4 ms·

Atari (old Atari, pre-layoff days) had an 8 byte sequence that they copyrighted, and that we were supposed to embed in our games. The idea was you could find th

by kabdib 14y ago

Atari (old Atari, pre-layoff days) had an 8 byte sequence that they copyrighted, and that we were supposed to embed in our games. The idea was you could find the sequence in a pirated ROM and ask in court, "What does this do?" Since the bytes weren't executable code, or useful data, it'd be hard to support their presence in any technical way.

lloeki 14y ago
I heard a story from the days of the Game Boy Advance, which supposedly had a similar feature. Physically, custom carts could easily be made. To prevent this (from a purely legal standpoint) Nintendo made it so the GBA internal ROM was looking for specific data (validated by hash of sorts) on the cart, or it would reject it and refuse to boot. This data happened to be the (copyrighted) logo displayed on boot, hence it made unapproved carts either unbootable or illegal.
- derekp7 14y ago
  Reminds me of how, back in the day, software would look for the letters "IBM" at a specific ROM address (it was in their copyright message) in order to identify the video card as a VGA card (or maybe it was back in the EGA days, can't remember). One of the clever clone card manufactures put in the ROM "There are various pieces of software that expect the letters IBM to appear here".
  - tankbot 14y ago
    Or how a game would make you answer a question that you would only know know if you had the manual to accompany the game. "What is the fourth word from the second paragraph on page 13?" Presumably you didn't have access to a copy machine if you were stealing software back then...
    - gmac 14y ago
      IIRC some games came with a data booklet printed in black on very dark brown, or similar, to foil potential photocopying.
- danielweber 14y ago
  There were still boatloads of counterfeit GBA games, particularly Pokemon. If you bought any used Pokemon games, odds are very good they were counterfeit.
  - pflats 14y ago
    That's an open-and-shut case (provided they catch the bootleggers). This was meant more to (theoretically) stymie something like Tengen's 3rd party NES carts. Nintendo wants a cut on all the games that play on its consoles.

by kabdib 14y ago

lloeki 14y ago

I heard a story from the days of the Game Boy Advance, which supposedly had a similar feature. Physically, custom carts could easily be made. To prevent this (from a purely legal standpoint) Nintendo made it so the GBA internal ROM was looking for specific data (validated by hash of sorts) on the cart, or it would reject it and refuse to boot. This data happened to be the (copyrighted) logo displayed on boot, hence it made unapproved carts either unbootable or illegal.

derekp7 14y ago
Reminds me of how, back in the day, software would look for the letters "IBM" at a specific ROM address (it was in their copyright message) in order to identify the video card as a VGA card (or maybe it was back in the EGA days, can't remember). One of the clever clone card manufactures put in the ROM "There are various pieces of software that expect the letters IBM to appear here".
- tankbot 14y ago
  Or how a game would make you answer a question that you would only know know if you had the manual to accompany the game. "What is the fourth word from the second paragraph on page 13?" Presumably you didn't have access to a copy machine if you were stealing software back then...
  - gmac 14y ago
    IIRC some games came with a data booklet printed in black on very dark brown, or similar, to foil potential photocopying.
danielweber 14y ago
There were still boatloads of counterfeit GBA games, particularly Pokemon. If you bought any used Pokemon games, odds are very good they were counterfeit.
- pflats 14y ago
  That's an open-and-shut case (provided they catch the bootleggers). This was meant more to (theoretically) stymie something like Tengen's 3rd party NES carts. Nintendo wants a cut on all the games that play on its consoles.