Copy protection found in Mystique games!

[Scott Stilphen]

Turns out Video Gems wasn't the only company to employ "anti-hacking" protection in their code - in Custer, Bachelor(ette), and B.E.& E.E.

 

Thanks to Thomas Jentzsch helping confirm my discovery.

 

Btw, what company came first - Mystique or Video Gems? AFAIK, this is the earliest known instance of protection code being used (for games anyway...)

[Chris++]

Let me guess...you found a condom around the ROM.

[Inky]

The Activision games for the colecovision had copy protection in them. There was a register in them that looked to see if it was running off of the cart or other media. If it found other media, then it wouldn't run.

 

Of course this was found and.. ahem.. 'corrected'.. and many many ADAM owners had Activision games on digital data pack. Of course not ME.

 

[Turnspike]

Let me guess...you found a condom around the ROM.

 

Even if that was so, under the DMCA, the Feds would have your head on a platter for busting their Trojan.

[jhd]

Btw, what company came first - Mystique or Video Gems?  AFAIK, this is the earliest known instance of protection code being used (for games anyway...)

 

A few of the early games for the Tandy Color Computer had code that would over-write other parts of the game code. This prevented the game from running from RAM (it was designed as a cartridge ROM game).

 

I remember a hack being published in one of the magazines to "fix" this, back in 1984. I think the game in question was Megabug (published 1981 or '82, if memory serves...)

[Scott Stilphen]

[from Thomas]

 

The protection can be disabled very easily. Just patch $EA at offsets $66 and $67 (from $D0, $19).

[+Cafeman]

How do you implement copy protection, anyway? Can you tell from your program if you are running on a cart VS an emulator? I'd think not.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

It's called 'copy protection' because we came to the conclusion, that it should stop other companies from pirating the games.

 

The implementation is only a simple checksum that prevents hacking.