Imagine getting a piracy message as a kid. Like what're you supposed to do? Your parents won't care and it's not like you can go out and buy a legal copy
Anti-Piracy Screen and Lost Episodes really scared me as a kid (and still do to this day!). They do have a little charm and mysteriousness to them though
Another tell with the fakes is that they use the word "piracy." That term wasn't nearly as commonplace back in the day, and as you can see, the real ones more often use terms like "hacked" or "unauthorized copy." In the '90s I'd also hear "bootleg" more than "pirated."
not true. piracy has been used for a long time. when I used to have illegal satellite like 18 years ago, there was a channel specifically integrated into the satellite receiver that you could access only by illegal use of the receiver. it was the owner of dish network saying "hello, did you know you're a satellite pirate"? "you may not realise it but you are illegally accessing dish network programming" or something like that
I can't believe you forgot Earthbound's anti-piracy tactic; Checksums dramatically increase the difficulty and number of enemies encounters to make it as unplayable as possible. If the player persists, then the final battle with Porky and Giygas eventually glitches out, crashing the game. Upon reloading, all your saves are wiped.
7:01 Despite this anti piracy being fake, the demonic theme can still be found in the game. After saying yes to the Devil, the main title theme will play in reverse. However, if you enter the konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, back, return) then the theme will begin to play. Credit to GioTGM for finding this, he has a vid on his channel showing this off.
Earthbound has a very interesting anti-piracy thing. The first part is that for most of the game, a huge amount of enemies spawn all over the place. This is very annoying, but you can deal with it. The interesting part is that if you get to the end of the game ,the game will crash during the final battle... But at different times. it'll always happen within a certain period of time, but it seems to be completely random where in that window it will crash.
Lol, yeah... Honestly that screen kind of looks fake to me with how it says "ビデオゲーム" (video game). in my experience playing games in Japanese it would usually just say "このゲーム" (this game) or just "ゲーム" (game). It makes me think that maybe the text was originally English and then machine translated to japanese instead of vice versa.
What would be spookier is that instead of that random tomb that doesn't look like it belongs to the game, it only gives you the message that the dog is sick and then the dog gradually moves less, looks sadder, barely interacts with objects, until it just lays down and stays still forever.
I’m glad you looked into some real anti-privacy measures in this video, and didn’t just look at the fake trend screens like many other do. There was definitely a few in here that I didn’t know about.
A bit of clarification; Whilst the anti-piracy screen in Donkey Kong Country 3 is *real,* it only plays music if the screen pops up upon entering a level. In this case, the uploader likely used a Game Genie code to force the screen to pop up upon entering a boss level. Its possible for the screen to pop up upon boot if the cartridge can't be read properly when turning on the SNES, anytime this occurs there's no music in the background. The 'irregularity detected' screen is a rather an error message that pops up if the game detects an unusual glitch/crash, and even then that depends on the state of the console's RAM at the time (which is random upon startup, which can trigger a false-positive that can have the error screen pop up). Waiting for 10 seconds is necessary upon powering off the console so that it can decay the contents of the RAM. Failure of the RAM to properly decay however WILL result in the anti-piracy screen popping up, again with no audio. There's more information on 'The Cutting Room Floor' which goes into further detail about these screens for all three games in the series. Also worth noting that the Japanese releases of DKC2 and DKC3 use a more generic blue screen, with Japanese text at the top, followed by an English translation of said text at the bottom.
On a more upbeat note. The anti piracy method for the RPG Earthbound makes enemies spawn at least 12 times more often than the normal game, making the game basically unplayable as tons of enemies chase down the player, which looks really funny to anybody who's not the player.
I couldn't watch the rest of the video after that moment. Set aside the context that Nintendo is a Japanese company, and set aside the research that went into making this video, it should be easy for anyone to distinguish between hiragana/katakana and pure Chinese characters
@@ninja1man4u I was curious what people didn’t like about it. I agree it’s different but I don’t mind the change of pace. Totally understand where you’re coming from tho
I heard that too around 15:30. I didn't know one could mispronounce Ave. Narrator should look up the difference between Chinese script and Japanese script.
I swear the creepy Cuphead music comes from when you pick the bad ending by agreeing to serve the devil at the end of the game. The game boots you back out to the title after the end cutscene, and it plays that music instead of the normal theme. I don't know if its exactly true, but I swear I remember seeing it somewhere.
the music thats playing during the hanging scene, "Oh Suzanna" is actually a somewhat somber, dark song. It was a favorite during the civil war and lyrics changed to be fitting to whatever was going on at the time, most of the lyrics including freezing to death, dying in the sun, being electrocuted by a telgraph wire (im not kidding), dying in the civil war, and undertones of starving because of union blockades. so its a pretty fitting song to hear at the time.
The best anti-piracy would be to play the ghost frequency while freezing the game, forcing the player to either power off their system or use task manager (on PC) or face the creator’s musical wrath.
I know it feels like I am getting getting watched and I am going to get killed by some lunatic outside my window in the next 5 minutes 😂 that is terrifying.
Funnily enough, the mystery of that weird Cuphead audio was solved, and it wasn't from an anti piracy measure Turns out, to activate the audio, you first had to get the bad ending by giving the soul contracts to the Devil, which in turn puts you in the menu with the theme in reverse. Then you have to input a version of the Konami Code (This one being ^^ vv [back] [confirm]) and the audio would begin to play What a random specific easter egg, which took SIX YEARS to find
The biggest concern for me is the risk that one of these could trigger on a legitimate copy (due to a glitch or unusual situation). To paraphrase a common legal principle, it is better to let ten pirate kids go unpunished than to wrongfully jumpscare one innocent kid. Although I do not condone piracy, I think it’s important to remember that these games are marketed at kids, and kids don’t really have any way of making money. I would also point out that many of these publishers have raked in millions of dollars selling broken/shovelware games, and in the US, there is no recourse for these consumers.
FUN FACT: The Name of the Rose was written by umberto Eco, who also wrote Foucault’s Pendulum and as an acclaimed academic, semiotician and childhood fascist party member Eco wrote the 1996 essay “Ur-Fascism,” which describes the 14 characteristics of any fascist movement.
I remember accidentally triggering the anti-piracy screen in DKC3 a couple years back, with an authentic copy mind you. I tried putting the cartridge in a Game Genie and playing it on my Supaboy (basically an unofficial handheld SNES), and upon booting it up, was almost immediately greeted with the piracy screen.
The Mario Party DS one is known to be fake, but it was really well done and honestly very convincing. It started the entire anti-piracy fad on UA-cam. The music used for it was also a banger. Most of the anti-piracy videos that were born as a result of it were also fake. However there are some real ones (I could've sworn the Cuphead one was one.
Real or not, I always found it disturbing just thinking how if you were just casually playing one of the games at 2am and these screens popped up.You'd GENUINELY shit your pants
The Name of the Rose (novel) came out in 1980 by Umberto Eco but Ellis Peters wrote the Cadfael novels starting in 1977. They both have a mystery solving monk. Sean Connery is in the Name of the Rose and Derek Jacobi in the Cadfael series. Both are worth watching.
When I was working at Nintendo I never had a customer complaint about this, but only when it was a modified console that's when things get creepy inside the games.
Imagine the anti-piracy screens that don't feature anything graphic or highly disturbing have been debunked as fake and the ones that are disturbing are real. Btw, I wish you were gonna to mention the anti-piracy measures 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' took. That you couldn't glide or grapple. And when people complained about it, they were outed as pirates. Great video, though!
Oddly enough, I JUST watched a play of that Serious Sam game. They said that's a normal enemy, but it's the most annoying enemy and the developers knew it because they used it for the anti-piracy measure. The only difference is that the anti-piracy scorpion is invincible. But it's not a disturbing version meant for pirates, it's just an invincible version of the most annoying enemy. Shout out to Mass Effect 1, who had an anti-piracy measure where if your game was pirated then sometimes your guns wouldn't cool down. All the guns in ME1 work on cooling/heating, so if they won't cool down, you can't shoot. Kind of a problem in a shooter. There was just one tiiiiiiny little flaw. Well, tiny in the sense an iceberg shaped hole is a tiiiiny flaw in the Titanic. Their highly skilled coders didn't program it well and the anti-piracy measure would sometimes trigger on legitimate copies.
While it isn’t a piracy screen, per se, I saw this fake screen from Ring Fit Adventure where you check your breathing, and it that warned that the player was having a heart attack and to call the ambulance immediately. And despite not being real, as someone who used to play that game, it ironically almost gave me a heart attack.😂
This kind of content takes me back a ways. Reminds me of when like, Some Ordinary Gamers and that guy Mullet Mike were first talking about this kind of stuff. The amount of effort put into some of those fake anti piracy screens is kind of funny in retrospect when you think of some of the real ones like... In the Pokemon Gen 1 remakes which let you play like normal until you get to the SS Anne then you're trapped forever because a sailor permanently blocks you. Or that Ocarina of time one near the end of the video. You got the fake anti piracy stuff that tries to spook you, and the real ones that just exist to piss you off.
My favorite anti-piracy method was the coded message you needed, particularly in Metal Gear Solid where you need the codec frequency for Meryl. The Arms Tech president knows the code, but suddenly forgets it before telling you it should be on the back of the cd case. This might sound annoying now, but it makes the codec code (140.15) iconic in the community.
Wasn’t very effective though, since there were only so many codec frequencies to enter, it was just a matter of trial and error before getting the right one. My copy of MGS didn’t have a manual, and the cover was just generic GameStop box art.
No joke, I popped a copy of Super Punch Out!! in my snes and an Anti-Piracy message came on the screen. Played the same game for nearly 25 years and never saw that message before.
Iirc the Super NES anti-piracy measures are triggered when the game detects an issue with the game pak's SRAM chip. And with these game paks nearing 35 years old, many of their SRAM chips are starting to go bad.
6:51 that first one is fake, the song is real but it's played when you choose the bad ending at the end of the game. If you choose to fight the devil it will be normal, but if you decide to join him and give him the contracts you'll get the bad ending and that song will play. Also that some is just the reversed theme song.
Lol I seem to recall a couple of cheat code devices would trigger the warnings for the super nintendo and 64 as well (which makes sense given what they were suppose to do) that I found funny some times growing up. Thankfully it never messed with actual game play though.
The entire ambience of the PS2 makes me feel uneasy like the music in the menu’s and just this empty void feeling it has… idk creeped me the heck out especially when it would all turn red.
Sir Patrick Mack?!? Dude!!! I miss your old videos!!! I thought you were banhammered forever or something. Good to see you're still cranking out videos. Missed you brother!
1:33 the Mario 64 Beta Archive shouldn’t be on this list, since they’re very horrible people. In fact, most of the people who own the channel are very toxic. All they do is steal credit from the original creator (won’t given the name since I used to be one of the members in that group) and made false accusations towards the creator. So don’t you ever bring up this channel again Chilling Scares.
9:49 this is chilling? Man I have I dog like the dog in game, and I started crying from it. It’s not chilling, it’s sad. Watching the player take care of the dog just for it to die.
The song played during the execution of the gold rush game is called " oh Susanna ". And its a very popular mid 1800s song. Very popular during the US Civil War.
Back in the Amiga days my friend had a copy of Gods. I played it on his machine and enjoyed it so I bought the original. I always tried to buy originals for good games. When I played it, the game was impossible. I struggled to get past the first level. I sent it back to Bitmap Brothers and they sent another copy to me stating the original copy I had bought had failed the copy protection. The copy they sent to me was just like my mates pirated copy. How ironic that I buy an original and get a copy protection debuff lol.
You have awesome videos. I wanted to say you are by far the best narrator on UA-cam. I would love if you would have a few more videos of you telling stories.
I love every upload from this channel. I've watched them all and look forward to new ones. I would like a new scary story upload, though. Those always caught my attention. Also, the scary dashcam videos.
There's one visual novel with a dev-approved GBA port that requires you to verify you actually own the game. Otherwise, one of the characters (already known for having keen observation) doxxes you. Like, straight-up dropping your IP address and other info on screen.
8:19 It actually can be heard SPOILER ALERT FOR CUPHEAD It has been a while since i last played cuphead but from what i remember when you enter the devil's level you're given a choice between fighting the devil or selling your soul If you chose to sell your soul you'll get the bad ending and after watching the bad ending you will be sent back to the main menu with this version
I think what made the early "Anti-Piracy" screens work was how realistic they all felt. Meanwhile, the newer anti-piracy screens felt over-the-top and cheap, if I'm being honest.
the original video has a jumpscare after it followed by an image of mario hanging with a CREEPY ASS AUDIO THAT MAKES ME PIIS MY PANTS TO THIS DAY playing in the background
In the 90's CDrom games on pc had a CDkey inside the cover. That was a good way to stop piracy. But there were many CDkey apps you could download to overcome this.
I've never heard of anti-piracy screens. They sure can be disturbing. The ones that are fake do look real. I didn't know that some games don't allow you to play copied versions of them. At least, some anti-piracy screens were not meant to be disturbing.
Damn I wish that I could make my own video games. Your video here gave me a cool idea for one... so, the goal of my game would be, the player-character is being chased all throughout the gamr by an unkillable monster that is also incredibly fast and strong, and it's up to the player to survive it, basically running away from it, hiding from it, just all sorts of survival elements and trying to stay further ahead of it or what ever it takes to survive it. So, then for MY anti-piracy trick - the monster never spawns. There's all sorts of other minor and side characters normally throughout the game, and the game has scripted events and triggers based on the current location or placement of the monster relative to reaching that particular trigger, etc., only without the monster ever spawning, these triggers never activate, so certain key events, cutscenes and other critical story-plot points would never activate to keep the game moving on. All the side and minor characters would react and behave differently than they normally would to the player-character if the monster was creating chaos and destruction all around it as it went. The game would essentially be "unplayable", in the sense that the player could never beat it, and the player-character would be stuck in a purgatory-like world with every other side and minor character, unable to escape or do anything besides acknowledge that something is wrong but they don't know what and they don't know how to fix it or escape from it. 😁
13:16 actually the Donkey Kong 2 screen is the one with them seemingly in a crate/cell. If you look close the DKC3 one has two sets of wooden "bars" you can lean over... and playbeads on the second one. It's a baby's crib.
The backwards cuphead song thing is something that can play in the game, its when before you fight the devil, he gives you an option to either fight him, or give up the souls you collected, if you give him the souls, the game automatically ends, and restarts, and that reversed slowed theme plays at the home screen when it loads up
I think the reason anti-piracy screens work so well in a horror aspect because it's sort of realistic way of the game knowing what you're doing. Before we had ben drowned and stuff like that which were fun at the time but not believeable at all. Besides what's scarier than a game that knows that you didnt' pay for it. You should haven't look into some of the real anti-piracy measures some devs have done, some of them are straight up evil. I remember a case where a dev would log piractes computer information and post it on their website once. I think that was a modder though, I can't remember.
A lot of people did copy games back when I was a kid. They used to sell them on market stalls and in pubs. Same with dvds as well. So this probably would scare you and make you think twice if you bought a copied game back in the day.
The fake ones seem more goofy than creepy to me. I mean, they're so absurdly over the top, I don't understand how anyone is fooled into believing they're real. The truly creepy part is how blindly so many people believe whatever they see, read or hear about on the Internet.
Adding anti-piracy measures to kids' games has the same vibe as beating them because their parents made you mad. Like bruh the kid definitely has nothing to do with this, why traumatize them lmao
As a 90s kid. I remember that Donkey Kong one. It was kinda terrifying as a kid. I never truly understood it what was going on. After following the instructions a few times it go back to normal. But I remember it.
Though I had a legitimate copy of DKC3, I do remember when my brother and I tried to play it, sometimes it wouldn't work (mainly due to dust) and when we were turn it off and back on, that screen would pop up saying something along the line of there was an error in the game and to turn to the manual for more instructions. It always freaked us out as we never knew what caused the screen to appear and feared that it could happen at any time as it also occurred during game play at random
Starflight, in 1986, also did something similar. They made you put a code in and if you got it wrong, you were given a second chance. If still wrong, it never really told you. You just played the game at normal. Then, at complete random in the middle of the game, at a random time, they would have an encounter with the Interstel police, and it would tell you why they stopped you, asked you what you had to say for yourself, if you do this correctly, you get ONE MORE chance. If you get it wrong again, they blow you out of the sky and it's game over.
That creepy version of cupheads theme song? To unlock it you actually: 1.get a bad ending 2.press buttons in this order: ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️(back) (confirm)
Those anti piracy methods were very rare, I remember buying pirated games as a kid and never seen once of this messages, even remember having Spyro and never seeing that message. The best anti piracy method was the black Playstation original discs, the lens will work better reading black discs and get damaged by reading silver cds (the most common ones sold in stores) so the lifetime of a pirated/chipped Playstation was lower than the one only reading original discs
i love looking at anti-piracy screens, they're either presented in a really goofy way or genuinely disturbing
The best anti-piracy "screen" is Mirror's Edge forcing you to walk the plank.
Nothing is scarier than the PS2 screen telling you the CD can’t be read
@@Chookity-Pok your comment is banned for some reason lol
@@mr.jamster8414 Lol wtf great
Twice! hehe @@Chookity-Pok
Imagine getting a piracy message as a kid. Like what're you supposed to do? Your parents won't care and it's not like you can go out and buy a legal copy
And? 😂
@@harrydavey9884 poor kid lyfe
You sit and wait for the authorities
@@boppo2158 boo 👎
I would cry thinking the fbi is gonna get me 😂
Anti-Piracy Screen and Lost Episodes really scared me as a kid (and still do to this day!). They do have a little charm and mysteriousness to them though
You must still be a kid
@@andrewcruz1931 You're right, I'm still 17
they do I like it it's cool
the SpongeBob "lost" episode, right
Another tell with the fakes is that they use the word "piracy." That term wasn't nearly as commonplace back in the day, and as you can see, the real ones more often use terms like "hacked" or "unauthorized copy." In the '90s I'd also hear "bootleg" more than "pirated."
Maybe in your neck of the woods
@@andrewcruz1931eh? International releases?
Maybe, but if you look at court records on Westlaw, "piracy" to mean illegal copying goes back to the early days of copyright in the 18th century.
Bullshit
not true. piracy has been used for a long time. when I used to have illegal satellite like 18 years ago, there was a channel specifically integrated into the satellite receiver that you could access only by illegal use of the receiver. it was the owner of dish network saying "hello, did you know you're a satellite pirate"? "you may not realise it but you are illegally accessing dish network programming" or something like that
I can't believe you forgot Earthbound's anti-piracy tactic; Checksums dramatically increase the difficulty and number of enemies encounters to make it as unplayable as possible. If the player persists, then the final battle with Porky and Giygas eventually glitches out, crashing the game. Upon reloading, all your saves are wiped.
7:01 Despite this anti piracy being fake, the demonic theme can still be found in the game. After saying yes to the Devil, the main title theme will play in reverse. However, if you enter the konami code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, back, return) then the theme will begin to play. Credit to GioTGM for finding this, he has a vid on his channel showing this off.
Yes! I was getting so annoyed hearing him say, “cannot be heard ingame,” like, YES IT CAN, AND EASILY AS WELL!
This is the only time I’ve seen a horror channel investigate the anti piracy screens 👏
Pretty novel/creative, I agree!
Yeah awesome channel that keeps all sorts of scary things.
I’ve seen it on 2 other channels already
Gearsiko did!
Earthbound has a very interesting anti-piracy thing. The first part is that for most of the game, a huge amount of enemies spawn all over the place. This is very annoying, but you can deal with it. The interesting part is that if you get to the end of the game ,the game will crash during the final battle... But at different times. it'll always happen within a certain period of time, but it seems to be completely random where in that window it will crash.
And after it crashes, when you reboot the game, your save files are erased.
2:19 is nobody gonna talk about the fact that man said "A message in Chinese" and then pans down to Japanese text
i recognized this too
I've been subbed for awhile, but this content is barely better than bottom of the barrel, low-effort react videos.
Lol, yeah... Honestly that screen kind of looks fake to me with how it says "ビデオゲーム" (video game).
in my experience playing games in Japanese it would usually just say "このゲーム" (this game) or just "ゲーム" (game).
It makes me think that maybe the text was originally English and then machine translated to japanese instead of vice versa.
Glad I'm not the only one who caught that.
Right? The moment I saw some hiragana and katakana I was like, ayo that ain't Chinese.
That nintendogs one couldve been spookier if they didnt pick "scurvy" like it just makes me think of a pirate going
"YARRR ME DOGS GOT SCURVY!!"
But its related to pirates, which is what the player would be
What would be spookier is that instead of that random tomb that doesn't look like it belongs to the game, it only gives you the message that the dog is sick and then the dog gradually moves less, looks sadder, barely interacts with objects, until it just lays down and stays still forever.
Ye scurvy dog!
I’m glad you looked into some real anti-privacy measures in this video, and didn’t just look at the fake trend screens like many other do. There was definitely a few in here that I didn’t know about.
A bit of clarification;
Whilst the anti-piracy screen in Donkey Kong Country 3 is *real,* it only plays music if the screen pops up upon entering a level. In this case, the uploader likely used a Game Genie code to force the screen to pop up upon entering a boss level.
Its possible for the screen to pop up upon boot if the cartridge can't be read properly when turning on the SNES, anytime this occurs there's no music in the background.
The 'irregularity detected' screen is a rather an error message that pops up if the game detects an unusual glitch/crash, and even then that depends on the state of the console's RAM at the time (which is random upon startup, which can trigger a false-positive that can have the error screen pop up). Waiting for 10 seconds is necessary upon powering off the console so that it can decay the contents of the RAM. Failure of the RAM to properly decay however WILL result in the anti-piracy screen popping up, again with no audio.
There's more information on 'The Cutting Room Floor' which goes into further detail about these screens for all three games in the series.
Also worth noting that the Japanese releases of DKC2 and DKC3 use a more generic blue screen, with Japanese text at the top, followed by an English translation of said text at the bottom.
On a more upbeat note. The anti piracy method for the RPG Earthbound makes enemies spawn at least 12 times more often than the normal game, making the game basically unplayable as tons of enemies chase down the player, which looks really funny to anybody who's not the player.
Hate to be pedantic, but the text on the N64 screen is Japanese, not Chinese. Great video otherwise!
I couldn't watch the rest of the video after that moment. Set aside the context that Nintendo is a Japanese company, and set aside the research that went into making this video, it should be easy for anyone to distinguish between hiragana/katakana and pure Chinese characters
I would imagine Chinese characters would be promoting piracy.
@@MarkSalhanysound like a weeb bro
@@MarkSalhanynot that deep calm down
Oh brother this guy stinks
Denuvo...now THAT'S a terrifying anti-piracy tactic. It makes EVERYONE suffer, especially the innocent.
Really liking the unique content ideas lately!
Agreed 💯
Naaa
I’m not. Needa go back to scary stories
@gunjourney046 glad I'm not alone. This is video is kind of silly
@@ninja1man4u I was curious what people didn’t like about it. I agree it’s different but I don’t mind the change of pace. Totally understand where you’re coming from tho
"Beneath Mario, a message in Chinese-"
Oof.. 😬
I physically cringed hearing that
No one cares.
@@mcantySame lmao
No one cares grow up
@@FunkyMunkey00_ woah, who took your friend chicken, nikka lmao
That pronunciation of "Ave Maria."
Calling the Japanese text Chinese.
The low stakes nature of this horror lol.
Ah-vey ma-ri-ah.
I heard that too around 15:30. I didn't know one could mispronounce Ave.
Narrator should look up the difference between Chinese script and Japanese script.
Who cares
@@FunkyMunkey00_ Those of us who are literate care.
@@jenniferlonnes7420your nose is dripping you better get a clean ex
I swear the creepy Cuphead music comes from when you pick the bad ending by agreeing to serve the devil at the end of the game. The game boots you back out to the title after the end cutscene, and it plays that music instead of the normal theme. I don't know if its exactly true, but I swear I remember seeing it somewhere.
I was like "let me see if Chilling Scares has uploaded recently" it literally said 13 minutes ago... that's creepy yet satisfying.
Same
@@OrcaMiniLopwatching this right now and it was uploaded 13 days ago 💀
the music thats playing during the hanging scene, "Oh Suzanna" is actually a somewhat somber, dark song. It was a favorite during the civil war and lyrics changed to be fitting to whatever was going on at the time, most of the lyrics including freezing to death, dying in the sun, being electrocuted by a telgraph wire (im not kidding), dying in the civil war, and undertones of starving because of union blockades. so its a pretty fitting song to hear at the time.
The best anti-piracy would be to play the ghost frequency while freezing the game, forcing the player to either power off their system or use task manager (on PC) or face the creator’s musical wrath.
man now i gotta know what the ghost frequency is
@@scalemerald 18.9 hertz. Tends to make people _really_ uncomfortable.
That Anti Piracy Mario screen at 4:15 was scary as hell 😨
It gave me goosebumps now I feel super uncomfortable
I know it feels like I am getting getting watched and I am going to get killed by some lunatic outside my window in the next 5 minutes 😂 that is terrifying.
Funnily enough, the mystery of that weird Cuphead audio was solved, and it wasn't from an anti piracy measure
Turns out, to activate the audio, you first had to get the bad ending by giving the soul contracts to the Devil, which in turn puts you in the menu with the theme in reverse. Then you have to input a version of the Konami Code (This one being ^^ vv [back] [confirm]) and the audio would begin to play
What a random specific easter egg, which took SIX YEARS to find
The biggest concern for me is the risk that one of these could trigger on a legitimate copy (due to a glitch or unusual situation). To paraphrase a common legal principle, it is better to let ten pirate kids go unpunished than to wrongfully jumpscare one innocent kid.
Although I do not condone piracy, I think it’s important to remember that these games are marketed at kids, and kids don’t really have any way of making money. I would also point out that many of these publishers have raked in millions of dollars selling broken/shovelware games, and in the US, there is no recourse for these consumers.
FUN FACT: The Name of the Rose was written by umberto Eco, who also wrote Foucault’s Pendulum and as an acclaimed academic, semiotician and childhood fascist party member Eco wrote the 1996 essay “Ur-Fascism,” which describes the 14 characteristics of any fascist movement.
1:33 oh hey look, it’s the channel that got one of the members on suicide watch. Now it’s coming back to them. Thanks a lot.
I remember accidentally triggering the anti-piracy screen in DKC3 a couple years back, with an authentic copy mind you. I tried putting the cartridge in a Game Genie and playing it on my Supaboy (basically an unofficial handheld SNES), and upon booting it up, was almost immediately greeted with the piracy screen.
The Mario Party DS one is known to be fake, but it was really well done and honestly very convincing. It started the entire anti-piracy fad on UA-cam. The music used for it was also a banger.
Most of the anti-piracy videos that were born as a result of it were also fake. However there are some real ones (I could've sworn the Cuphead one was one.
Love your pizza profile picture. Looks very good😁🤤😋
14:35 -- Last words: "No, really, I'm Jesus"
Bro never fails to make me get chills down my spine with his voice.
This is why I fucking love this dude.
8:05 The way to trigger that sound was found out today, you put the Konami code on the main menu after getting the bad ending.
Real or not, I always found it disturbing just thinking how if you were just casually playing one of the games at 2am and these screens popped up.You'd GENUINELY shit your pants
12:36 That is Kiddy Kong and Dixie; Diddy isn't playable in DC3.
Was wondering if anyone was going to point that out xD
The Name of the Rose (novel) came out in 1980 by Umberto Eco but Ellis Peters wrote the Cadfael novels starting in 1977. They both have a mystery solving monk. Sean Connery is in the Name of the Rose and Derek Jacobi in the Cadfael series. Both are worth watching.
what i think is stranger is how you'd be shocked if an anti piracy screen would be disturbing in a kids game.. I mean its what you get tbf
That mario party one actually made me feel slightly uncomfortable with the music playing. Surprised it got me.
When I was working at Nintendo I never had a customer complaint about this, but only when it was a modified console that's when things get creepy inside the games.
Imagine the anti-piracy screens that don't feature anything graphic or highly disturbing have been debunked as fake and the ones that are disturbing are real.
Btw, I wish you were gonna to mention the anti-piracy measures 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' took. That you couldn't glide or grapple. And when people complained about it, they were outed as pirates.
Great video, though!
Oddly enough, I JUST watched a play of that Serious Sam game. They said that's a normal enemy, but it's the most annoying enemy and the developers knew it because they used it for the anti-piracy measure. The only difference is that the anti-piracy scorpion is invincible. But it's not a disturbing version meant for pirates, it's just an invincible version of the most annoying enemy.
Shout out to Mass Effect 1, who had an anti-piracy measure where if your game was pirated then sometimes your guns wouldn't cool down. All the guns in ME1 work on cooling/heating, so if they won't cool down, you can't shoot. Kind of a problem in a shooter. There was just one tiiiiiiny little flaw. Well, tiny in the sense an iceberg shaped hole is a tiiiiny flaw in the Titanic. Their highly skilled coders didn't program it well and the anti-piracy measure would sometimes trigger on legitimate copies.
While it isn’t a piracy screen, per se, I saw this fake screen from Ring Fit Adventure where you check your breathing, and it that warned that the player was having a heart attack and to call the ambulance immediately. And despite not being real, as someone who used to play that game, it ironically almost gave me a heart attack.😂
Your voice is so relaxing.
When Chilling Scares uploads, it's a good day.
agreed, his voice is so good for this
🤖
Mamalo
This kind of content takes me back a ways. Reminds me of when like, Some Ordinary Gamers and that guy Mullet Mike were first talking about this kind of stuff. The amount of effort put into some of those fake anti piracy screens is kind of funny in retrospect when you think of some of the real ones like... In the Pokemon Gen 1 remakes which let you play like normal until you get to the SS Anne then you're trapped forever because a sailor permanently blocks you. Or that Ocarina of time one near the end of the video. You got the fake anti piracy stuff that tries to spook you, and the real ones that just exist to piss you off.
Who knew watching fails could be this entertaining? Hats off to the creators!
My favorite anti-piracy method was the coded message you needed, particularly in Metal Gear Solid where you need the codec frequency for Meryl. The Arms Tech president knows the code, but suddenly forgets it before telling you it should be on the back of the cd case. This might sound annoying now, but it makes the codec code (140.15) iconic in the community.
Wasn’t very effective though, since there were only so many codec frequencies to enter, it was just a matter of trial and error before getting the right one. My copy of MGS didn’t have a manual, and the cover was just generic GameStop box art.
Great to see another video from you Chilling Scares.
1:04 fun fact: the bottom screen image appeared on mario party ds'S story mode cutscene
2:19
Did- Did he just call the text Chinese?
Its Japanese, Nintendo is a Japanese company
No joke, I popped a copy of Super Punch Out!! in my snes and an Anti-Piracy message came on the screen. Played the same game for nearly 25 years and never saw that message before.
Iirc the Super NES anti-piracy measures are triggered when the game detects an issue with the game pak's SRAM chip. And with these game paks nearing 35 years old, many of their SRAM chips are starting to go bad.
6:51 that first one is fake, the song is real but it's played when you choose the bad ending at the end of the game. If you choose to fight the devil it will be normal, but if you decide to join him and give him the contracts you'll get the bad ending and that song will play. Also that some is just the reversed theme song.
Lol I seem to recall a couple of cheat code devices would trigger the warnings for the super nintendo and 64 as well (which makes sense given what they were suppose to do) that I found funny some times growing up. Thankfully it never messed with actual game play though.
This was literally just a history lesson on video games
I always got scared by the ps2 no disc screen anybody else get scared by it?
Me too
Absolutely terrified. Made me feel like I was doing something illegal
The entire ambience of the PS2 makes me feel uneasy like the music in the menu’s and just this empty void feeling it has… idk creeped me the heck out especially when it would all turn red.
The gamecube error disc cannot be read..... with the piano sounds
I would mess w it bc my ADHD fr said "oooooo cool lemme mess w this" I was like 5
Sir Patrick Mack?!? Dude!!! I miss your old videos!!! I thought you were banhammered forever or something. Good to see you're still cranking out videos. Missed you brother!
1:33 the Mario 64 Beta Archive shouldn’t be on this list, since they’re very horrible people. In fact, most of the people who own the channel are very toxic.
All they do is steal credit from the original creator (won’t given the name since I used to be one of the members in that group) and made false accusations towards the creator.
So don’t you ever bring up this channel again Chilling Scares.
9:49 this is chilling? Man I have I dog like the dog in game, and I started crying from it. It’s not chilling, it’s sad. Watching the player take care of the dog just for it to die.
Will you do “Missing Hikers disappeared without a trace.” Or “Hikers last seen in the forest.”
I remember the code wheels for the SSI AD&D games. Thankfully you can get the games on GOG and the code wheels are no longer needed.
I dont think Mario characters were behind bars, but you are and they look at you.
Hmm makes sense
The song played during the execution of the gold rush game is called " oh Susanna ". And its a very popular mid 1800s song. Very popular during the US Civil War.
You are doing some awesome topics between this and the weird websites. Loving this kind of content.
Back in the Amiga days my friend had a copy of Gods. I played it on his machine and enjoyed it so I bought the original. I always tried to buy originals for good games. When I played it, the game was impossible. I struggled to get past the first level. I sent it back to Bitmap Brothers and they sent another copy to me stating the original copy I had bought had failed the copy protection. The copy they sent to me was just like my mates pirated copy. How ironic that I buy an original and get a copy protection debuff lol.
You have awesome videos. I wanted to say you are by far the best narrator on UA-cam. I would love if you would have a few more videos of you telling stories.
I love every upload from this channel. I've watched them all and look forward to new ones. I would like a new scary story upload, though. Those always caught my attention. Also, the scary dashcam videos.
There's one visual novel with a dev-approved GBA port that requires you to verify you actually own the game. Otherwise, one of the characters (already known for having keen observation) doxxes you. Like, straight-up dropping your IP address and other info on screen.
Jesus 💀
8:19
It actually can be heard
SPOILER ALERT FOR CUPHEAD
It has been a while since i last played cuphead but from what i remember when you enter the devil's level you're given a choice between fighting the devil or selling your soul
If you chose to sell your soul you'll get the bad ending and after watching the bad ending you will be sent back to the main menu with this version
Correction* The language at the bottom in 2:21 is Japanese! Awesome vid btw!
the cuphead one isn't an anti piracy screen, it just happens when you achieve the bad ending and then go back to the main menu
I think what made the early "Anti-Piracy" screens work was how realistic they all felt.
Meanwhile, the newer anti-piracy screens felt over-the-top and cheap, if I'm being honest.
That creepy ass Mario one got me buggin the fuck out. Scared the shit outta me
the original video has a jumpscare after it followed by an image of mario hanging with a CREEPY ASS AUDIO THAT MAKES ME PIIS MY PANTS TO THIS DAY playing in the background
Yo the “YOU ARE A THIEF” actually had my dying once I got over the creepy Mario face
6:39 I think that's him closing his eyes, not them turning black.
They would be skin coloured not black
In the 90's CDrom games on pc had a CDkey inside the cover. That was a good way to stop piracy. But there were many CDkey apps you could download to overcome this.
Then came the cracked games that you could download and play without the CD.
15:41 considering the fact that nowadays those type of "music" or in other words sounds are now known as meme sounds
Chilling Scares talking about video games (especially retro games) makes the gamer side of me smile
I've never heard of anti-piracy screens. They sure can be disturbing. The ones that are fake do look real. I didn't know that some games don't allow you to play copied versions of them. At least, some anti-piracy screens were not meant to be disturbing.
Damn I wish that I could make my own video games. Your video here gave me a cool idea for one... so, the goal of my game would be, the player-character is being chased all throughout the gamr by an unkillable monster that is also incredibly fast and strong, and it's up to the player to survive it, basically running away from it, hiding from it, just all sorts of survival elements and trying to stay further ahead of it or what ever it takes to survive it. So, then for MY anti-piracy trick - the monster never spawns. There's all sorts of other minor and side characters normally throughout the game, and the game has scripted events and triggers based on the current location or placement of the monster relative to reaching that particular trigger, etc., only without the monster ever spawning, these triggers never activate, so certain key events, cutscenes and other critical story-plot points would never activate to keep the game moving on. All the side and minor characters would react and behave differently than they normally would to the player-character if the monster was creating chaos and destruction all around it as it went. The game would essentially be "unplayable", in the sense that the player could never beat it, and the player-character would be stuck in a purgatory-like world with every other side and minor character, unable to escape or do anything besides acknowledge that something is wrong but they don't know what and they don't know how to fix it or escape from it. 😁
13:16 actually the Donkey Kong 2 screen is the one with them seemingly in a crate/cell. If you look close the DKC3 one has two sets of wooden "bars" you can lean over... and playbeads on the second one. It's a baby's crib.
The backwards cuphead song thing is something that can play in the game, its when before you fight the devil, he gives you an option to either fight him, or give up the souls you collected, if you give him the souls, the game automatically ends, and restarts, and that reversed slowed theme plays at the home screen when it loads up
The first Leisure Suit Larry game had a question you had to answer correctly to play the game.
I think the reason anti-piracy screens work so well in a horror aspect because it's sort of realistic way of the game knowing what you're doing. Before we had ben drowned and stuff like that which were fun at the time but not believeable at all.
Besides what's scarier than a game that knows that you didnt' pay for it.
You should haven't look into some of the real anti-piracy measures some devs have done, some of them are straight up evil. I remember a case where a dev would log piractes computer information and post it on their website once. I think that was a modder though, I can't remember.
A lot of people did copy games back when I was a kid. They used to sell them on market stalls and in pubs. Same with dvds as well. So this probably would scare you and make you think twice if you bought a copied game back in the day.
The fake ones seem more goofy than creepy to me. I mean, they're so absurdly over the top, I don't understand how anyone is fooled into believing they're real. The truly creepy part is how blindly so many people believe whatever they see, read or hear about on the Internet.
"A message in Chinese". That was Japanese, a mix of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji 😭 great video though
14:15 this is the funniest shit i have ever seen. i can tell the game developers just lost their shit when the sprite artists churned out this bad boy
Adding anti-piracy measures to kids' games has the same vibe as beating them because their parents made you mad. Like bruh the kid definitely has nothing to do with this, why traumatize them lmao
This is the least scary thing Ive ever seen
As a 90s kid. I remember that Donkey Kong one. It was kinda terrifying as a kid. I never truly understood it what was going on. After following the instructions a few times it go back to normal. But I remember it.
Though I had a legitimate copy of DKC3, I do remember when my brother and I tried to play it, sometimes it wouldn't work (mainly due to dust) and when we were turn it off and back on, that screen would pop up saying something along the line of there was an error in the game and to turn to the manual for more instructions. It always freaked us out as we never knew what caused the screen to appear and feared that it could happen at any time as it also occurred during game play at random
Starflight, in 1986, also did something similar. They made you put a code in and if you got it wrong, you were given a second chance. If still wrong, it never really told you. You just played the game at normal. Then, at complete random in the middle of the game, at a random time, they would have an encounter with the Interstel police, and it would tell you why they stopped you, asked you what you had to say for yourself, if you do this correctly, you get ONE MORE chance. If you get it wrong again, they blow you out of the sky and it's game over.
That creepy version of cupheads theme song?
To unlock it you actually:
1.get a bad ending
2.press buttons in this order: ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️(back) (confirm)
Not even close to being a chilling scare.
12:50 That is not Diddy Kong, That is Kiddy Kong.
Those anti piracy methods were very rare, I remember buying pirated games as a kid and never seen once of this messages, even remember having Spyro and never seeing that message. The best anti piracy method was the black Playstation original discs, the lens will work better reading black discs and get damaged by reading silver cds (the most common ones sold in stores) so the lifetime of a pirated/chipped Playstation was lower than the one only reading original discs
while i never got to pirate it myself, I knew kids that did it on their DS. It always played well.
This was a good one! A very different kind of video but i liked it !
8:16 Fun fact: if you look this weird version of the inteo on the spectrum, you get an image of the game's main villain, the devil.
9 year olds when they saw black sonic eyes :
SONIC.EXE!!!!
With Ocarina of Time I thought you were gonna talk about the Anti-Piracy measure of the impossible to catch fish.
This was actually similar to what happened when I tried to play a copy of Legacy of The Ancients on my C64.