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Anti-Piracy
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Anti-piracy is an unofficial cartridge registration method when detecting that the cartridge is illegal. The game freezes on a screen full of text saying that it is a serious crime to copy video games. This screen will be seen until the user put an original cartridge. This also appears in the Metroid series. It was used in the series for the first time in Super Metroid. There are some anti-piracy screens that have the image of the screen of the "Game Over" screen. Some examples are Donkey Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest and Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble. Super Metroid anti-piracy not only freezes the game, but also deletes all files permanently.
Examples of Anti-Piracy in Metroid Games[edit | edit source]
Super Metroid[edit | edit source]
In Super Metroid, there are two anti-piracy checks that happen during boot up. The first is the region check and the second one is the SRAM mapping check. The SRAM mapping check first copies the 8KiB SRAM at $700000 copied to WRAM for backup. Then this SRAM area is erased. An incrementing series of values ($0000, $0001, $0002,... $0FFF) is written to the $702000..3FFF area, which on the real cart is a mirror of the 8KiB of SRAM. Finally, it reads back the 8KiB of SRAM from $700000 and asserts that the incrementing values have been written. If they match, the program restores the WRAM backup to SRAM and continues to boot as usual. On extension devices or copy devices/cartridges there may be more SRAM and the two 8KiB areas not mirrored. In this case, the above assertion fails and the anti-piracy message is triggered, leaving the SRAM erased. The region check doesn't erase the SRAM on failure unlike the SRAM check.
The anti-piracy screen for the US and Japan versions of the game says: "It is a serious crime to copy video games. 18 USC 2319. Please refer to your Nintendo game instruction booklet for further information" with some Japanese version of the message at the bottom. The screen for the European version says: "To resume your gameplay, turn off your control deck and disconnect any attachment or game altering device. Refer to your game pak instruction booklet for further information."
