Copy Protection: Difference between revisions

** Depending on which sources you believe, the primary intent of the lock-out chip wasn't copy protection. Instead, the system was designed to allow Nintendo to keep tight control over who could release games for the platform and extract heavy licensing fees from third party developers. This was also the mechanism Nintendo used to enforce their infamous [[Censorship Bureau|censorship and quality control regime]], keeping out the porn games and low quality software that [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983|caused recurring PR nightmares for Atari.]] The copy protection was just a nice side effect...

** Some unlicensed games work around the lockout system either by using special cartridges that piggyback on another game ''a la'' [[Game Genie]], or through a charge pump designed to send a voltage spike which should knock the CIC offline; later revisions of the NES were no longer susceptible to said voltage spikes. This led to companies such as American Video Entertainment to bundle their unlicensed games such as ''[[Wally Bear and the NO! Gang]]'' with instructions on how to modify their NES in case their console is of the newer revision.<ref>[http://www.thegameisafootarcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Wally-Bear-and-the-NO-Gang-Game-Manual.pdf Wally Bear and the NO! Gang - Nintendo NES - Manual]</ref> Also, Atari's Tengen division got themselves into a lawsuit by using social engineering and reverse engineering to create a key chip workaround called the "Rabbit Chip". Years later, the Rabbit would serve as a key to successfully reverse-engineering the CIC for homebrew and reproductions of popular games due to the presence of debug/test headers in the chip.

** The Game Boy is an interesting example, as it was designed more as a passive ''trademark protection'' scheme that relied more on their merry band of lawyers than actively shutting out any bootlegs, the theory being that bootleggers and developers of unlicensed games wouldn't dare display the '''Nintendo®''' logo lest be sued for trademark infringement, which was more easily enforceable in certain jurisdictions (This is also why some bootleg multicarts for the Game Boy simply have "GAME" embossed on the cart to dodge trademarks). If a copy of the logo was found on the cartridge ROM, the game loads, but using it as it is would make them an easy target for litigation. There is however a workaround taking advantage of a peculiarity on how the logo is checked and displayed: the Game Boy reads the boot logo twice--once to display it, and another to check if it matches the one on the boot ROM. Through this, unlicensed developers were able to subvert Nintendo's trademark protection by displaying their own logo on startup as a form of [[Plausible Deniability]], then load the Nintendo logo to pass the internal boot check.<ref>[http://fuji.drillspirits.net/?post=87 Neo Fuji: "go go logo"]</ref> Ironically enough, [[Argonaut Games]] demonstrated this to Nintendo, and rather than sue Argonaut for breaking their protection scheme, they invited them to develop 3D games. And the rest, as they say, [[Star Fox|is history]].

** In a similar vein to Nintendo, Sega used a similar trademark enforcement system on the [[Sega Genesis|Genesis]], aptly named "TradeMark Security System." The TMSS checks for the "SEGA" wordmark in various memory locations for a cartridge to boot, and if an unlicensed game has the necessary strings in the ROM, Sega can sue them for trademark infringement. This was however challenged in 1992 by Accolade when they were involved in a lawsuit concerning the use of Sega's trademarks on some of their games. The courts ruled in Accolade's favour, as the judges concluded that the required TMSS code took up 35 bytes while the rest of the game was wholly original content, and that Accolade's reverse-engineering to achieve compatibility with Sega hardware was a reasonable invocation of fair use.