with his first role as a producer being Mega Man 8. Also, I wonder if Star Ocean had copy protection, other than it being one of the few games to use a 48 megabit ROM cartridge with a special chip that would decompress the code and data to 96 megabits.

[@waltercomunello121]

in fact, we all saw the trainwreck that was Mighty No. 9, and the vaporware that came under the name "Red Ash". He might be a good designer, but he's terrible at putting stuff together and advertising his own products. The very moment he left Capcom he was doomed.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

@@waltercomunello121 He didn't leave Capcom. He was fired from Capcom. Inafune was notorious for abandoning projects he was involved with before they were finished.

[@mateuspinesi]

Great video, love this series on anti piracy methods explained

[@forgado7396]

Mega Man X: has cruel and unusual punishments for piracy. Also Mega Man X: does it on real cartridges. This is a real bruh moment right here.

[@thisis2wenty2wo]

You make the best videos. Never stop.

[@thaddeusmcgrath]

I remember in the late 90's inserting Killer Instinct into the console and getting the anti pirate message wondering what the hell just happened and how not to do it again, None of my friends never heard of it. Only happened one time, so now I know.

[@HellScream107]

I enjoy the idea of games having odd anti-piracy deterrents that mess with the pirate but still allow them to play with the game.

[@josephploettner7327]

I love this series. Thank you :)

[@yooamatwa]

Really interesting topic on the whole. Great vid mate.

[@edsound2354]

I remember doing some copy tests on my Super Ufo Pro 8, with a pirated cart from Demon's Blazon (Demons Crest in USA). The fun thing is: the pirated copy runs without issues in my SNES, but if the ROM extracted from this cart runs througn Super Ufo, the game will show this anti-piracy "unbeatable" enemies/ objects after some minutes of gameplay... The ROM would needs to be "patched" again, I suppose... very odd. Great video, MVG!

[@proxy1035]

if most games just had SRAM checks why weren't there any DIP switches or something to select an SRAM size so that you could adjust it to whatever the game expects?

[@jamesw2868]

Great video! Very interesting indeed. Keep up the great content

[@hikari_production]

Do I just wake up within a hour of him posting every time?

[@ponocni1]

I can confirm Chrono trigger Ds indeed trigger antipiracy softlock.

[@KuroeDetectiveAgency]

re: chrono trigger infinite loop- i distinctly remember having this happen back in the day with (probably) zsnes pre-v0.400 back in the late 90s

[@babyboomertwerkteam5662]

yuka-tan!

[@user10476]

One problem with making the game unplayable and not telling the player it's a piracy protection is that they'll most likely believe it's just a bad game. Is this really good for business?

[@haloharry97]

This happend to me with mega Man X When j as a kid, it was my 1st mega man game, it put me of from playing again for a long time.

[@lordeilluminati]

That is why the Spyro one I think is the smartest, because it tells you right away that you will face issues that are not present in the original game (sorta, it just detects an modchip, so even if you buy the original copy but are using on a modded console it will happen)

[@user10476]

Just making the game bad will maybe work the best IF it's common knowledge that pirated games might or might not behave as expected. Not sure that was common knowledge then?

[@tabajaralabs]

A great video as always, congratulations!

[@flying_Night_slasher]

The an irregularity has been detected thing is also in dk country 2.

[@AurynTwo]

I wonder why many people talk about the "enhancing chips" ( FX / SA / DSP /etc...) as copy protection measure when the chips where chips to enhance the SNES with capabilities and didn't had anything to do with copy protection. Back on the days, many consoles / games at the time had / needed "enhancing chips" or "enhancing cards" like the MPEG card for the Saturn (used by Lunar), ram extention for Saturn or N64, co-processor and ram in the game Chess on Odyssey2 / Videopack, all "console expantions as Sega CD (or megadrive CD) + 32x / Jaguar CD / 64DD, games like Golden Sun / Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble / Harvest moon (all GBA) with internal hardware or Hey you Pikatchu / Tetris64 (N64) who had external hardware. They was all about pushing the boundaries of what the console / game could do or make it do better than other games. All the SNES enhancing chips had specific functions and none of them has something to do with copy protection. Sure, the chips was on the way when you wanted to copy the game because they was cutting edge and nothing changed until today where cutting edge hardware can not be copied quickly. Remember that back on those days, the limitations was always the hardware and not the software.

[@MaaZeus]

Because even if copy protection was not the main function of enhancement chips they still did work as such. When you made a copy from such game you could not play it unless you had that chip available (or emulation of it) one way or another. Case in point, normal Everdrive flash cart. You cannot play any games that need special chips with it, you need the much more expensive SD2SNES cart and even that does not copy all chips out there.

[@AurynTwo]

@@MaaZeus Nasa builds rockets because of necessity and they want to go to space, not because they want to stop others from going to space. In fact Nasa was for long time the only one that did successfully go to space. This was done with knowhow, infrastructure and money. Are rockets difficult to build? Are they expansive? Sure but they are not a Nasa copy protection systems. Apart that, what kind of copy protection was it if you could put sometimes other game with the same chip on top of the SWC and the copy would play fine? Don't get me wrong, they was a nuisance back on the day but it was not the function of those chip. Remember that those custom chips was not cheap either and added to the price of the translation/localization as well (especially in Europe with the shit ton of languages). Apart that, I don't know what the amount of piracy really was in the US but in Europe I knew only about 10 people ( mostly people working in import games shops) that knew what a SWC was but they sure had interest on selling them. Following you thinking had Start Ocean and Tales of Phantasia (and maybe other 2-3 games Japan only), had another layer of "copy protection" with the size of the ROM (48Mb if my memory isn't wrong) and the most SWC I ever see was 32Mb only (including my). Adding to that SO had even another "copy protection" (apart the DSP) and that was how it stored the graphics. From my knowledge, it wasn't the DSP that made problem in the Emulation of Start Ocean but the graphics. On the early day you neededed a graphics pack to play SO in Emulator.

[@Lanius04]

Fantastic as always

[@paul2062]

i love your channel every time i see a vid its interesting.... please keep it up

[@Whiterabbit124]

I love your anti piracy videos and I have never owned a console in my life

[@Biggestsonicfan]

Got very excited to see a part 2! But... with absolutely no elaboration on the lockout chip. RIP.

[@sabin1981]

Awwww yeah, another MVG vid on DRM/anti-piracy.. and it's another vid on the SNES too! Double super whammy! I'm all about the like button before I've even watched it ^_^

[@sabin1981]

though to be fair; Demon's Crest isn't really considered a sequel, or even spin off, to Ghouls'n'Ghosts (or Ghosts'n'Goblins) -- it's a sequel to the GB/NES titles; Gargoyle's Quest :D It's technically the 3rd entry in the GG series \o/

[@Diceman82]

I actually had the Chrono Trigger infinite time warp thing occur on a very old copy of Zsnes, but we are talking beta versions here from a very long time ago.