StarTropics on the NES. Was it Anti-Piracy or just a fun gimmick?

as you may know we like to cover all things DRM and anti-piracy on this channel and back in the '90s video game Publishers were coming up with unique ways to stop piracy it was common place for computer games to come bundled with a book or a manual we would be asked to enter a word on a certain page or perhaps a code wheel where you'd need to match symbols on the Wheel to reveal the code itself now code Wheels were very popular with games such as the secret of Monkey Island now these forms of copy protection were pretty Cru and for the most part they were cracked within a matter of days at the most and if that wasn't enough we've even covered the infamous lens lock which thankfully was a very short-lived experiment this was a piece of plastic that could to scramble a code for you simply by looking through it but there was always something unique and interesting about purchasing a big box PC game opening it up and having a bunch of goodies Inside the Box including a unique code wheel but what about on consoles like the NES or Sega Master System this form of anti-piracy wasn't really a thing at all you see the NES or Nintendo Entertainment System contained a basic lockout chip that could detect bootlegging and tampering of games at least for the most part and NES emulation wasn't really around at the time that would come later in the '90s with the release of both iness and nesticle so most game companies just relied on the hardware itself to ensure that their games would not be bootlegged but it wasn't just about bootlegging or piracy game rentals would be something that some game Publishers were not happy with for example they would rather have 10 people buy 10 copies of their game rather than rent out one copy to 10 people but there is one particular game that stands out that does have what I would consider a form of anti-piracy that took inspiration from the computer game Market in 1990 Nintendo would release a game called start Tropics when we think about the NES it has a long history of classic franchises that began on the hardware Mario Zelda Metroid and even star Tropics developed by Nintendo R&D 3 star Tropics was an interesting game for a few reasons the first is that it never released in Japan even though it was internally developed by Nintendo R&D 3 the second is that it's the very first NES title that featured a form of anti-piracy which took inspiration from the PC market the game box itself would contain a letter that would form the basis of the anti-piracy the catch however was that this letter needed to be submerged in water to reveal a secret code once the code was discovered you could enter it into the game and then the game would continue on as normal and it's at this point you have to ask the question is this truly anti-piracy or was it Nintendo's ongoing battle with the rental market which is very well documented or simply was it just a fun gimmick as a part of the game well let's go ahead and dig deeper star Tropics is a classic action adventure game that follows the story of Mike Jones a teenage baseball player who travels to Sea Island in the South Seas to visit his uncle Dr Steven Jones when Mike arrives at Sea Island he heads to the Village of coral Cola but he finds that Dr Jones has gone missing and sets out on a tropical island adventure to find him Mike Jones is armed only with a yo-yo as his main weapon but as you progress through the game you uncover more powerful and unique items now you might be thinking to yourself Mike Jones corl Cola yo-yos Dr Jones as an archaeologist this game sounds like something from a Hollywood movie and you would be correct star Tropics was specifically designed to appeal to Western audiences even though it was developed in-house in Japan by Nintendo themselves as you explore the world of star Tropics you uncover not only Overland areas but dungeons that contain puzzles and secrets and of course boss encounters the game is separated into chapters each with their own substory and adventure to uncover and it's also no real secret that the game does take some influence from the original Legend of Zelda I mean take a look at the hearts and even the character creation screen as an example but to be clear this is its own story in a unique tropical setting star Tropics is really a fun game that's worth a look if you've never EXP experienced it before it's one of those games that Nintendo has brought forward to Modern audiences in 2008 Nintendo would bring star Tropics to the Wii Virtual Console then in 2016 make it available for the NES classic in North America and even more recently in 2019 was added as a part of the NSO service on the Nintendo switch as you progress through the game in chapter 4 specifically Mike gets sucked into the mouth of a large whale where he locates Baboo Dr Jones's assistant both trapped inside the whale you must find a way to escape which involves finding bab's lighter and starting a fire inside the whale upon doing this and escaping successfully you discover that Dr Jones has been abducted by aliens Baboo tells Mike okay Mike I have to tell you Dr J's last words evil aliens from a distant planet tell Mike to dip my letter in water the letter that Dr Jones sent Mike a few weeks ago of course is referring to the letter that comes within the game packaging itself once you return to your sub the game will ask you to input the frequency which enables the navigation system on the submarine to track Dr Jones's location and at this point the game gives you another hint but this time much more direct that you need to put water on Dr J's letter in the instruction booklet the code is revealed when you dip the bottom portion of the letter in water revealing the code 747 MHz inputting the code 747 into the game allows the game play to proceed and of course without this code you are stuck at this part of the game unable to continue however the game does give you a infinite amount of attempts so you can simply try all 999 combinations of numbers until you get the right one now whether you consider the star Tropics piece of paper in the water to be anti-piracy or not really is kind of up to your interpretation many people believe that it really was simply there to be more of a deterrent in the rental market where Nintendo probably would have have preferred to have sold as many copies as were rented of this game but just like most early anti-piracy measures that involved a piece of paper that could be photocopied or duplicated this result was also the same Not only was the code the same across every single game so there was no unique code per game but it was just a matter of once you had discovered the code then all you needed to do was write it down somewhere for safekeeping as an example I've seen cartridges with the code 747 scribbled on it or on the box or manual once the code is discovered it's pointless and more of an annoyance than anything else but on the flip side I've heard stories of people renting the game and being unable to proceed because they weren't sure what the code was because the letter was either damaged or simply not available what saves star Tropics is that the same code is used everywhere and if it was different per game then that would certainly pose a different challenge especially in the rental market in any case 747 was known for years as the code for Star Tropics even magazines of back in the day would publish the code for all to see but what about in more recent times we said that the game was brought forward to the Virtual Console NES classic and NSO did Nintendo patch out the ROM so any code could be entered effectively cracking the check well no now star tropics was a game that also released for the Nintendo Virtual Console on the Wii and Nintendo had the foresight to include a copy of this letter and the code itself in the operations manual of the game a digital manual is provided for Star tropics and even includes a transcript of the actual letter itself and when you click on the link it shows the animation of the letter being dipped in water and the code appearing and I got to say this is pretty neat by 2016 with the launch of the NES classic Nintendo would provide a link for you to download all the digital manuals for the games on the NES classic and once again with star Tropics the code was available here however when it comes to more recent times and the Nintendo switch online service where star Tropics was added back in 2019 there was some confusion basically wrong information presented by Outlets that Nintendo had completely forgotten about the star Tropics code and I'm I'm here to tell you that that's actually not the case the code has been provided by Nintendo and I'll leave a link to that in the description below but I will say that I'm not sure when Nintendo added this code to their website it may have been something that was done after the fact when people started to ask questions about why star Tropic didn't have a code or what the code was but in any case Nintendo has seemingly covered all their bases here I do find it curious that Nintendo themselves did not decide to patch the ROM and effectively just remove the check in of itself because this is something that you can do with an action replay or a Game Genie cartridge from back in the day and I feel like it would have been trivial for Nintendo just to patch out this particular piece of code and at least as of the making of this episode Nintendo has not patched any type of update into the game to help plays out now of course you can just Google the code itself it's 747 it's not the end of the world it's certainly not something that I would consider traditional anti-piracy because once you know the code and it's pretty easy to just to Google the code itself then you are good to proceed now star Tropics 1 was not the only game that featured anti-piracy in fact Zuma's Revenge the SQL star Tropics 2 also came with an anti-piracy measure albeit a more sophisticated one in 1994 the sequel to Star Tropics known as zoda's Revenge was released in North America once again developed by Nintendo R&D 3 in Japan this would be the final game developed by Nintendo exclusively for the NES and once again would feature Mike Jones in a brand new adventure this game features nine chapters of Adventure where you decipher codes solve Mysteries battle dragons in an Epic Journey Through Time and Space overall zoda's revenge is a bigger and more ambitious sequel what you may not know about zoda's revenge is that it also contains a form of anti-piracy within the game gone is the letter in the water gimmick replaced with a more traditional form of anti-piracy when the game is plugged in and turned on on it performs a check sum against the title and data and determines if anything has been tampered usually when bootlegs are made a title screen or something is altered if this test fails the game simply starts to flash between black and white this is very similar to when the 10 NES lockout chip determines a bootleg and simply resets the NES over and over again it also simulates a cartridge that hasn't been plugged in correctly but in this instance the game isn't being locked out it's simply being simulated in this way and if you let the game flash between black and white eventually after about 5 minutes or so it does throw you into the game there are also certain areas of code that are selected randomly and execute it just as you're about to start a new chapter of the game this anti-piracy check kicks in from chapter 5 if the block of code does not match what's expected the anti-piracy check will fail and dump you back to chapter 2 unable to complete the game now this more traditional form of anti-piracy was put in place because it was the time where disc cop started to become more popular and having this additional level of copy protection meant that this game would not be playable on anything other than original Hardware with the original game but in conclusion both star Tropics 1 and star Tropics 2 contained interesting forms of anti-piracy whether you believe star Tropics 1's letter in the water was anti-piracy is certainly up for interpretation but in the end I have a lot of love for both star Tropics 1 and star Tropics 2 everything about these games including the letter gimmick is something that is just bathe in Nostalgia for me so if you are interested in playing a really cool set of action adventure games from the early '90s then you could do a lot worse than checking out star Tropics 1 and 2 so there you have it guys Star Tropics 1 and 2 some of my early favorite Nintendo games with these interesting anti-piracy measures in place we're going to leave it here for today's episode guys thank you so much for watching if you liked it please don't forget to leave me a thumbs up and I'll catch you guys in the next one bye for [Music] now

Channel: Modern Vintage Gamer

Views: 356,560

Keywords: nes, nes games, nintendo entertainment system, nintendo, startropics, startropics 2, anti piracy, drm, cracking, letter, manual protection, copy protection, 747, rental, video game rental, mvg, modern vintage gamer, 8 bit, zoda's revenge, nso, nintendo switch, nes classic, virtual console, wii

Id: Nl_aDNd8ZAE

Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2023