DS #2107: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Rings Of Fate (USA)

[Kamakazie]

flashed with G6 Lite on Safe Mode and I got the dreaded screen. Will test with DoFAT tomorrow.

 

[BlueStar]

I'm not incredibly worried, if anything will spur the R4 chackers into action it's a major game that's hugely popular both in the west and the far east which contains copy protection pretty specific to their device and which has spared their main competitors. I'm sure they're working round the clock stuffing rice in their face with one hand and setting the keyboard ablaze with their hardcore chacker skills with the other.

If not I guess it's time to upgrade to the CycloDS, which would be a shame cos a mate of mine is a big Final Fantasy fan and she only got her R4 last week.

 

[DarkCamui]

Couldn't stand the english voices so I downloaded the Japanese rom and took out the sound files and put those into the english rom. Got R4 though so I have to wait for a fix or firmware update.

 

[Doggy124]

what if this protection also come with games in the future?

 

[Social0]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

 

[cory1492]

Why does everyone always assume it is "protection" rather than simply a compatibility issue? (Like those games that used a different mask ROM ages ago, which because the dumpers were not coded to compensate everyone assumed it was "protection"

.)

Sounds to me like there is a pointer to the pak file getting trashed somewhere along the way, maybe even directly to do with whatever is done to the ROM by very specific methods that make it work on unofficial hardware in the first place. Might even be a good test to see exactly which "teams" are snaking code from competitors...

 

[darchibald]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

it makes sense!!

 

[Osaka]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

 

[Kellicros]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

Just to piss off us lil pirates, it is like "GOTCHA!".

 

[Nehle]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

The fact that newer cards don't get the screen. It's not like those new cards have some "anti-kiosk" features or accidental incompatability that coincidentally removes the exactly right features

...right?

 

[dakeyras]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

As a teaser maybe?

 

[Nehle]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

Read that article about Dungeon Master. Making anti-piracy measures act later in the game, seemingly at random, makes it much harder for hackers to actually verify that their crack works. This is a good example of anti-piracy being integrated into the game instead of tacked on afterwards.

Edit: Hell, according to that IRC log, some people suggested nuking it. That's probably a game developers dream - having perfect dumps of their game nuked because people were fooled by the anti-piracy

 

[Osaka]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

Read that article about Dungeon Master. Making anti-piracy measures act later in the game, seemingly at random, makes it much harder for hackers to actually verify that their crack works. This is a good example of anti-piracy being integrated into the game instead of tacked on afterwards.

Edit: Hell, according to that IRC log, some people suggested nuking it. That's probably a game developers dream - having perfect dumps of their game nuked because people were fooled by the anti-piracy

yes, they may have made it like this to make it appear as a demo

 

[CockroachMan]

Hooray! It's out!
Damn.. have to wait for a M3 Simply update now..

 

[Social0]

I can confirm that this "thank you for playing " screen also popped up on my G6 Real

 

[NekoDS]

Pretty smart way of using copy-protection, can't say that I didn't see such a thing not happening in the near future.

It reminds me of the pirated versions of Earthbound where the pirated version would throw more enemies at you and when you got to the last boss the game would freeze and delete your data.

Let's hope they don't actually go that far again.

 

[Serabii]

I'm kinda pissed off now... I just realized just recently (after playing) that this game is unplayable for my R4 ><

oh well... might as well play some other games until the R4 team can make an update

 

[Social0]

I don't think it'll be an update for flashcarts that solves this. Probably a patch for the rom itself

Has anyone got the courage to try and build a custom rom out of the JAP and ENG version?

As in, replace contents etc...

Just to see if that works?

 

[Nehle]

I actually like this approach, it's like "Okay, look, we know you pirated this so consider it a free demo, now go out and buy the real thing, okay?

" instead of "ARGH PIRATE FUCK OFF

"

More civil

 

[BlueStar]

Why does everyone rule out the chance that this is merely a kiosk full version of the game or something? It doesn't look like a copy protection they would use to combat piracy

Thinking about that, if it is a copy protection, why did they put it on a timer? why didn't they just make it pop up when you turn it on and have it, instead of saying "thanks for playing", just show a Moogle flipping you off or something?

This kind of copy protection has been around for ages, Command and Conquer Red Alert had all your units randomly blow up during one of the early levels if it detected you'd been monkeying with the copy protection rather than just refusing to play at all. A single screen to get past is a dream for crackers and once you've done it you know it's finished. With random checks and randomly throwing you out of the game it's firstly much harder to make sure you've found all the checks and you're never quite sure when you can release the crack as done.

Yes, it's stupid when a game simply doesn't work and people assume it's 'copy protection', but not when a game is displaying all the classic signs of a traditional type of protection like this game is. Random freezes, black screens, refusing to boot, those are usually what you get when you have a compatibility issue, not turning the game into a demo and giving you a goodbye screen.

EDIT: Going further back Manic Mansion had the copy protection in the door on the second floor, so you could explore about half the game but couldn't progress beyond a certain point.