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Fake anti-piracy screens are pretty cool (Featuring Persona 4 & Mario Party DS) [OPEN P4 SPOILERS]

Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Crisis Dino
Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
39,054
Ibis Island
I'm sure some of you have been getting these in your recommended on youtube and I could've sworn we had a thread on the Mario Party DS one. Regardless these are of course fan-made, but the idea of developers going out of their way like this for anti-piracy measures is always entertaining to see (Since sometimes they even did in the past though perhaps with not such a creepy slant)






Curious if anyone here knows of any others.
 
Lua

Lua

Member
Aug 9, 2018
1,959
I think this started because of that "every copy of mario 64 is personalized" pseudo-creepypasta. I remember seeing a lot of fake beta screens, and some of them were anti-piracy ones with some creepy music or uncanny audio. Now every week theres a new one for an old game.
 
Rikucrafter

Rikucrafter

Chicken Chaser
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Oct 28, 2017
910
Australia
I liked when Pokemon Black and White couldn't gain EXP for pirated copies. News sites reported on this as if it were an intended feature, giving away their shady acquisitions of the game.
 
CoinStarDX

CoinStarDX

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
634
I think this trend started woth this one unless I'm mistaken.
youtu.be

Anti-Piracy Screen

Rare anti-piracy screen found by a friend of mine some years ago when playing on a dusty cartridge.
youtu.be youtu.be

Also one of the best "personalized mario 64" channels imo
 

MoonlitBow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,943
Hard disagree, it just becomes harder to see if new interesting anti-piracy features are discovered in games because these are flooding the internet now.
 
UnluckyKate

UnluckyKate

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Oct 25, 2017
10,680
Serious Sam 3 (?) had an ultra agressive invicible monster harassing the player on pirated copies. Its hilarious
 
GingerbreadMan

GingerbreadMan

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Oct 27, 2017
1,302
If you pirate Link's Awakening the game runs fine, but every time you enter a shop the shopkeeper will kill you, saying you now have to pay "the ultimate price"

LcQzlEi.gif


They kept this even in the Switch version!
 
TigerBrownie

TigerBrownie

One Winged Slayer
Member
May 9, 2018
485
The Persona 4 one doesn't make sense.
Adachi would definitely pirate games.
 
rdbaaa

rdbaaa

Member
Oct 27, 2017
190
Of all the things for zoomers to pick up as a quaint thing from the past, I wasn't expecting this.
 
blamite

blamite

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Oct 27, 2017
1,595
QuIA2JH.png


I saw this one recently and I'm just going to continue to believe it's real, please nobody tell me otherwise, thanks.
 
Procheno

Procheno

Alt Account
Banned
Nov 14, 2018
2,879
I used to get anti piracy screens for Donkey Kong Country 3 on SNES. It just cut from black to the game over screen with cold text and dead silence.

DKC3-AntiPiracy.png


My 11 year old me didn't like that very much
 
Rikucrafter

Rikucrafter

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 28, 2017
910
Australia
Satonaka said:
Did this actually happen? I struggle to tell which of these are real or fake.
Click to expand...
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I don't have the specific articles because they've likely been deleted, but I did find this thread that mentions it from Sep 2010

Nintendo's Cease and Desist

Since I want a serious discussion on the topic and posting it in the flameboard is just asking for it to be derailed. If somehow you are unaware of what we're talking about you can read about it here: http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fansites_served_with_copyright_infringement_notices In...
www.smogon.com www.smogon.com
 

Deleted member 3208

Oct 25, 2017
11,934
Undertale also had one. Shame Toby didn't implement it.

 
Tokyo_Funk

Tokyo_Funk

Banned
Dec 10, 2018
10,053
All the creepy anti-piracy ones are great



My favourite anti-piracy method ever though is from Batman Arkham Asylum, where they allow the player to play a short amount of time, then hit them with a room full of gas they can't get over without the cape. The pirated version disables cape gliding, so it's impossible to continue, rendering their pirated version a demo.

The funniest part of this is all the people who went to the official forums and complained about it openly "Can't escape gas room" and "Batman can't glide". Might as well have just written "I'm a pirate, YARRR me fuckos" as a thread.
 
russbus64

russbus64

Member
May 1, 2018
1,985
If I remember right, Mirror's Edge had a anti-piracy measure. Game played normally until the third level or so. Then Faith couldn't run anymore, only walk.
 
Zonic

Zonic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,859
Two of my favorite examples:

- Earthbound has more enemies that were much harder & if you somehow made it to the final boss, the game would lock up and your save data was erased

- That School Days PC sequel & the fact you did a fake terms of agreement saying it would take a screencap of your PC upon agreeing & posted it online to a site with your info, to which the only way to have it taken down was to apologize publicly that you pirated the game.

There's a few more here, including the Batman one: https://www.cracked.com/article_19162_6-hilarious-ways-game-designers-are-screwing-with-pirates.html

Edit: yeah, there's also the Michael Jackson one on DS where all the music has vuvuzelas playing & the game freezes.
 
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THube

THube

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Oct 27, 2017
630
MoonlitBow said:
Hard disagree, it just becomes harder to see if new interesting anti-piracy features are discovered in games because these are flooding the internet now.
Click to expand...
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Gotta agree... Plus so many of these feel like they miss the point and try to go hard on the "creepy" factor when legitimate anti-piracy warnings often are able to do so effortlessly. Just feels uninspired to me
 
fiendcode

fiendcode

Member
Oct 26, 2017
25,031
Tangentially related but I love warning screens for older games when played on incompatible devices (like some GBC games on GB, NGPC games on NGP, PCE/CD games using the wrong upgrade card, etc).
 
Lkr

Lkr

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Oct 28, 2017
9,792
shockdude

shockdude

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,340
Old DJMAX games had antipiracy that "corrupted" the game in front of you. Glitchy music, flickering & disappearing graphics, menus that don't appear. It's the most creepypasta-like antipiracy that I've heard of in a real game
 
xir

xir

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,758
Los Angeles, CA
in police quest 1 some guy is in jail for software piracy. i didn't know what that meant and copied the game for my DARE officer. he said thanks.
this was like 1989
 
Zonic

Zonic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,859
shockdude said:
Old DJMAX games had antipiracy that "corrupted" the game in front of you. Glitchy music, flickering & disappearing graphics, menus that don't appear. It's the most creepypasta-like antipiracy that I've heard of in a real game
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1st off, oh god seizure warning in the 2nd half of the video.

Considering how damn buggy Fever was (I couldn't even load one of the song's charts without it locking at the loading screen), you can't convince me that this wasn't just part of the game. Shocked I didn't know about this earlier. This is probably the most "actually creepy without being too blunt & saying you pirated the game" I've seen in this thread.
 
WrenchNinja

WrenchNinja

Member
Oct 25, 2017
18,789
Canada
Rikucrafter said:
I don't have the specific articles because they've likely been deleted, but I did find this thread that mentions it from Sep 2010

Nintendo's Cease and Desist

Since I want a serious discussion on the topic and posting it in the flameboard is just asking for it to be derailed. If somehow you are unaware of what we're talking about you can read about it here: http://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fansites_served_with_copyright_infringement_notices In...
www.smogon.com www.smogon.com
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Still makes me laugh
 
Mr. Gold

Mr. Gold

Member
Jul 1, 2019
725
How does the copy know it's pirated, especially the Zelda one? Why not make it work instead of trolling the player with that shop keeper
 
indask8

indask8

Member
Oct 28, 2017
324
Not a fake one, but I like the anti piracy in Michael Jackson The Experience on DS :


For context the game was released just after the 2010 FIFA World Cup

In case the game detects a pirated copy vuvuzela plays in background and no inputs appears on the touch screen.
 
Aldo

Aldo

Member
Mar 19, 2019
1,769
I love these memes.
Some great real ones:
Serious Sam 3 spawned a half-human half-scorpion creature which was ultra fast and unkillable.
Crysis had your guns shooting chickens.
 
Zonic

Zonic

Member
Oct 25, 2017
33,859
Mr. Gold said:
How does the copy know it's pirated, especially the Zelda one? Why not make it work instead of trolling the player with that shop keeper
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My understanding is that there's code to recognize the fact it's an illegitimate copy, usually put out by the developers themselves so then that version gets passed out first instead of legit versions, or a check for a license is done to ensure it was purchased legit.

For stuff like SNES titles, you can actually alter some lines of code using emulators to make it think you're playing a pirated copy. I assume that's how pirates are able to figure out why the game is acting weird.
 
Dolce

Dolce

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,289
I was actually going to make a thread on how much I hate these. Most don't reveal they are fake which means in the future actually looking for anti-piracy screens will be much harder.

And they're all overly dramatic and lack what makes a lot of old anti-piracy screens creepy.
 
Efejota

Efejota

Member
Mar 13, 2018
3,750
I remember when I was a kid that the Nintendo magazine in my country had a contest about drawings against piracy, since it was at a all time high during the DS days. The winner piece was an array of famous Nintendo characters like Mario and Link waiting in line in front of a National Employment System office in order to get some help from the government.
 
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