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How my (weird) fascination of Anti-Piracy screens/measures was ruined

HOTSPUR

HOTSPUR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,991
I know this is probably an odd thread to most users here but for as long as I can remember, I've had a fascination with Anti Piracy measures in games. It all started when a legit copy of Super Mario All Stars gave me this screen



Curiosity got me looking a few months ago for any newer anti piracy measures found in games, whether recent or not and I found out its a trend/meme now to fake these.

Youtube is flooded with terrible fakes and fan made versions of these, and it's been super hard to actually find any real ones at all.

I'm not bitching, but it is certainly a weird internet trend to have taken off, and it kind of makes me sad that it's infinitely harder to find the real ones now. maybe there is a wiki of sorts (think tcrf) that covers this? Maybe I'm weird for even being fascinated with this sort of stuff in the first place? Who knows.
 
Murlin

Murlin

Member
Feb 12, 2019
1,182
Actually, TCRF itself does tend to cover these, especially if they have effects other than "a screen pops up at the start and doesn't let you progress"

But yeah, all the fake ones are unfortunately a sort of offshoot of creepypasta "haunted cartridge" type stuff
 
SteveWinwood

SteveWinwood

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,964
USA USA USA
i remember a fake one was super popular on youtube (thanks algorithm) a few years ago where you had to record you voice reading a script about how you pirated this ds game or whatever

im sure plenty of people rode that wave and made copy cats
 
RadioJoNES

RadioJoNES

Prophet of Truth - One Winged Slayer
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
1,938
Yeah, same boat for sure. I enjoyed the well-done Mario 64 stuff, but afterwards yeesh.
 
Simone

Simone

Member
Oct 27, 2017
339
Italy
I swear my Youtube reccomendations have become for no reason, like 99% fake anti-piracy nintendo screens.
 
Kinsei

Kinsei

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
21,066
Yup. Real anti piracy measures in games can be quite fascinating, from screens, gameplay tweaks, to having an invincible super enemy chase you throughout the game. It's a shame searching for them, has been pretty much ruined by shitty sub creepy pasta level fakes.
 
Man God

Man God

Member
Oct 25, 2017
39,038
I also got that same screen on the same game once upon a time and it scared the shit out of me. Then I just cleaned the contacts a bit and never got it again.
 

Brandino

Avenger
Jan 9, 2018
2,155
I remember one of the Rocksteady Batman games had it so you couldn't glide properly if you pirated the game.
 

Deleted member 61531

Banned
Nov 19, 2019
10,231
My only direct experience with anti-piracy measures is really old: my dad hooked up an amiga...or commodore...or one of those old ass computers.

There was a tank game that required you to enter certain words found in particular places of the game manual (like, line 10 paragraph 2 page 33) and the manual was massive.

It struck me as a very mysterious exercise as a kid, but the idea of "analog" anti-piracy is really fun to me.
 
guybrushfreeman

guybrushfreeman

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,091
Unknownlight

Unknownlight

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 2, 2017
11,037
There's a TV Tropes page with lots of info and examples of this.

tvtropes.org

Copy Protection - TV Tropes

When a player purchases a video game, how does the developer prevent them from simply making an illicit copy of the software and giving it away to a friend? Unlike physical merchandise (such as books), video games exist as electronic data, which …
tvtropes.org tvtropes.org
 
Xterrian

Xterrian

Member
Apr 20, 2018
3,044
The Mario Party ds ones were really well done imo, but yeah. The massive influx of fake *and mostly terrible* ones can be a pain.
 
Bigg

Bigg

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,886
People find anti piracy screens unsettling so they're perfect vectors for creepypasta

I can see why the fake ones became a trend but it's a bummer that it's hard to find the real ones now
 
mael

mael

Avenger
Nov 3, 2017
17,662
God, were these screens annoying when importing games from the US/Japan.
Something like SMRPG was unplayable outside of getting a legit correct region console back in the day.
 

Sixfortyfive

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
4,615
Atlanta
Not an anti-piracy screen per se, but one of my favorite tangential examples of this sort of thing is the region lockout screen of Mickey Mania on Sega Genesis. If you boot up the cartridge on a console of the wrong region, you'll get an error message like this:

MickeyManiaMDRegion1.png


That in itself isn't too notable. A lot of games produced on the Genesis after 1992 had similar region lockout screens.

But what made this one different is that the game didn't necessarily end here. Even after hitting the lockout screen, the game still continuously runs checks against the console to see whether or not the region matches, and if--for whatever reason--it suddenly detects a match, the screen will change to the following message, and then the game will load normally:

MickeyManiaMDRegion2.png


The only time you'll ever legitimately see this second message on real hardware is if you've modded your console with a region switch, and you flip the switch from one region to another after the game has already loaded.
 
OP
OP
HOTSPUR

HOTSPUR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,991
Sixfortyfive said:
Not an anti-piracy screen per se, but one of my favorite tangential examples of this sort of thing is the region lockout screen of Mickey Mania on Sega Genesis. If you boot up the cartridge on a console of the wrong region, you'll get an error message like this:

MickeyManiaMDRegion1.png


That in itself isn't too notable. A lot of games produced on the Genesis after 1992 had similar region lockout screens.

But what made this one different is that the game didn't necessarily end here. Even after hitting the lockout screen, the game still continuously runs checks against the console to see whether or not the region matches, and if--for whatever reason--it suddenly detects a match, the screen will change to the following message, and then the game will load normally:

MickeyManiaMDRegion2.png


The only time you'll ever legitimately see this second message on real hardware is if you've modded your console with a region switch, and you flip the switch from one region to another after the game has already loaded.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I remember this one! I can't remember if it was MVG or someone else who did a video on it but I thought this was hilarious.

I'm glad to see everyone in this thread doesn't think I'm crazy for being annoyed by this whole thing lol
 
Pargon

Pargon

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,678
Since anti-piracy measures have failed you, try loader/cracktro screens instead.
They're a lot more fun.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Seriously, though, it is very annoying when you're looking for things like this and it's flooded with fakes/parody now.
Some of the examples above, like the Mickey Mania screens are pretty interesting.
 
OP
OP
HOTSPUR

HOTSPUR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,991
Pargon said:
Since anti-piracy measures have failed you, try loader/cracktro screens instead.
They're a lot more fun.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com

Seriously, though, it is very annoying when you're looking for things like this and it's flooded with fakes/parody now.
Some of the examples above, like the Mickey Mania screens are pretty interesting.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I LOVE cracktros and the demo scene as well. These are my two favorites


 

Deleted member 4869

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
7,753
HOTSPUR said:
I remember this one! I can't remember if it was MVG or someone else who did a video on it but I thought this was hilarious.

I'm glad to see everyone in this thread doesn't think I'm crazy for being annoyed by this whole thing lol
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Here you go, directly from the game's programmer himself, and the one who coded the regional lockout. His YouTube channel is super cool. He reveals a lot of coding tidbits from the work he did on numerous games back in the day.

 
OP
OP
HOTSPUR

HOTSPUR

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,991
Ishida said:
Here you go, directly from the game's programmer himself, and the one who coded the regional lockout. His YouTube channel is super cool. He reveals a lot of coding tidbits from the work he did on numerous games back in the day.

Click to expand...
Click to shrink...


Yes!!! His channel is so fascinating. Ex Travelers Tales employee iirc. He has some great content!
 
Wislizeni

Wislizeni

Member
Oct 27, 2017
720
As a kid, I accidentally bumped the SNES while at Bowser and got that exact screen, with Bowser's theme still playing. It creeped me out, though that turned into morbid curiosity, and got me into cartridge tilting. I never saw another anti-piracy screen after that one, though. I don't mind the fake ones on Youtube. Sometimes, they're pretty good, and even clever. Of course, there will be a ton of low quality ones, but that comes with any form of entertainment, lol.
 
Ultratech

Ultratech

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,390
The DS Era had some interesting ones once Anti-Piracy became a major concern for Nintendo.
  • Pokemon B/W had it to where you'd get no EXP from battles. (It checks for the infrared communicator; it it fails to check in, you stop gaining EXP for your mons.) BW2 had this and random freezing!
  • Dragon Quest V had a rather infamous one where you couldn't leave the boat at the beginning of the game.
  • Pokemon HGSS would freeze during battles, softlocking the game with your pokeballs spinning forever.
  • Mega Man Star Force had a really annoying one where it'd constantly pop up with "Hey, hurry up and touch the train, kid!" over and over again after the first fight. You basically couldn't get it to go away no matter what you did.

As for some non-DS stuff:
  • Earthbound: Most people know about these since this game has several LAYERS of AP protection (mostly aimed towards pirated copies). The first two are pretty standard AP screens, another is greatly increased encounters to the point of unplayability, another one is unknown. The final one is perhaps the worst of all, as if you get past all the other layers, the game hangs right before the Final Boss and deletes all of the save files.
  • Banjo-Tooie has two of these; One checks for the proper save type and if it fails, it just hangs at boot saying "No Controller". The other checks for a CIC lockout chip (and the game checks for this a LOT); Upon failure, it just freezes the game.
 
Cheesetriangles

Cheesetriangles

Member
Dec 5, 2017
1,807
As a kid I had some Win 3.1 game I played a lot that required you to look up a word in the manual. The manual was damaged or thrown out or something somehow eventually and I only found a single page of it remaining and would keep having to boot the game until it asked for the word on that one page.
 
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