Alternatively, the game may simply attempt to overwrite critical program instructions, which if successful renders it unplayable. By reading the value back to see whether the write succeeded, the game could tell whether it was running from an authentic cartridge. Pirate cartridges also often used writable chips instead of ROM. On an authentic cartridge this would do nothing however, emulators would often allow the write to succeed. The full decryption algorithm was cracked in 2007 by Nicola Salmoria, Andreas Naive and Charles MacDonald of the MAME development team.Īnother copy prevention technique used in cartridge-games was to have the game attempt to write to ROM. Their stated intent was to wait until CPS-2 games were no longer profitable to release the decryption method (three years after the last game release). The original crack by the CPS2Shock Team was not a true emulation of the protection because it used XOR tables to bypass the original encryption and allow the game to play in an emulator. This contained a heavy copy protection algorithm which was not broken until 7 years after the system's release in 1993. However, as early as 2000, hackers found a way to decrypt and dump the ROMs successfully, making them playable once again in a Neo Geo emulator.Īnother company which used to employ methods of copy prevention on their arcade games was Capcom, which is known for its CPS-2 arcade board. Many thought that this would mark the end of Neo Geo emulation. SNK also employed a method of copy prevention on their Neo Geo games, starting with The King of Fighters in 1999, which used an encryption algorithm on the graphics ROMs to prevent them from being played in an emulator. It was not until a security hole was found in Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II that GameCube games could be successfully copied, using the GameCube itself to read the discs. For instance, the Nintendo GameCube used non-standard 8 cm DVD-like optical media, which for a long time prevented games stored on those discs from being copied.

Viewing this as potentially reducing sales of their products, many game companies have incorporated so-called features into newer games which are designed to prevent copying, while still allowing the original game to be played.

While ROM images are often used as a means of preserving the history of computer games, they are also often used to facilitate the unauthorized copying and redistribution of modern games. For most common home video game systems, these devices are widely available, examples being the Doctor V64, or the Retrode.ĭumping ROMs from arcade machines, which are highly customized PCBs, often requires individual setups for each machine along with a large amount of expertise. ROMs can be copied from the read-only memory chips found in cartridge-based games and many arcade machines using a dedicated device in a process known as dumping. A ROM dumping device for the Game Boy Advance

Rom hacking tools online