NES, SNES, N64: piracy only became possible way after the end of life of the console Wii, 3 years from its launch: *just give me a pair of twiizers, or an SD card* Switch, not even one year from its launch: _paperclips_
Man I played N64 in late 90s with a lot of counterfeit cartridges. You just needed an adapter cartridge... That, after watching this video, I think was just an CIC chip and a slot for a counterfeit cartridge. The counterfeit cartridge would cost something like 15-20 USD at the time (50 BRL actually) ... Not cheap, but a lot less expensive than the original.
@@bielgaucho_real yes. I'm always riddled when he says "this wasn't cracked until" and think of: but what about the counterfeits I played? One thing, for sure, was that those adapters could fry your console - probably due a excessive number of communication between the PIF-CIC? Not sure, I'm sure that ai had one N64 fried up and one that is still working, but has never seen a pirated cartridge.
There were bootleg carts for the N64 - they were just too expensive to ever become popular. The CIC was cloned in exactly the same way the SNES/Super Famicom CIC was - decapping it, imaging all the layers and generating a set of masks from that. The carts also needed logic to implement the latches and address counters that were built into the custom ROMs that Nintendo used. Back in the day, the "go to" platform for N64 piracy were devices like Bung's Doctor V64 or the UFO CD64 which loaded the ROM images in from CD.
@@TrimeshSZ The reason why they were so expensive, is because Nintendo had EXCLUSIVE rights and supplies for ROM Chips. N64 Bootleg Carts weren't even fully program written. They only had Binary Assembly Code inside of them and required NECVR3400's Middleware. You can use and write Custom ROMs without it, but you can't fully write programs without Unix U64. You NEED the Software to fully write complete program codes for N64 ROM Chips. Nintendo 64 used a Method called "RAM Passport Gate Locking". To get around the limitations of Storage due to not being able to obtain a CDX License, Nintendo engineered Nintendo 64 with a very simple Anti Piracy Mechanism: The NECVR4300 itself was encrypted with a hidden BIOS. Yes, there's a BIOS in N64,PLUS an ISO. How RAM Passport Gate works is like this: Each Rachel N64 development kits have a UNIX Middleware tool in them. The Tool called "Unix U64" contains access to ALL ISOs. But ONLY Nintendo can offer the Tool. You had to buy a license to access it, and a Rachel SDK. Nintendo figured that Pirates would attempt to crack and jailbreak N64's Cartridge Pin, the same way they were able to NES/Famicom's in the late 1980s, so Nintendo, rather Keishi Yamauchi(Hiroshi Yamauchi's youngest son and Lead Architect behind Ultra 64) got the bright idea to simply encrypt N64's main CPU with a Hidden BIOS, that can only be Boot accessed with a Middleware tool. The BIOS Has a Sector Check and Single Checksum whenever a Cartridge is plugged in. In 1997, Chinese Pirates attempted to design a CD ROM Drive they thought would override the Checksum, but all it did was access the Node Instruction Data coded inside NECVR4300's Binary, the lack of the Unix U64 made it IMPOSSIBLE to copy the ROM from a Cartridge and dump burn it to CD, so if you had the CD ROM add on, you NEEDED the Game Cartridge to run as a Gate Array backup on a Blank CD.
@7MGTESupraTurboA im sure he was saying its a blessing for stuff like the everdrive and a curse for the fake carts going around, try not sniffing coke before typing an essay like that dude shit aint good for the heart
@7MGTESupraTurboA now build a time machine and fix all the mistakes you thought was made, that is how the market works, stop complaining about 20 years of market wars, mistakes were made, MVG always says that, but was like a chess table, and you not always win, but not take moves wasn't the awnser either. Your comment is like a enthusiast addict. HD DVD, bluray, controllers, digital vs physical, Nvidia vs AMD(Ati), there always a war and sometimes there's a win and sometimes a lose. Grow up, and start to accept things as they are.
Banjo Tooie's AP implementation was a modified version of Jet Force Gemini's. Game assets were encrypted, and when loaded into memory, the game sent a challenge to the CIC, and used the response to decrypt the assets. JFG used a single challenge/response pair. Tooie used many. Project 64's solution was to run the game on real hardware and capture every single challenge and response pair the game ever used, which was only 200-300 pairs, to build a lookup table, as mentioned in the video. Encrypting the assets was dastardly because it complicated the cracking process. You couldn't just find the triggers and disable them. You had to feed the decryption keys. I believe a rom patch was released in 2012, using the lookup tables.
This is basically the code sheet all over again - I remember spending hours figuring out all possible answers for games like Prince of Persia 2 to build my own sheets. (This was before internet was everywhere and after the game stopped being sold and supported) I never did get all of the POP2 solutions, but I had enough to get ingame within a few tries.
@@amshermansen damn that brings back memories.Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis. Those crappy code wheels that came with it. That you simply xerox both pieces of cardboard and create your own.
@@ZinhoMegaman I don't think DK64 used this method. The only two games present in pif2.dat, i.e. the only two games that required this lookup table as the video and Jacob described, are Jet Force Gemini and Banjo Tooie: github.com/twostars/project64/blob/master/Bin/Release/pif2.dat
That's why I buy my games in person whenever possible so I can physically check the board and make sure it's real. Luckily I've already got all the rarer/expensive games that I wanted that people might actually bother making repros of.
@@palen2890 Yeah, same with a lot of rarer DS games. I've seen people selling "Brand New" cartridge only DS games for about twenty bucks even though the actual game would cost you three times that amount. Of course, the multiple copies is a dead give away as well. The problem is that some people will buy these without realizing its a repro and then later try to resell it thinking its real. Because of that, I am kind of scared to pick up cart only DS games if the game has any sort of value.
@@Kougeru I'd say it was just starting to get pretty common. Our house got dial-up in the later half of the 90s but then my parents worked in technology. I remember seeing it at the schools in like '98 or '99, and I remember stacks of AOL CDs at Blockbuster and locked-down internet at the local library not long after that. I think that was around the time where even if you didn't have an internet connection, as long as you didn't live in the middle of nowhere, you probably knew someone who had one or at least somewhere that had one.
bro... you always upload things on such a timely manner that lets me watch this during my lunch break... i know this is weird to say but i honestly love watching your videos while i eat and i always feel smarter afterwards. thank you so much for the time and effort you put into every video 💙
Goldeneye was my favorite. We wore out controllers to the point you could flip it upside down and shake it and the analog stick would flop around from wear. My brother still hates for for proximity mines in the facility.
@Smattless Great question because you just jogged my memory like 20+ years... I remember we always changed the default control layout. I distinctly remember this one friend would change it back on me when he played.
@@codo8584 true, but having had a repro pokemon ruby i can say that whatever was in place while it didn't do much for the games themselves it certainly screwed with any game linking, i accidentally cloned stuff twice because of those errors and it hated gc link cables entirely
I wanted a Bung V64 back in the late 90s, but it was prohibitively expensive(~$400) and had to be imported from outside the US, which was a risky proposition back then. PSX was much easier to break, just required an external game enhancer that would plug into the parallel port and game patches to rip and reformat the CDs correctly. MegaGames was the website I used to get the cracks and patches.
I got mine in Manchester chinatown UK. Think I only paid about £150 and I could get 30 ro 40 games on one CD for £20 I ended up with about 6 CDs by the time the N64 was ending its lifespan and I switched to PC.
I am so technically inept that I never even thought of any of this stuff.. then again I'm easily amused. I played Mario 64 for like a year straight (solid I mean).. haha.. if anyone were peeping in on me they'd know I'm still easily amused by games. That are harmless .. 🙃💋
One of the things that tell me if someone is truly intelligent vs just has a great memory is the ability to translate complex things in ways normal people can understand. You do a great job of this. Merry Christmas sir.
obviously. more and more people are looking up anti piracy. sometimes the youtube algorithm isnt that hard to crack. if lots of people are watching minecraft content, it's gonna recommend minecraft to everyone more.
@Abstractism how do game companies make billions from advertising? Also, isn't wanting 100s of games for free also greedy?😄. Not sure it is as simple as you say.......
I remember hearing in the past from a friend of mine that they changed the circuitry of the system to help stop piracy. That's why stuff like stop 'n' swop with Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie would not work and was cancelled by Rareware. But then again I might be as to why they did that.
Stop N Swop didn't work because it relied on the RAM in the N64 retaining memory for a little while. Early model N64s would work just fine but Nintendo had released later models with newer RAM chips that wouldn't hold data long enough for the feature to work.
@@SirWhiskersThe3rd Yes, during the development they changed the N64 board from using 2 2MB RAM chips to a single 4MB chip. While the older chips could retain data for quite a few seconds after power was cut, the newer ones didn't retain data nearly as long. Apparently this was found out during the testing of the feature and Nintendo told Rare to axe the feature. I suppose they didn't want to deal with thousands of complaints about the feature not working or flood technical service centers with tons of consoles and cartridges damaged by children trying to jam the cartridge in too fast trying to do the swap in time.
@@sarowie Well, it was supposed to be around ten seconds. That's plenty of time... but yes, maybe children would be flustered and mess up even if there's enough time to do the swap calmly.
adventureoflinkmk2 in fact they didn't follow this strategy at all back then. The Wii is an absolute proof of it. If I remember correctly it sold a little more than 100 million units, certainly they would have been much more if Nintendo continued to sell them. But now it's a completely different story, before the CEO was Iwata now it's Furukawa. Speaking of which, recently he himself has confirmed that they are sticking to this strategy with the Switch.
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Because the wii sales dropped off a cliff after 2009. Nintendo was not doing very well in the early 2010's. Wii sales were gone and the wii U was a flop. If it wasn't for the 3DS doing fairly well Nintendo might have been in a pretty rough spot.
Just here to say this channel is one of the most informative and interesting channels based on gaming I've found on here. Love these videos on how the older consoles were hacked. Great stuff!
Super-[or should I say Ultra?]interesting. I’ve always been fascinated with how the N64 seemingly was so well protected from piracy. Impressive that Nintendo found a method that worked so well for them way past the consoles lifespan
n64 piracy had 0 effect on sales. Consumer grade flash storage was insanely expensive at the time, and most people wouldn't bother paying for a flash cart because of the price. It would be cheaper to buy a game, play it, and sell it. Piracy wasn't really a problem until optical media went mainstream. It was a gateway to a drug of free games. First Dreamcast, then mod chips, then CFW. From then on, we saw PSP take piracy mainstream. Then DSTT flash carts were sourced by everyone for $4/piece from china.
And now with digital games, the 3DS, Wii U, and Switch are pretty easy to pirate on, especially the 3DS. These days it's about a twenty minute process to get it all set up and download free games.
Well, N64 piracy back then wasn't done with flash cartridges, but with RAM based backup units. That said, there are some rare cases of pirated ROM carts that relied on using a T-connector to piggyback the CIC from an original cart. Years ago I was shown pictures of Mario 64 and Wave Race cartridges supposedly from hong kong, with epoxy glob ICs on the PCB and that description.
No matter what, piracy will almost never be able to put a dent in a new game's sales _during its prime._ No security is truly infallible, and developers know this, so anti-piracy is developed purely with a goal of making the process of cracking the game slow enough that by the time the game is cracked, the vast majority of sales the game will see in its lifetime have already happened, and the pirates will only hurt the small trickle of late-life sales coming in. MVG talked about this mentality in his PlayStation 1 anti-piracy video during the Spyro the Dragon 3 segment.
Upskirts on Jet Force Gemini was the best I could find of anything as a young teen at that time. Was an upgrade to the clothing catalogs that we would get in the Sunday's paper. Had to say it. 😂
Decapping or Uncapping integrated circuit (microchip) packages to physically access the silicon inside is actually insanely difficult to do without causing damage, there are only so many labs in the world that can do it, mostly in academia or governmental security agencies like the NSA. It’s crazy to think some researcher would decide to do it to investigate a nearly 30 year old console’s anti-piracy mechanism.
I'm not a gamer vintage or modern. But I love your videos for the detailed explanation about the mechanisms used in various games/consoles security systems. Thanks.
@@ruggie.74 There were many uncertainties like that for the time period when you look back. All 3 major consoles of that generation were radically different architecturally because each company had a different idea of what they thought was most important to this newly accepted 3D frontier in gaming. And with hindsight all of their designs are riddled with many questionable decisions.
The PS1 was my first console where I had the mental fortitude to conquer anti-piracy measures. I wish I had known about the disk drive backup hardware for the SNES... that thing is amazing.
First time I watched this video I was like oh damn, not even a mention. Second time I watched this video I saw my cracktro at 13:04. woop. Greetz to Actraiser, Hartec, Hotblack, NaN, Ravemax, Redbox. :P JoViS LiVeZ
We live in a world where both the console and carts for the NES and SNES are repro'd and the clones are widely available, allowing people to play a somewhat authentic experience of cart in console without a single copper stitch of authentic vintage hardware in the equation and for a fraction of the cost as the skyrocketing collector's prices for those systems...
My launch N64 is still hooked up downstairs with Wrestlemania 2000 installed. Mario Kart, Conker, Vigilante 8, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark... so many great games!
Nice video once again and you did something amazing for me as well. I played Jet Force Gemini as a kid and wanted to play it again ever since, but couldn’t find it. Now you showed the game on your video and I recognized it after 10 years! Thank you so much. @Modern Vintage Gamer
You'd think so, but there was way more copy protection than the weird size, and it needed it. Mini CDs were very much a thing at the time and they worked in normal burners.
If they wanted protection due to size they could have gone with larger discs. Granted it would have been quite expensive, and hardware hacks could have been made (although if you had to do hardware hacks, I'd say that the protection won?)
I just about sh*t myself when I noticed that the shirt you’re wearing is the exact same one that arrived at my doorstep just a few days ago! As always, another awesome video from MVG. I love your content, keep up the fantastic work!
Whenever I watch a video about these anti-piracy measures, I always find myself being both impressed by the cleverness behind it, and annoyed that it was done in the first place.
Great video as always. I watched the CIC reverse engineering talk a while ago, but it's good to have a higher level overview to put real world examples in with it.
Nintendo: Uses CIC chip and gets away with it for a VERY long time. 20 years later, hackers be like: 0xDEADBEEF I love those videos, the ultraCIC looks really interesting! Stuff like that makes me wish I had gone into chip design rather than software development on servers... Still, this is awesome. Thank you for this quality content man!
I'm always behind and usually go through my subscriptions feed to catch up but I've found that not all videos from my subscriptions actually show up there.
I love your videos, man. I understand half or less of technical stuff, but they are so well explained I comprehend the principle behind it. It's also very cool to know how these devices worked when, back in my kid days, o though they did it out of plain magic.
@@somebonehead Here is the original thread. Sorry, but almost everything is in German. circuit-board.de/forum/index.php/Thread/24209-WIP-UltraPIF-Multi-Region-N64-PIF-Replacement/ I already published the PCB stuff on github. As soon as I have some more spare time I want to publish all the FPGA and software stuff. github.com/jago85/UltraPIF_Hardware
I still have my Dr V64 and purchased all the game carts with different CIC's, have fond memories of the n64 scene back in the day, it was a blurry mess on screen but didnt know better until years later.
Jet Force Gemini... that game is for sure, super underrated and overlooked, the music is fantastic and the difficulty can be very high, it's just the camera and the regular aim that sucks
@@joshm264 Well, if you want relatively good image quality you might regret it unless you want to mod it. It mostly only supports composite video, some revisions support S-Video and some are easily RGB moddable while others aren't as easy to RGB mod, UltraHDMI's aren't readily available either. I personally don't regret my buy, mainly because it was cheap (35usd for a blue translucent japanese model in perfect condition) and because I like tinkering with stuff so I RGB modded it.
I bought mine for 5€ with Mario 64, Goldeneye and 2 controllers. I don't regret it, but it's a crappy console. Most games run 5-10fps and tbh emulation is the best way to enjoy them.
@@JuddMan03 They thing I dislike the most about JFG is the flawed way that damage is relayed to the player. The multi-level energy bar, where the most significant value is represented by the smallest element on screen doesn't help, but the most problematic part, I think, is how it is possible to incurr massive damage without there being a quantitative or qualitative difference in the feedback mechanism to convey that to the player through visuals or sound. Many times during a combat, especially with bosses, where it matters the most, you can be getting pounded and not even realize until you consciously decide to look at the energy bar. This is not a nuclear powerplant control where you need to have your eyes on the meters, but an action game where your eyes are on the action, trying to kill and not get killed, the damage inflicted needs to be transmitted to the user in an inline manner, and the health meter should be an informative mechanism to check during the pauses, which don't really occur in the game's bosses. During regular gameplay there can be attacks that knock you to the ground and so on, and give you a small invulnerability break, which is a very good way to convey a critical hit. During boss battles, you just remain still all the time and all you see is the screen flash red without any indication of whether it is light or heavy damage. It was very annoying to me to be playing like nothing too bad is happening, and then take a glance ad the health bar and be shocked at the dire situation.
Now some N64 games do use multi security chips to communicate non-stop with each other ,but i can imagine that if due a dirty cartride connection or because of the random nature of the analogue world of non-functional materials such as coppr, i can imagine that if those multi security chips fall to talk with each other,, even if it only falls once in a million times during gameplay soon or later, then the game could randomly crash or behave differently ( depending how game devs let their game behave once it detects no auterized hardware),, am glad the nes lockout chip don’t talk non-stop with each game or the nes could randomly reset itself overtimes because of the randomness of copper conductioness behavior in the cartrides.
I just wanted to say I love these videos and gaming history videos in general and really enjoyed this. I would also like to thank you for having subs, which makes easier for me to follow along. :3
Interesting video. Didn’t understand most of it because I’m not familiar with hardware, but I do enjoy learning about this kind of stuff. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for all the efforts to make this video. It just up rises my admiration to the people behind emulation and patches. A plenty good moments in my childhood happened because I had a computer and Roms to play. Thanks
I spent a lot of money with Bung. It was terrifying back then to fire off 399 quid for a Doctor64. Pretty sure it was imported through customs as a VCD player :) Great bit of kit for the time though.
Man, I love your content. I look forward to every upload as you are so unbelievably knowledgeable and make it easy for those of us who aren't into software or dev to understand. Great job! Keep up the great work.
I will still believe that blowing into the cartridge does help. I've tested several times with games that won't start. Just taking it out and putting it back in multiple times, to remove corrosion, as people suggest does nothing. When I blow into the carts, they then startup almost every time.
@@kingdavid7516 but pulling the cardridge out and put it back in scraps rust off the pins. I think the rust pins could be the cause of the old games not being to boot.
@@kingdavid7516 it removes dust and debris from the contacts if the carts arent stored well, which makes contact better and can actually help. but if you keep them cleaned and stored properly it wont do anything other than accumulate spit on the contacts and make them rust
Having a snes was one thing. Having a computer, internet and the items to pirate SNES games were all really expensive at the time. I'm sure there were some bootlegs but it wasn't a common thing where I lived
True, I suppose you could have rented games and copy them that way, but from what I remember the actual devices to play copied games were also not cheap.
@@johnsimon8457 that does make sense, I lived in the US at the time so I hardly knew or saw anything bootlegging. Not until the late 90s with the psone because of its CD based games.
I had a Magicom which was a floppy drive and 2 adapters on the bottom that fit in the SNES and Genesis cart slots and I could load any game from floppy. I remember having thousands of floppy disks with every SNES and Genesis game, then had 4 CDs with every N64 games for the v64 device. All my friends had them as well and we swapped games at school in the early 90's. Then again, we also had 'tape parties' where we would all go over to 1 friends house with our dual cassette decks and spend countless hours copying games on cassettes for the Atari 400/800 in the mid 80's.
Sometimes I don't even watch these videos but I'll always play them bc they are amazing background noise also I don't understand what he's talking about bc I'm not super computer literate. Great videos tho on this channel.
I would think that a good approach for guarding against piracy would be to have a mapper chip which watches for certain sequences of events and triggers a "surprise" bank switch when they occur. Using a dump of the game without the surprise bank switch would yield a "demo" version which would only let a player use the first couple levels; if the chip sees a certain sequence of RAM stores which should occur when clearing a level, however, it could bank-switch to code which would tweak things in such a way as to let the player advance.
Well, besides the advanced security only possible with cartridges (as it involves chips), they had another important advantage. Although they had a very limited storage compared to CDs (~4 MB compared to ~700 MB), the transfer speed of cartridges was much higher than CD's. While for example PlayStation games were more accurately textured and had CD quality audio, the N64 games didn't have a single loading screen because they didn't need it. This was explained more in depth in a vid I saw some months ago, I don't remember perfectly but probably it was still from MVG.
Just imagine a world where Nintendo (or any other) would remove the copy protection with the last "official" firmware update a few years after a console is discontinued. This would be so amazing and support game preservation.
i love these videos so much
That couch tho XD
Hamburger
holy frick it's seth
Seth has shown his presence
nintendo piracy protection
NES, SNES, N64: piracy only became possible way after the end of life of the console
Wii, 3 years from its launch: *just give me a pair of twiizers, or an SD card*
Switch, not even one year from its launch: _paperclips_
Reality but in all of the three cases the CIC/PIF chip security still wasn't defeated, so piracy was still very limited I guess?
Man I played N64 in late 90s with a lot of counterfeit cartridges. You just needed an adapter cartridge... That, after watching this video, I think was just an CIC chip and a slot for a counterfeit cartridge.
The counterfeit cartridge would cost something like 15-20 USD at the time (50 BRL actually) ... Not cheap, but a lot less expensive than the original.
@@bielgaucho_real yes. I'm always riddled when he says "this wasn't cracked until" and think of: but what about the counterfeits I played?
One thing, for sure, was that those adapters could fry your console - probably due a excessive number of communication between the PIF-CIC? Not sure, I'm sure that ai had one N64 fried up and one that is still working, but has never seen a pirated cartridge.
There were bootleg carts for the N64 - they were just too expensive to ever become popular. The CIC was cloned in exactly the same way the SNES/Super Famicom CIC was - decapping it, imaging all the layers and generating a set of masks from that. The carts also needed logic to implement the latches and address counters that were built into the custom ROMs that Nintendo used. Back in the day, the "go to" platform for N64 piracy were devices like Bung's Doctor V64 or the UFO CD64 which loaded the ROM images in from CD.
@@TrimeshSZ The reason why they were so expensive, is because Nintendo had EXCLUSIVE rights and supplies for ROM Chips.
N64 Bootleg Carts weren't even fully program written. They only had Binary Assembly Code inside of them and required NECVR3400's Middleware. You can use and write Custom ROMs without it, but you can't fully write programs without Unix U64. You NEED the Software to fully write complete program codes for N64 ROM Chips.
Nintendo 64 used a Method called "RAM Passport Gate Locking". To get around the limitations of Storage due to not being able to obtain a CDX License, Nintendo engineered Nintendo 64 with a very simple Anti Piracy Mechanism: The NECVR4300 itself was encrypted with a hidden BIOS. Yes, there's a BIOS in N64,PLUS an ISO.
How RAM Passport Gate works is like this: Each Rachel N64 development kits have a UNIX Middleware tool in them. The Tool called "Unix U64" contains access to ALL ISOs. But ONLY Nintendo can offer the Tool. You had to buy a license to access it, and a Rachel SDK. Nintendo figured that Pirates would attempt to crack and jailbreak N64's Cartridge Pin, the same way they were able to NES/Famicom's in the late 1980s, so Nintendo, rather Keishi Yamauchi(Hiroshi Yamauchi's youngest son and Lead Architect behind Ultra 64) got the bright idea to simply encrypt N64's main CPU with a Hidden BIOS, that can only be Boot accessed with a Middleware tool.
The BIOS Has a Sector Check and Single Checksum whenever a Cartridge is plugged in. In 1997, Chinese Pirates attempted to design a CD ROM Drive they thought would override the Checksum, but all it did was access the Node Instruction Data coded inside NECVR4300's Binary, the lack of the Unix U64 made it IMPOSSIBLE to copy the ROM from a Cartridge and dump burn it to CD, so if you had the CD ROM add on, you NEEDED the Game Cartridge to run as a Gate Array backup on a Blank CD.
The PIF-CIC protection is basically like two guys shaking hands saying "everything's good" and not letting go until you stop playing.
so akward... are they going to kiss or something? xD
It's like Mr Shake-Hands Man from banzai.
Makes me feel like they're doing that while looking at the the player with an uncomfortable smile the whole time.
Ikr
Reminds me of sword and shield tbh, the gym leaders shake your hand for what feels like an awkward hour lol
The ultra cic chip would really explain the absurd number of counterfeit games on Amazon recently.
yep. you got it. its a blessing and a curse
I read that as “Ultra Thicc” and was like go on Miyamoto
@7MGTESupraTurboA uhmmm wut? Tl;dr
@7MGTESupraTurboA im sure he was saying its a blessing for stuff like the everdrive and a curse for the fake carts going around, try not sniffing coke before typing an essay like that dude shit aint good for the heart
@7MGTESupraTurboA now build a time machine and fix all the mistakes you thought was made, that is how the market works, stop complaining about 20 years of market wars, mistakes were made, MVG always says that, but was like a chess table, and you not always win, but not take moves wasn't the awnser either.
Your comment is like a enthusiast addict. HD DVD, bluray, controllers, digital vs physical, Nvidia vs AMD(Ati), there always a war and sometimes there's a win and sometimes a lose.
Grow up, and start to accept things as they are.
Banjo Tooie's AP implementation was a modified version of Jet Force Gemini's. Game assets were encrypted, and when loaded into memory, the game sent a challenge to the CIC, and used the response to decrypt the assets. JFG used a single challenge/response pair. Tooie used many. Project 64's solution was to run the game on real hardware and capture every single challenge and response pair the game ever used, which was only 200-300 pairs, to build a lookup table, as mentioned in the video. Encrypting the assets was dastardly because it complicated the cracking process. You couldn't just find the triggers and disable them. You had to feed the decryption keys. I believe a rom patch was released in 2012, using the lookup tables.
This is basically the code sheet all over again - I remember spending hours figuring out all possible answers for games like Prince of Persia 2 to build my own sheets. (This was before internet was everywhere and after the game stopped being sold and supported)
I never did get all of the POP2 solutions, but I had enough to get ingame within a few tries.
@@amshermansen damn that brings back memories.Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis. Those crappy code wheels that came with it. That you simply xerox both pieces of cardboard and create your own.
Could this encryption method be the cause for Donkey kong 64 memory leak?
@@ZinhoMegaman I don't think DK64 used this method. The only two games present in pif2.dat, i.e. the only two games that required this lookup table as the video and Jacob described, are Jet Force Gemini and Banjo Tooie: github.com/twostars/project64/blob/master/Bin/Release/pif2.dat
@@amshermansen I still remember plenty of the answers from the original populous game..
That totally explains the uptick in N64 reproductions we started seeing a few years ago!
That's why I buy my games in person whenever possible so I can physically check the board and make sure it's real. Luckily I've already got all the rarer/expensive games that I wanted that people might actually bother making repros of.
Time to make a Ben drowned MM cartridge :D
@Smattless On ebay any n64 game with a stock image and multiple copies in stock is most certainly a reproduction.
@@palen2890 Yeah, same with a lot of rarer DS games. I've seen people selling "Brand New" cartridge only DS games for about twenty bucks even though the actual game would cost you three times that amount. Of course, the multiple copies is a dead give away as well. The problem is that some people will buy these without realizing its a repro and then later try to resell it thinking its real. Because of that, I am kind of scared to pick up cart only DS games if the game has any sort of value.
They are not repros they are technically counterfeits
Correction : Everdrive 64 was first released in 2012
First
Noted.
best year
I do remember how shitty the Ed64 chip s aging worked I felt bad destroying cartridges so I made an piggyback adapter
Was that the 2.5 version?
MVG, I love this series of "Anti-Piracy" videos you've been doing. Just fantastic info. Thanks.
Agreed
Yep
MVG you're one of like 3 UA-camrs I actually get genuinely excited for an upload. Big props.
Dork
Nintendo: how do we prevent piracy
My dad: don't make a Metroid game for that console
Now that's a dad joke
Haha Space Pirates
DAD 100
"Available on the internet" had a whole different meaning when the vast vast majority of the population didn't have access to it.
Internet wasn't that uncommon at the time
@@alienxotic5028 Also wasnt very common at that time
@@alienxotic5028 it really was, though.
Yeah, just slow and basic. Remember those old, dual color text screen computers often had internet since the late 80s for offices
@@Kougeru I'd say it was just starting to get pretty common. Our house got dial-up in the later half of the 90s but then my parents worked in technology. I remember seeing it at the schools in like '98 or '99, and I remember stacks of AOL CDs at Blockbuster and locked-down internet at the local library not long after that.
I think that was around the time where even if you didn't have an internet connection, as long as you didn't live in the middle of nowhere, you probably knew someone who had one or at least somewhere that had one.
bro... you always upload things on such a timely manner that lets me watch this during my lunch break... i know this is weird to say but i honestly love watching your videos while i eat and i always feel smarter afterwards. thank you so much for the time and effort you put into every video 💙
Means a lot. Thank you
Nintendo 64 was probably my favorite console as a kid. My friends and I played a lot of goldeneye, my family too
Goldeneye was my favorite. We wore out controllers to the point you could flip it upside down and shake it and the analog stick would flop around from wear.
My brother still hates for for proximity mines in the facility.
@Smattless Great question because you just jogged my memory like 20+ years... I remember we always changed the default control layout. I distinctly remember this one friend would change it back on me when he played.
Carlos Pulpo haha yes, them dang proximity mines!
I always wondered why there were suddenly so many repro games everywhere! Thanks for shedding some light on this!
Yet it seems like they didn’t do the same for Nintendo DS that was pirated like there was no tomorrow
They kinda did. The basic protocol for reading the rom is encrypted to a level comparable to the CIC stream.
Not as bad as the GBA in terms of bootlegs
@@codo8584 true, but having had a repro pokemon ruby i can say that whatever was in place while it didn't do much for the games themselves it certainly screwed with any game linking, i accidentally cloned stuff twice because of those errors and it hated gc link cables entirely
GBA was too easy, i remember seeing a friend of mine doing small homebrew game and it works on real GBA.
@@henke37 the wii though.
I wanted a Bung V64 back in the late 90s, but it was prohibitively expensive(~$400) and had to be imported from outside the US, which was a risky proposition back then. PSX was much easier to break, just required an external game enhancer that would plug into the parallel port and game patches to rip and reformat the CDs correctly. MegaGames was the website I used to get the cracks and patches.
I got mine in Manchester chinatown UK. Think I only paid about £150 and I could get 30 ro 40 games on one CD for £20 I ended up with about 6 CDs by the time the N64 was ending its lifespan and I switched to PC.
Megagames. That brings back memories. I used to get my no CD hacks from that site.
I am so technically inept that I never even thought of any of this stuff.. then again I'm easily amused. I played Mario 64 for like a year straight (solid I mean).. haha.. if anyone were peeping in on me they'd know I'm still easily amused by games. That are harmless .. 🙃💋
One of the things that tell me if someone is truly intelligent vs just has a great memory is the ability to translate complex things in ways normal people can understand. You do a great job of this. Merry Christmas sir.
Bruh UA-cam algorithm really gave us this after Mario party Ds anti-piracy.
obviously. more and more people are looking up anti piracy. sometimes the youtube algorithm isnt that hard to crack. if lots of people are watching minecraft content, it's gonna recommend minecraft to everyone more.
Piracy is no party
@Abstractism how do game companies make billions from advertising? Also, isn't wanting 100s of games for free also greedy?😄. Not sure it is as simple as you say.......
@@randomspeedruns6292 Piracy is the SuperStar!
@@randomspeedruns6292 piracy is party I pirated Mario Party DS on Twilight menu on my DSI and I didn't get piracy is no party cuz it's fake
I remember hearing in the past from a friend of mine that they changed the circuitry of the system to help stop piracy. That's why stuff like stop 'n' swop with Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie would not work and was cancelled by Rareware. But then again I might be as to why they did that.
Stop N Swop didn't work because it relied on the RAM in the N64 retaining memory for a little while. Early model N64s would work just fine but Nintendo had released later models with newer RAM chips that wouldn't hold data long enough for the feature to work.
@@SuperSmashDolls oh ok thank you for clearing that up. 😁
@@SirWhiskersThe3rd Yes, during the development they changed the N64 board from using 2 2MB RAM chips to a single 4MB chip. While the older chips could retain data for quite a few seconds after power was cut, the newer ones didn't retain data nearly as long. Apparently this was found out during the testing of the feature and Nintendo told Rare to axe the feature.
I suppose they didn't want to deal with thousands of complaints about the feature not working or flood technical service centers with tons of consoles and cartridges damaged by children trying to jam the cartridge in too fast trying to do the swap in time.
@@radornkeldam it also does not sound like a good idea to tell kids to swap cartridges "as fast as possible"
@@sarowie Well, it was supposed to be around ten seconds. That's plenty of time... but yes, maybe children would be flustered and mess up even if there's enough time to do the swap calmly.
Nintendo always had the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality.
It's what makes Nintendo, Nintendo.
Yeah like "the Switch is selling really good right now, we won't ever release another console if the situation doesn't change"
@@samueleproiettimicozzi8134 then by that logic.. the Wii sold well... but why didn't they just keep making wiis
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Nintendo will support it as long as demand is there, once sales start falling of course they'll release something new
adventureoflinkmk2 in fact they didn't follow this strategy at all back then. The Wii is an absolute proof of it. If I remember correctly it sold a little more than 100 million units, certainly they would have been much more if Nintendo continued to sell them.
But now it's a completely different story, before the CEO was Iwata now it's Furukawa. Speaking of which, recently he himself has confirmed that they are sticking to this strategy with the Switch.
@@adventureoflinkmk2 Because the wii sales dropped off a cliff after 2009. Nintendo was not doing very well in the early 2010's. Wii sales were gone and the wii U was a flop. If it wasn't for the 3DS doing fairly well Nintendo might have been in a pretty rough spot.
Just here to say this channel is one of the most informative and interesting channels based on gaming I've found on here. Love these videos on how the older consoles were hacked. Great stuff!
You gotta love those new MVG uploads, it's like watching a whole new season from a show
[RS] mineturte83 facts he is giving free game and structure feels like an episode. Love consoles that try to be built unique from their competitor
Super-[or should I say Ultra?]interesting. I’ve always been fascinated with how the N64 seemingly was so well protected from piracy. Impressive that Nintendo found a method that worked so well for them way past the consoles lifespan
This is seriously one of the best most informative channels on UA-cam. I'd love to have half the knowledge that you do.
n64 piracy had 0 effect on sales. Consumer grade flash storage was insanely expensive at the time, and most people wouldn't bother paying for a flash cart because of the price. It would be cheaper to buy a game, play it, and sell it. Piracy wasn't really a problem until optical media went mainstream. It was a gateway to a drug of free games. First Dreamcast, then mod chips, then CFW. From then on, we saw PSP take piracy mainstream. Then DSTT flash carts were sourced by everyone for $4/piece from china.
And now with digital games, the 3DS, Wii U, and Switch are pretty easy to pirate on, especially the 3DS. These days it's about a twenty minute process to get it all set up and download free games.
Well, N64 piracy back then wasn't done with flash cartridges, but with RAM based backup units.
That said, there are some rare cases of pirated ROM carts that relied on using a T-connector to piggyback the CIC from an original cart. Years ago I was shown pictures of Mario 64 and Wave Race cartridges supposedly from hong kong, with epoxy glob ICs on the PCB and that description.
@@radornkeldam Either way, it was insanely expensive, uncommon, and the average gamer would never bother with it.
No matter what, piracy will almost never be able to put a dent in a new game's sales _during its prime._ No security is truly infallible, and developers know this, so anti-piracy is developed purely with a goal of making the process of cracking the game slow enough that by the time the game is cracked, the vast majority of sales the game will see in its lifetime have already happened, and the pirates will only hurt the small trickle of late-life sales coming in. MVG talked about this mentality in his PlayStation 1 anti-piracy video during the Spyro the Dragon 3 segment.
it doesn't seem like rare etc would have gone to the extra work to exceed the basic protection of the CIC if it really had zero effect.
Damn, they really did a good job with that protection given the technology they were using. Very cool.
Upskirts on Jet Force Gemini was the best I could find of anything as a young teen at that time. Was an upgrade to the clothing catalogs that we would get in the Sunday's paper.
Had to say it. 😂
You really didn't have to say it
Decapping or Uncapping integrated circuit (microchip) packages to physically access the silicon inside is actually insanely difficult to do without causing damage, there are only so many labs in the world that can do it, mostly in academia or governmental security agencies like the NSA. It’s crazy to think some researcher would decide to do it to investigate a nearly 30 year old console’s anti-piracy mechanism.
I'm not a gamer vintage or modern. But I love your videos for the detailed explanation about the mechanisms used in various games/consoles security systems. Thanks.
I love these videos. It's so fascinating to see the different methods of security used, and then the ingenuity used to break them so many years later.
Love these informative videos on gaming history
I had an N64 in 1995 many months before others.
I was playing Mario 64 in Japanese at the end of the summer in 1995 IIRC. Amazing time.
N64 is awesome...except the choice of RAMBUS memory. A bottle neck for framerates, and performance.
It's vram is also too low
It was acceptable for the time period, I'd maintain.
@@ruggie.74 Yep, it was thought to be the future of RAM. Even the PS2 used RAMBUS, the large ones, not sure about the slims.
@@ruggie.74 There were many uncertainties like that for the time period when you look back. All 3 major consoles of that generation were radically different architecturally because each company had a different idea of what they thought was most important to this newly accepted 3D frontier in gaming. And with hindsight all of their designs are riddled with many questionable decisions.
So high cart prices and limited storage are awesome?
The PS1 was my first console where I had the mental fortitude to conquer anti-piracy measures. I wish I had known about the disk drive backup hardware for the SNES... that thing is amazing.
First time I watched this video I was like oh damn, not even a mention. Second time I watched this video I saw my cracktro at 13:04. woop. Greetz to Actraiser, Hartec, Hotblack, NaN, Ravemax, Redbox. :P JoViS LiVeZ
That hack journey was wonderful, as always. Thanks for such a great video! Love it.
The games are 25 years old, cost a fortune and Nintendo doesn't bother itself rereleasing, so, sorry Nintendo.
Sure m8, i bet the N64 mini is coming out this year.
@ Even if they do release a mini, it'll be maybe 20 games out of a much larger library.
@@F-Lambda the wii mini console will have 10. Wii U mini will have 5. Switch Mini Will 2
We live in a world where both the console and carts for the NES and SNES are repro'd and the clones are widely available, allowing people to play a somewhat authentic experience of cart in console without a single copper stitch of authentic vintage hardware in the equation and for a fraction of the cost as the skyrocketing collector's prices for those systems...
I was literally looking to see if you had a video like this yesterday... what great timing!
My launch N64 is still hooked up downstairs with Wrestlemania 2000 installed. Mario Kart, Conker, Vigilante 8, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark... so many great games!
Quality over quantity
Nice video once again and you did something amazing for me as well. I played Jet Force Gemini as a kid and wanted to play it again ever since, but couldn’t find it. Now you showed the game on your video and I recognized it after 10 years! Thank you so much. @Modern Vintage Gamer
You could do a video like this on Gamecube, but it might run a little short: "They used Baby Discs, yep."
You'd think so, but there was way more copy protection than the weird size, and it needed it. Mini CDs were very much a thing at the time and they worked in normal burners.
Halp ma $i$ter med me preggknot??Hhow to rtre?
@@undefishin How is babby formed?
If they wanted protection due to size they could have gone with larger discs. Granted it would have been quite expensive, and hardware hacks could have been made (although if you had to do hardware hacks, I'd say that the protection won?)
@@MsHojat They could have done it even more easily. Two words: Smaller. Hole.
Or even do a square hole or something like that.
God i love waking up and seeing one of your videos in my notifications.
I seriously could watch these anti piracy videos all day.
I just about sh*t myself when I noticed that the shirt you’re wearing is the exact same one that arrived at my doorstep just a few days ago! As always, another awesome video from MVG. I love your content, keep up the fantastic work!
RELLIK yo man where’s the shirt from I want one too!
Imagine censoring yourself
Whenever I watch a video about these anti-piracy measures, I always find myself being both impressed by the cleverness behind it, and annoyed that it was done in the first place.
Love this series. You are the first guy on youtube talking about history of pracy. I hope that one day you'll write book on that topic as well :)
Great video as always. I watched the CIC reverse engineering talk a while ago, but it's good to have a higher level overview to put real world examples in with it.
Nintendo: Uses CIC chip and gets away with it for a VERY long time.
20 years later, hackers be like: 0xDEADBEEF
I love those videos, the ultraCIC looks really interesting! Stuff like that makes me wish I had gone into chip design rather than software development on servers... Still, this is awesome. Thank you for this quality content man!
Jet force Gemini should have been given more love honestly
I sit through the Ads for you! Because you actually do the research and deserve the money for your content!
UA-cam sucks. I didn't even get a notification for this video and I've got the bell set to all.
As always great video MVG.
I'm always behind and usually go through my subscriptions feed to catch up but I've found that not all videos from my subscriptions actually show up there.
Meanwhile I'm not subscribed to many channels, but youtube knows what I'm interested in.
One of the most successful implements of game securities primary function, which is the prevention of bootleg sales. 20 years! Amazing.
It's too late for Nintendo because RONALDINHO'S SOCCER still exists
Ronaldihno so sad? Ronaldihno saucer?
@@jimmyw1026 r/youngpeoplleyoutube
@@voidyt9939 Reddit moment
I love your videos, man. I understand half or less of technical stuff, but they are so well explained I comprehend the principle behind it. It's also very cool to know how these devices worked when, back in my kid days, o though they did it out of plain magic.
God I’m loving these uploads let’s me nerd out for a minute!
PIF-CIC protection looks similar like TCP/IP Handshaking. Great video!
I'm working with Jago85 to offer the PIF replacement for N64, so one console will play all NTSC and PAL games.
nice. how does that work? do you need to solder in the new chip as a direct replacement or via some other means?
@@ModernVintageGamer I'll try to contact you via Twitter to send some pics and details.
oh nice, this sounds sweet!
Neat, where can we follow the project?
@@somebonehead Here is the original thread. Sorry, but almost everything is in German. circuit-board.de/forum/index.php/Thread/24209-WIP-UltraPIF-Multi-Region-N64-PIF-Replacement/ I already published the PCB stuff on github. As soon as I have some more spare time I want to publish all the FPGA and software stuff. github.com/jago85/UltraPIF_Hardware
I am rather enjoying these series of videos you are putting out. I'm enjoying learning about about the console security from these :3
Could you please make a Video " How the Nintendo Switch security was defited" 🙏
Krylik it is?
I don't know why but I find these anti-piracy methods so interesting. Love these videos, don't stop making them. Cheers from Italy 😁👌
Hey guy, just wanted to say I appreciate the quality and information you produce. You're very intelligent and it shows.
I still have my Dr V64 and purchased all the game carts with different CIC's, have fond memories of the n64 scene back in the day, it was a blurry mess on screen but didnt know better until years later.
So interesting and informative!
Jet Force Gemini... that game is for sure, super underrated and overlooked, the music is fantastic and the difficulty can be very high, it's just the camera and the regular aim that sucks
U convince me
I'm buying a n64
You'll never regret it, trust me
@@joshm264 Well, if you want relatively good image quality you might regret it unless you want to mod it. It mostly only supports composite video, some revisions support S-Video and some are easily RGB moddable while others aren't as easy to RGB mod, UltraHDMI's aren't readily available either.
I personally don't regret my buy, mainly because it was cheap (35usd for a blue translucent japanese model in perfect condition) and because I like tinkering with stuff so I RGB modded it.
I bought mine for 5€ with Mario 64, Goldeneye and 2 controllers. I don't regret it, but it's a crappy console. Most games run 5-10fps and tbh emulation is the best way to enjoy them.
i got my Japanese n64 for 62Euros but it was worth it
Ever drive 64 + Ultra HDMI is a must
N64 could have beaten PS1/PSX if Nintendo went with CD-drive/CD as medium.
N64 was so powerful man... if only...
Jet Force Gemini: One of the greatest games of the generation.
Underrated. Held back by the single analog stick and onerous 100% fetch quest required for completion. I finished it.
@@JuddMan03 They thing I dislike the most about JFG is the flawed way that damage is relayed to the player.
The multi-level energy bar, where the most significant value is represented by the smallest element on screen doesn't help, but the most problematic part, I think, is how it is possible to incurr massive damage without there being a quantitative or qualitative difference in the feedback mechanism to convey that to the player through visuals or sound. Many times during a combat, especially with bosses, where it matters the most, you can be getting pounded and not even realize until you consciously decide to look at the energy bar.
This is not a nuclear powerplant control where you need to have your eyes on the meters, but an action game where your eyes are on the action, trying to kill and not get killed, the damage inflicted needs to be transmitted to the user in an inline manner, and the health meter should be an informative mechanism to check during the pauses, which don't really occur in the game's bosses.
During regular gameplay there can be attacks that knock you to the ground and so on, and give you a small invulnerability break, which is a very good way to convey a critical hit. During boss battles, you just remain still all the time and all you see is the screen flash red without any indication of whether it is light or heavy damage.
It was very annoying to me to be playing like nothing too bad is happening, and then take a glance ad the health bar and be shocked at the dire situation.
Underrated classic
I still dream with a remake of it. Somebody somewhere with licenses to do so will care enough to make it happen.
Best game on the system IMO.
Now some N64 games do use multi security chips to communicate non-stop with each other ,but i can imagine that if due a dirty cartride connection or because of the random nature of the analogue world of non-functional materials such as coppr, i can imagine that if those multi security chips fall to talk with each other,, even if it only falls once in a million times during gameplay soon or later, then the game could randomly crash or behave differently ( depending how game devs let their game behave once it detects no auterized hardware),, am glad the nes lockout chip don’t talk non-stop with each game or the nes could randomly reset itself overtimes because of the randomness of copper conductioness behavior in the cartrides.
I love everything about the 64, just such an interesting console
Then Konami decided “symphony of the night on N64? Nahhh 3D is better!”
Just became a little patreon :P
I just wanted to say I love these videos and gaming history videos in general and really enjoyed this. I would also like to thank you for having subs, which makes easier for me to follow along. :3
3:40 Turok Dinosaur Hunter gameplay
With a very strange Doom 64 looking cartridge.
GG
Thx, I wanted to know.
This man is literally ExplainingLikeim5 for every game system .. legend 🐐
I wonder what this combined with the Patent ending, for N64 Clone Consoles? I would totally blow 500 quid on a totally metal N64.
patents are only 5ish years
Enjoyed so much Brother, big thumbs up hope your week is awesome
I would love to see the faces of the guys on the moment that after so many tries and errors find the thing that bypass protections
Just another awesome and informative video. I love watching and learning from these videos about video game systems.
10:52 RIP John McMaster
I love to listen to you while programming. Background talk about consoles hacking is very motivating
Please never switch intro music. Thank you.
Interesting video. Didn’t understand most of it because I’m not familiar with hardware, but I do enjoy learning about this kind of stuff. Keep up the good work!
"Mistakes weren't made"
Well now I finally understand exactly why the GameShark Pro needed (M) codes and the swap method to boot certain games!
What's this guys background why is he so knowledgeable about everything lol
He was involved in XBox homebrew community. That knowledge and skill would be suffice to do such videos.
Thanks for all the efforts to make this video. It just up rises my admiration to the people behind emulation and patches. A plenty good moments in my childhood happened because I had a computer and Roms to play. Thanks
Can't wait until 2030 when "How Nintendo Switch security was defeated"
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I spent a lot of money with Bung. It was terrifying back then to fire off 399 quid for a Doctor64. Pretty sure it was imported through customs as a VCD player :) Great bit of kit for the time though.
Even now as a 37 year old man I still cannot make my mind up between N64 and playstation. Its just a vicious circle.
I'd go with PS1. The 2D games on that system still hold up.
Man, I love your content. I look forward to every upload as you are so unbelievably knowledgeable and make it easy for those of us who aren't into software or dev to understand.
Great job! Keep up the great work.
Why did vintage gamers celebrate when the Nintendo 64 turned 18 in 2014?
They could now legally blow the cartridges.
God dammit 😂
Blowing into cartridges never really did anything right? I remember my dad teaching me that on NES & Genesis. Surprised we didn't lick PS1 discs.
I will still believe that blowing into the cartridge does help. I've tested several times with games that won't start. Just taking it out and putting it back in multiple times, to remove corrosion, as people suggest does nothing. When I blow into the carts, they then startup almost every time.
@@kingdavid7516 but pulling the cardridge out and put it back in scraps rust off the pins. I think the rust pins could be the cause of the old games not being to boot.
@@kingdavid7516 it removes dust and debris from the contacts if the carts arent stored well, which makes contact better and can actually help. but if you keep them cleaned and stored properly it wont do anything other than accumulate spit on the contacts and make them rust
I learned a lot here. Incredible video M8! Thank you kindly. Hat's off to you!
Having a snes was one thing. Having a computer, internet and the items to pirate SNES games were all really expensive at the time. I'm sure there were some bootlegs but it wasn't a common thing where I lived
irregular mana Japan is right next to China so in 1995 you could buy a super magicom that would dump/load a SNES/SFC game to several floppies
True, I suppose you could have rented games and copy them that way, but from what I remember the actual devices to play copied games were also not cheap.
@@johnsimon8457 that does make sense, I lived in the US at the time so I hardly knew or saw anything bootlegging. Not until the late 90s with the psone because of its CD based games.
I had a Magicom which was a floppy drive and 2 adapters on the bottom that fit in the SNES and Genesis cart slots and I could load any game from floppy. I remember having thousands of floppy disks with every SNES and Genesis game, then had 4 CDs with every N64 games for the v64 device. All my friends had them as well and we swapped games at school in the early 90's. Then again, we also had 'tape parties' where we would all go over to 1 friends house with our dual cassette decks and spend countless hours copying games on cassettes for the Atari 400/800 in the mid 80's.
Always looking forward to your videos. Keep up the good work!
Sometimes I don't even watch these videos but I'll always play them bc they are amazing background noise also I don't understand what he's talking about bc I'm not super computer literate. Great videos tho on this channel.
I would think that a good approach for guarding against piracy would be to have a mapper chip which watches for certain sequences of events and triggers a "surprise" bank switch when they occur. Using a dump of the game without the surprise bank switch would yield a "demo" version which would only let a player use the first couple levels; if the chip sees a certain sequence of RAM stores which should occur when clearing a level, however, it could bank-switch to code which would tweak things in such a way as to let the player advance.
"Nintendo using cartridges on the n64 was the right move!"
WAT
@@kreuner11 even the PS1 had good anti tamper methods and it was CD based
@@AchiragChiragg
Not really, my 1st gen PS1 it took a spring and a copy of Ridge Racer to play any copied game.
@@wing0zero The Saturn did have very robust copy protection though, so it could be done at that time with cd.
Well, besides the advanced security only possible with cartridges (as it involves chips), they had another important advantage. Although they had a very limited storage compared to CDs (~4 MB compared to ~700 MB), the transfer speed of cartridges was much higher than CD's. While for example PlayStation games were more accurately textured and had CD quality audio, the N64 games didn't have a single loading screen because they didn't need it.
This was explained more in depth in a vid I saw some months ago, I don't remember perfectly but probably it was still from MVG.
@@detectivescrotes and then there was Dreamcast that just played some back ups for no reason at all
Just imagine a world where Nintendo (or any other) would remove the copy protection with the last "official" firmware update a few years after a console is discontinued. This would be so amazing and support game preservation.
"Sega does what Nintendon't" Suuuurrraaaa...
Jesus, I see you everywhere
@@Pinkymilo (raspberry)
No one cares.
Love the intro music i guess i remember it from amiga.
It's a good thing that Nintendo made no mistakes on console security.
Wait... mistakes were made? Well i'll be damned...