2 ms·
Fairly recently the chip was studied in detail and replicated. But like most systems of that era, I believe it was circumvented fairly quickly by pirates. The e
by inigyou 3mo ago
Fairly recently the chip was studied in detail and replicated. But like most systems of that era, I believe it was circumvented fairly quickly by pirates. The easiest way would be to piggyback a licensed cartridge - unlike the NES, it has to be one with the same region and bootloader as there are several lockout chip variants, but that basic technique still works.
- cubefox 3mo agoI never saw a piggyback cartridge at the time though, or one that was obviously unlicensed. Of course, this could have more to do with Nintendo's legal pressure than with technological possibility.
- inigyou 3mo agoI think a lot of the early flashcarts were piggybacks. I was never into that scene though.
- monocasa 3mo agoThe main pirating route at the time (a device (oh which there were several) that sat under the N64 and had either an Iomega Zip drive or a CD drive for holding ROMs), had a port for inserting a real cartridge to use its lockout chip.
- cubefox 3mo agoYeah, though piracy is not the same as publishing unlicensed original games (bootlegs) like Xibalba 64.
- inigyou 3mo agoAs far as Nintendo's concerned, it is. Their method of piracy prevention at this point was putting a lockout chip on every cartridge, and attaching their license fee to the lockout chip. Your homebrew cartridge needs one too.