LGR - Arcade Game Copy Protection & DRM
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- An overview of copy protection and DRM schemes used in coin-op arcade gaming, covering the most notable and interesting methods from the early 80's on up through today!
● Please consider helping support LGR on Patreon! / lazygamereviews
Featured on TH-cam's Geek Week on August 8, 2013.
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The arcade game makers sure came up with a lot of crazy copy protection schemes... but I'm surprised they missed the best and most effective way to keep arcade owners from copying games: make the player invincible. No arcade owner would want someone playing on a single quarter for hours on end!
I had a suicide battery die on a Shinobi board a while back, all it really did was disable the sound. Thank god for the online arcade community, as I was able to find a different revision that didn't use it. All I had to do was copy a few eproms and replace the z80 processor with a z80b.
That suicide battery is just cruel.
i agree!
Not to bad actually. Unlike what the Video states in Capcom's case the Game is still stored on ROM. Only the decryption Keys are stored in RAM. Battery dies and then yes the encryption keys are gone but not the game.
In CPS2 Games (street fighter 2 era) the battery can last many many years. and they are easy to change. You can pull the battery and you have about 45 minutes before the ram actually losses the keys.
Not to mention this encryption they use has been broken. If your game suicides. Pull the ROM chips. Load the un-encrpyted rom for the game on them. Reinstall them on the board and you are back in business.
No, you can't say "it's fixed now" as a justification for how much it sucked back in the day. I saw several machines go down due to bad suicide batteries at the arcade I worked at, and we had no way to get them back in action without sending the boards in for replacement. It was infuriating, especially as we were directly run by Namco.
You mean evil instead of cruel, right?
Konami was absolutely awful with their suicide batteries. They used timekeeper RAMs or RTCs (real-time clocks). If the game has not been dumped in MAME, the entire game will become useless after it dies since there was no reliable backup. See my Racing Jam Chapter II video for more info.
One can really tell that you're doing your research prior to making videos. Great work, and lots of information in a few minutes. Thanks for being the light at the end of the dark TH-cam gaming-channel tunnel.
+1 like.
I appreciate it!
Oh wow, I didn't even know arcade games HAD copy protection. I learned a thing today!
same here
Primal Rage's DRM was so good that it STILL hasn't been cracked, and the dev team refuses to help, even for official releases. As such, there is no arcade perfect version anywhere to be found. Even the MAME ROM and the version on Midway Arcade Classics 2 are imperfect and buggy.
I've never heard anyone say anything good about Primal Rage, so I don't really think it's much of a loss...
q306005
RAGE!
Now it's cracked!
How does it work?.
Fun fact: Donkey Kong uses a clever bit of code to validate the characters "INTEND" from the Nintendo copyright on the title screen. The check is done at the beginning of a level, but the game does not actually crash until several seconds later, making it rather hard for programmers of the time to debug. This protection type was used to prevent re-branding or clones of the game. Crazy Kong/Congorilla are mistakenly thought as bootlegs, but are actually licensed copies with redesigned sprites by Falcon.
That's a good point. The earliest protections didn't keep you from cloning the game, they just made sure the copyright messages were left intact.
Your reviews aren't lazy at all, man. Nice vid.
I'm glad this stuff gets cracked... _someone_ needs to preserve the history of the video game medium, and developers and publishers can't be relied upon to do so.
I just learned how to replace the battery on my MvC machine, and I thank god for it. It's now an every-4-year thing, cause I don't want to lose it. Screw you, Capcom, for making me change a battery on a giant arcade machine
Well, as batteries get better over time you could just replace the battery with one that lasts twice as long as before and so on.
Good thing CPS2 is actually easy to replace, It could be worse. You don't need a helper battery with CPS2.
True. I can't think what some machines would be if they are the sucky button cells
I wonder if a rechargable battery could be used. Then you don't have to buy replacements for a long time.
"One way to protect the ROM chips was to encrypt them somehow"
Or have like 10 thousand chips so you can't tell which one to steal
+12Me21 all chips need to be labeled to prevent mixup at either the factory or during repair, and for the repair you just look to a repair manual to tell which of the seemingly infinite chips is the game rom
@@cpufreak101 nah I've seen some boards with unlabeled chips. I can only imagine they remove them right before shipping
I will be watching more of your videos next LGR! Love the content
Thank you, glad to hear it!
+john farley Check out his older content. I sometimes go back and rewatch them
I've been playing and reading up on videogames for over 25 years now and this is the very first time about there being DRM on arcade machines. So, erm, thanks for educating me man !
I find it hilarious that "dongle" is the technical term.
Expand dongle
That thunder force 4 song remix at the end. Had to hear it a few times to be sure.
Yay!!!! Another video!! Congrats on getting featured on TH-cams Geek-Week!!!!
As always, it's a mix of both. I've always found these methods of protection interesting over the years, and just sort of amassed a mental list of things I'd like to cover in video form sometime. Then when it comes time to do it, I go and re-research and try to get all the facts straight for the script!
One point to start on is that the earliest protections didn't really keep anyone from cloning the ROMs or game boards, they were simply hidden bits of code that made sure the copyright message was on the attract screen or they'd mess up the game. They were afraid of people knocking off the game and selling it in other markets as their own.
I certainly hope to, as it was one of my absolute favorite fighters back in the day. Would like to cover the DOS PC version as well, as it's actually pretty close to the arcade original.
The PC based arcade protections would make a video of their own. Sega Ringwide being notoriously known for the people who got a look inside one and can say the stuff ain't going to be cracked open anytime soon. Multitudes of both hardware/software based stuff there.
Also did you know? Some konami based arcade PCB's (or just, the central unit, a Windows PC) Can be booted into the PC's safe mode with USB keyboard and inputting the konami code.
aaaaaand now we have a semi-working ringwide/edge emulator
Great video, I absolutely love your arcade game reviews and your DRM videos, they're really informative and freakin' awesome. I love being able to learn about both new and old games on your channel. Thanks, LGR!!
the USB dongle liscense keys some more recent games use are still iffy, and often they're screwed into the side of a cabinet and connected to the PC in the game via usb extension cable. Sometimes this gets flaky and the best solution is to unscrew the liscense thumbdrive from the wall of the cabinet and plug it directly into the game PC.
The first DRM video was probably my favorite video LGR has ever made. I'm so glad he made this second video!
Spinning a 2p as it dropped into an old metal, microswitched coin mech used to work well, the spin allowed the coin to pass the rejected coin slot and trigger the microswitch. `Strumming` using a bit of plastic cord to bounce the microswitch worked until operators started putting countermeasures in the mechs. Electrolighters used to work putting one terminal to the reject coin button and the other to the metal body of the mech. You could glitch the machines using the electrolighter as well.
your videos are so awesome. I enjoy every single one of them! thank you
I found out about the suicide battery on various PCB boards when I was looking up information about games compatible with MAME. Not sure how many games were lost due to having to have the board powered by a battery. You could get around it by connecting another board but you would lose that one. There were hundreds of Streetfighter II rom hacks that ended up in arcades.
Namco arcade hardware usually has a dongle as well, on the PS2 based on it's a special magic gate memory card.
Game boards that use RAM instead of ROM memory and a battery from pirating!? That is messed up.
Messed up, probably, but it was one HELL of a way to protect your code, and a money generator selling replacement RAM Units or otherwise something else short-term to reflash the code onto the RAM chips in the system.
brainstar64
CAPCOM made a lot of money "reflashing" CPS2 boards but their idea backfired with the CPS3, which aside from being a 2D system at the time when everybody was going 3D, arcade operators realized that the CPS2 boards were dying on their own so they said FUCK THIS CPS SHIT! and chose the Naomi instead...
+brainstar64
Guess what, the pirates actually found a way around that one too. They dumped the RAM into code and managed to program a ROM chip that could be soldered onto a board, or they could make a board themselves. The worst one though was the Sega-16 board which was the single most sensitive board ever.
FedorovAvtomat
years after the CPS2 was discontinued...
Omega Rugal
No, they were available in about '95, however the replaceable ROM chips were quite hard to find. Mostly pirated boards existed.
I know it's pedantic but just for completeness, beatmania IIDX including Tricoro use hardware dongles which are _I think_ DIN plugs for some reason (one for the game, one for the system), not an always on connection - though without Internet/registration/your arcade paying Konami fees you miss out on a lot of game content. I just thought some people might like to know since many are talking about it! Oh, and excellent video!
Lovin' "Arcade August." Will we see some Paper Boy arcade cabinet action?
I like that you even showed beatmania IIDX 20 as example of always online DRM arcade machine. That is indeed only case of arcade DRM I knew, before this vid at least. Japan in general is crazy how they have quite full blown services for coin arcade game that has ceased all home console versions too.
A lot of machines have a battery on the mainboard for other purposes (like high score keeping and settings keeping) but even those that don't brick the board by losing the memory, can still brick the board by leaking on it. On my pinball machine I mounted the score keeper battery off board so that it cannot destroy the mainboard if it leaks.
I use to work for a company that takes care of the games for theaters and some restaurants. I was walking into the arcade of one of the theaters and cought a guy taking the sitdown pirates game apart. He had both guns off and was working on removing the back panel when I showed up. Lol, without saying a word i grabbed one of the guns and ask for the manager. He bolted very quickly after.
Oh fun fact most modern arcade games are nothing more then dell optiplex's with a few external interface cards to help sort out the controler inputs. The DRM in most cases are small thumb drives.
Pretty much, yeah. They were examples of games that used the methods of copy protection I was talking about at the moment.
This is really awesome, as are all of your videos.
I love learning about these kinds of protections.
You're the best LGR
I had no idea about this. Awesome to get the details. You rock man.
I have an idea for future use: The history of portable/removable storage. Stuff(In no chronological order whatsoever) like floppy disks, flash drives, external hard drives, zip drives, tapes, and whatever else there is. That could be an interesting topic.
Good point, but he actually was also talking about today. The methods talked about at the end are recent methods. New Arcade units are still pretty expensive though.
Most of the proprietary protection chips were simply to make it difficult to produce a clone board since most of the parts on early arcade boards were off-the-shelf types. This ensured that there would be a least one part that people couldn't get and they'd have to break the protection to move forward. There weren't a lot of cross-game compatible boards at first, which each game board being spec'd for the game it needed to support, but more general purpose platforms did eventually arise which meant a game swap needed to be more just the copyable ROMs. One early example was the auxiliary board needed to run Ms. Pac Man, and then the epoxy sealed box needed for Pac-Man Plus.
Now that is interesting! Makes complete sense, always wondered why those ports were strange.
Dongle copy protection was from hell at least with games on home computers. As a kid I was happily playing Robocop3 until my dad came and took the dongle out from joystick port for closer inspection in the middle of the game and it broke and game didn't work anymore. What a great invention.
You really make the perfect videos to watch while eating lunch :)
Holy crap! This channel got featured by TH-cam for geekweek! Yay :D I don't think I've ever seen an LGR video hit that 301+ thing.
Apparently, there was a good reason why Primal Rage played so weird on Midway Arcade Treasures 2: The game was encrypted so weirdly that it was made impossible to port correctly. The one version you'd expect a perfect port from has weird blood misdrawing to look like pus instead and the music was timed incorrectly. This was because the people that made the game still don't want to release the algorithm to unencrypt it, most likely wanting to take it to the grave with them (if not already)
It was a video filter for Geek Week, that made the video look like an old comic book.
I love revisiting this video
Two SNES chips had embedded CPUs. Nintendo's SDD1 and Hudson's SPC7110. Pirates played the (few) games on a hacked console to send VRAM (post-decompression) data to a PC so emulators could swap in the ripped data, years before the actual code was figured out.
Arcade games like Capcom's were first emulated similarly (data somehow intercepted on its way through the PCB, then the pre-decrpyted data was uploaded to the Internet). I think it was the late 2000s before the actual code was figured out.
Nice Thunder Force IV music at the end! Classy!
Some of the MCUs used by SEGA in the late 80's (and Namco in the 90's) are downright sinister contraptions, needing decaping and utmost effort to dump the RAMs volatile content.
Sweet! Thanks for this. Reminds me of the good ol' days... -Michelle
Actually, I covered the Serious Sam invincible scorpion and many others in my Computer Game DRM video, which is linked to at the very end of this one :)
For extra protection, the DECO cassette also required one of those dongles to play, according to Wikipedia.
Great video, I have always loved the info in your videos. I have even used your video about software DRM to make a presentation in a school project!
Cool video and hard to believe the amount of copy protection needed for an arcade then again arcades are complex machines.
to be more accurate, the suicide battery powered the memory holding the decryption table or something else required for bootup, and not the actual game itself. Since that era some really smart people found that these games with dead batteries could be restored to working order with the proper know how.
Copy protection is very important. Thanks for the video.
WHOLY CRAPOLA!! LGR is featured in TH-cams Geek Week Congrats LGR!
2:29 Aww Taito went the extra mile and engraved their kawaii mascot the Bubble Dragon into the chip!
No, not necessarily. It doesn't have to be a dedicated cabinet to be legit. Many games were sold as upgrade kits -- just the game board, instructions, marquee, etc.. The JAMMA standard for wiring arcade games was introduced in 1985; this allowed arcade owners to easily buy and switch out games without buying a whole new machine or doing tedious rewiring work. Unless it's a game that _needs_ a special cabinet, it would be most common to see it in a standard "generic" cabinet.
Wait.... the internet-connected ones actually check your location? So then people in the US will never be able to play these things? I see all kinds of music-based arcade games I never knew existed in the US at conventions, sad to think some of those would be impossible to play here.
xD just wait for hackers to crack it
It's called VPN. Very useful to spoof location
If you are talking about beatmania, pop n music or jubeat, konami actually allows the games to connect from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection... well that or they are using pirated versions found on bemaniso or Leggendaria
Actually My second comment to this video:
The PC based arcade hardware has a LOT of some funny protections as I hear, Rhythm games have IO device checks, data integrity checks and so on beside the now quite fresh Always-on-DRM. I heard about mirror encrypted group of hard drives making the data pretty much quite hard to crack, and Japanese laws and game companies holding operators in strict rules also make attempts to rip HDD's hard.
Oh, and they are Windows based game, yes. No linux in Japan.
Can you do copy protection in console games?
Heh, I keep forgetting that I even did these videos! I'd love to cover that sometime, yeah.
Lazy Game Reviews try to keep it from devolving into a why Nintendo sucks video
Lazy Game Reviews please do
Yes please :)
SGNRyan ur
Hell man, I love your videos. They are informative, different and entertaining.
I really wish Konami didn't put their stupid e-Amusement DRM in games like DDR and Beatmania. You end up unable to play it unless in Asia.
I knew someone was gonna say this
Odd. My local arcade (being Round 1) has Pendual and it runs just fine. But yes, I am with you.
TriPhone4 Round 1 is a special case. Round 1 arcades actually have proper permission from konami to hook up to the official eamusement drm servers so they can run the latest versions of the games. This is exclusive to round 1 arcades though so if you live outside America then you are stuck with IIDX 19 lincle or lower
So is Round 1 the only chain that has permission from Konami?
TriPhone4 Yup
Thanks, glad you're enjoying! Unfortunately not, as I wasn't able to get footage of Paper Boy when I was at the arcade...
Hmm, maybe a job for a certain someone with the initials PUR that also just reviewed an arcade game from the same arcade? ;)
Arcade owners, mostly. Just think about it: many of the games used the same hardware, except for the ROM chips. Copy the chips of a new game and install them in an old machine and bam, totally new game for people to pay you to play, all without you having to pay full price to a manufacturer. I listed the other kinds of people who might want to copy these games in the video...
02:29 bubble bobble little dragon with the black eyes in the chip looks demonic XD...
On the theme of a suicide battery... Not forgetting sega's infamous 'suicide' chip... a combination of battery, micro controller and RAM for it's program, all entombed in a thick plastic shell... (if you think trying to hack open a dallas clock chip is bad enough)
it sat between the arcade board and the encrypted game ROMs... once the internal battery got to low or died... the decryption program was lost... rendering your arcade machine... as useful as an oversize door stop..
Yay a gaming history video. I really enjoy these.
Sometimes I wish the time back.. good memories.
xD even arcade owners have to deal with allways-online DRM
also whos fucking idea was the suicide battery completely destroying the product because you dared try to modify it is just evil
why not jave a rechargable one that charges while still plugged in and if theres no power, it would be on the battery tovnot lose data
Another excellent LGR video. Thanks for the entertainment.
The difficulty was reading from the RAM without removing power from the chips. Given that the only to read externally would usually be to desolder them, it was effective.
What wasn't effective was how the games had an expiration date, however.
3:42 - Oh, shit - the blast from the past.
Keep in mind he's talking about the late 70s to early 90s (and really primarily the late 70s and early 80s), not today, when most people didn't have video game systems or computers, and the ones that were out were nowhere near the arcade systems. The arcade cabinets then cost thousands of dollars (or even $10k adjusted w/ inflation) and newer games would bring in hundreds of $ per month more than old games. A pirate would be saving/making tens of thousands of dollars... more than "a few bucks".
As happy as I am for you Clint, Geekweek is still an utter abomination of good taste
I heard that early versions of DJMAX Technika required a certain USB dongle (same technique as in DJMAX Trilogy) to be inserted to operate the machine properly.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the method Capcom used for their CPS-3 system with its use of the suicide battery along with a CD that contains the game and a cartridge that holds the decryption data to even play it. It was really kinda ingenious for copy protection.
eYe had no idea there was DRM in the cabinet games "I use to play back in the day" (aka ClueLess)... That was a reel I opener. Thank you!
I remember when people used to say "CPS3 will never be cracked deal with it"
Now, it's Denuevo
Now it's the PS3 super slim or any "unhackable" system to be honest. What people seem to forget is that NO system is 100% secure.
:3 give it a few years, right now not enough people care about the PS3 Slim or Super Slim, but they WILL be cracked
Silica Yep, even if it takes a modchip. We've got full physical access to the system. It can already be compromised if we focus attention on hardware hacks rather than just software.
@@ProGamer1515 me looking back from the future and lel
**I FUCKING CALLED IT**
I always learn so much watching your videos :3 thanks, Clint!
No, but it was an example of what a USB dongle looks like, and since I couldn't find a picture of the exact type for the arcade games I was taking about, I used it.
Though, the funny thing about the whole DDR thing in the states is that only 2 Mixes were ever legal in the states (Dance Dance Revolution and DDR USA), none of the more popular mixes (like the still ever present DDR Extreme). It wasn't until DDR X3 when Konami put the always online DRM into the Arcade machines. Though the X series has had its own problems (embaresing announcer chatter, songs outright breaking themselves)
Congrats on the feature, dude!
All that protection and look at today. You can download everything. Wii u only been out like 3 years and you can download it for free. No matter how many locks are placed in the system it will always be cracked.
So, why taiko no tatsujin 1-6 doesn't cracked
IIDX 20th Tricoro! Beatmania is probably the longest series/franchise of all time, and it's on Arcades! (well PS/PS2 too, but Bemani discontinued IIDX after 16th Empress)
very interesting. Thanks for the effort Duke!
The little bubble dragon by Taito on one of the chips looked like a angry Bubblun XD
You used "fighting back" melody from Thunder Force IV game! Cool!
So happy for the namedrop of IIDX Tricoro~
Oh yeah, arcade games were quite frequently used as showcases of the best technology in gaming at the time!
Good to know... In Brazil most of arcade´s machines were copies!!!
I really liked Nintendo's PPU from the Vs. arcade hardware. The PPU was a copy protection chip that contained no ROM data, and instead contained the color info. If you used the wrong PPU with the wrong game, then the colors would be all messed up and make the game near unplayable in most cases. The PPU still has not been cracked, and they still fetch a good price on eBay, as most PPUs work for a few games each.
Thunder Force music? You’re a man of taste.
nice youtube geek week video
One time, I was visiting an arcade in Flagstaff, AZ, and there was a Donkey Kong cabinet, but none of the sprites were there. No Mario, no DK, no barrels, nothing. It was like playing ghost Donkey Kong.
Also, has there ever been word of someone who would take the arcade PCB and build a console around it to hook up to a monitor? I would like to learn how to do that. That would be awesome.
I love it when he uses Britishisms occasionally like "arses" instead of "asses" in this video. Is it because he has so many British fans?
Yay for LGR and PUR!!
Sun workstations had suicide batteries. If the battery went bad, the ethernet MAC would change to all F's. You could load the MAC into ram before booting up, but you typically had to do it each time.
Just the way they designed it, the MAC was programmed into volatile ram backed up by the battery. They didn't expect people would still be using it 10+ years later.
I suppose if the board is replaced, they can easily transfer the MAC over. In that case if the company has the IP address assigned to the MAC via DHCP, they won't have to reconfigure anything,
We just got bit by the Suicide Batteries from Sun last week. That was not a fun phone call, considering that Sun got bought out by Oracle. They couldn't even find the database to pull our serial number from. I had to do the MAC Address change while booting the Linux kernel, otherwise somebody would have to sit in front of the system in the Datacenter to tell me it's IP Address from DHCP.
Sure. The problem is not getting power to the chip, the problem is getting the chip to an EPROM reader/burner. You had to physically move the chip to a reader to grab the contents, and it'd lose its contents as soon as you did that. People figured out a way to do so eventually though, since downloadable ROMs of these games exist now.
It would be awesome if you covered DRM in consoles and handheld gaming, like Earthbound's DRM, and the buy it or die thing in pokemon firered.