Trivia Browser

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Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings
Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (1999)
subdirectory_arrow_right Age of Empires (Game)
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Attachment Despite being largely forgotten in favor of its sequels, the original Age of Empires remained popular decades later in Vietnam, due in large part to pirated copies of the game being bundled in Vietnamese computers and a long history of LAN matches dating back to the 1990's. Modern Vietnamese players often use custom rulesets, and top players have earned tens of thousands of dollars in tournaments viewed by audiences as high as the hundreds of thousands.

In 2023, this popularity in Vietnam was formally acknowledged by Forgotten Empires, the modern developers of the series, in their "Return of Rome" expansion for Age of Empires II, which ported and updated content from the original Age of Empires to Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition. The expansion included a new faction, Lac Viet, "in honor and recognition of ["The Rise of Rome" expansion from the first Age of Empires game's] phenomenal popularity in Vietnam."
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Bonus Content, Bundled/Pack-In Game, Downloadable Content (DLC), General, Piracy, Real Life, Update Difference
person Salnax calendar_month November 14, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
subdirectory_arrow_right Game Boy (Platform), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform)
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Attachment Popular conceptions about Nintendo's release history in Europe claim that their hardware was never released in the former Eastern Bloc until the 21st century. Rather, these countries instead saw the proliferation of various clone consoles called "Famiclones", such as the Dendy (a Taiwanese-built bootleg that achieved widespread popularity in the Commonwealth of Independent States, made up of the ex-republics of the former Soviet Union) and the Pegasus (which became as popular in Poland as the Dendy did in Eastern Europe). However, while Famiclones did indeed dominate the Eastern European gaming market during the 1990s, Nintendo was not only aware of this, but actively attempted to halt the spread of bootlegs in these regions in favor of officially sanctioned products.

In 1994, Nintendo made a deal with Steepler, the Dendy's distributor in Eastern Europe, to permit continued sale of the Dendy in exchange for equal distribution of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy in the Commonwealth of Independent States; official Russian releases of these systems even included Dendy stickers on the packaging to reflect the arrangement. Meanwhile, in various other parts of the former Eastern Bloc, Nintendo made deals with other third-party distributors; among others, the NES, SNES, and Game Boy saw official releases in Poland, Hungary, and the former territories of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia during 1993–1994.
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Anti-Piracy, Box Art, Console Difference, Copyright, Corporate Affairs, Legal Affairs, Misconception, Piracy, Real Life, Regional Difference, Release Date
person VinchVolt calendar_month August 23, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Game & Watch Collection
Game & Watch Collection (2006)
subdirectory_arrow_right Nintendo DSi (Platform), Nintendo 3DS (Platform)
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When run on a Nintendo DSi or Nintendo 3DS, Action Replay DSi's icon and title will be listed as Game & Watch Collection. This is a way of working around the DSi's bootleg game protection, which is done by having a built-in whitelist of every official DS game, which Action Replay circumvents by tricking the device into thinking Game & Watch Collection is being played. Action Replay DSi contains almost every byte of data from Game & Watch Collection, but jumbled into an unplayable format.
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Cheat, Piracy, Technology
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month June 19, 2024
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Doubutsu no Mori
Doubutsu no Mori (2001)
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The source code for Doubutsu no Mori contains references to a variety of non-Nintendo Famicom ROMs that would not appear in the final game, including Arkanoid, F1 Circus, and most bizarrely, the bootleg port of Tekken 2 by Hummer Team.
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Development, Emulation, Fan Works, Piracy, Source Code, Unused Code, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month April 1, 2024
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Pokémon Black Version
Pokémon Black Version (2010)
subdirectory_arrow_right Pokémon Black Version 2 (Game), Pokémon White Version 2 (Game), Pokémon White Version (Game)
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Attachment When Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2 first released in Japan, fake leaks were posted on various websites claiming to be ROMs of the game, but in reality contained an FMV of a parody of the theme song to the Disney Channel series Cory in the House. The parody featured several of the games' characters and other memes at the time superimposed over the actors' heads, including talk show host Stephen Colbert, a caricature of the Pokémon fan website Serebii.net with a Trollface superimposed over it, and legacy Pokémon character Gary Oak. Before the title card of the show appears at the end, a barely visible screenshot of a post from the imageboard 4chan can be seen featuring the box art of the Nintendo DS game adaptation of the show, implying that the parody and fake ROMs originated from there. The video also features several scrolling text statements including:

• "Amber killed Gary" - supposedly referring to an incident on 4chan's dedicated Pokémon board /vp/ starting on August 26, 2010 where several posters using Gary Oak and Mewtwo as avatars tried to "revive" or "kill" the anime-only character Amber from The Uncut Story of Mewtwo's Origin by trying to predict their post numbers in advance.
• "SHE IS BLACK ?!?" - referring to Pokémon Black & White Gym Leader Lenora.
• "GIANT HAIR EVERYWHERE" - on the following shot with four Bouffalants superimposed over Mount Rushmore.
• "FINAL GYM LEADER (IT HAS BEEN SEREBII CONFIRMED)" - referring to Iris, the last Gym Leader in Pokémon White and seems to be referring to leaks from the first Pokémon Black and Pokémon White games.
• "THIS FLOATING TEXT IS UP IN YO' SCREEN DAWG"
• "AMERICA" - on a shot of Stephen Colbert.

An upload of the fake ROM's FMV on YouTube dates back to September 16, 2010, two days before Pokemon Black & White's release date in Japan, and features several comments mentioning 4chan and /vp/ on top of the references in the video, suggesting that the hoax actually dates back to the release of the first Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, although discussion of this FMV from that time does not appear to have been preserved. While this ROM is also not known to be preserved (though its contents are), as recently as 2018 there have been reports of ROM dumps of Pokémon White 2 being silently modified to include Cory in the House references, including NPCs with dialogue featuring the lyrics to the show's theme song.
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Emulation, Fan Works, Hoax, Leak, Meme, Modding, Parody, Piracy, Reference, Social Media, Suggested, Theory
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month March 14, 2024
comment Comment (0) | Source
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GBATemp forum thread from Pokémon Black & White 2's release discussing the Cory "leaks":
https://gbatemp.net/threads/pokemon-black-white-2-j-ot.325098/page-59

The Cory in the House FMV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTcf2n7WODU

A documented Cory-related mod in Pokémon White 2:
https://www.realmeye.com/forum/t/pokemon-white-2-has-a-cory-in-the-house-reference/29349/6

Bulbapedia user article on /vp/ that seems to be the only archived text online explaining what "Amber killed Gary" even means:
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/User:The_Great_Butler//vp/#Notable_Creations
Platform: Nintendo Switch
subdirectory_arrow_right Nintendo (Company)
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In 2020, hackers Gary Bowser and Max "MAXiMiLiEN" Louarn were arrested and extradited to the United States for money laundering and selling products meant to crack the Nintendo Switch's copy protection to run pirated copies of games. The two were members of Team Xecuter, a hacking group which specialized in similar measures for a large number of Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft consoles. In 2021, Bowser pled guilty on conspiracy and trafficking charges and was sentenced to 40 months in prison; Nintendo later filed a separate civil suit against him, which together with the prison sentence left him $14.5 million in debt. The company's legal department claimed during the court case that the unusually severe punishments were intended to send a chilling effect through the piracy world, intimidating would-be hackers by using Bowser's punishment as an example.

Following the case, multiple news outlets noted the irony of Gary Bowser's last name, which is shared with Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser and Mario series antagonist Bowser.
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Anti-Piracy, Corporate Affairs, Financial Affairs, General, Legal Affairs, Piracy, Real Life
person ProtoSnake calendar_month February 2, 2024
comment Comment (9) | Source
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Max & the Magic Marker
Max & the Magic Marker (2010)
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The NTSC release of the Nintendo DS version of Max & the Magic Marker has the entirety of the song "Wonderwall" by Oasis in its files, complete with audio tag metadata and the cover artwork of their album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?.
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Music, Piracy, Unused Audio, Unused Content, Unused Text
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month January 24, 2024
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Alien Resurrection
Alien Resurrection (2000)
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On December 19, 2023, programmer Martin Piper revealed a pair of hidden cheat codes he included in the original release of Alien Resurrection. To execute these codes, you need to go into the game's Options menu and unlock the Cheat Menu with the code Circle/Left on the D-Pad/Right on the D-Pad/Circle/Up on the D-Pad/R2. The cheats Piper revealed include the following:

• A level selection menu can be unlocked in the Options menu right after unlocking the Cheat Menu by pressing R1/Down on the D-Pad/R1/Right on the D-Pad/L1/Up on the D-Pad/L2/Square. If entered correctly, you will hear a "bonk" sound indicating the code has been activated. Re-entering the Cheat Menu will reveal an additional option to re-visit any section in any level in the game.

• The more notable of the two codes Piper revealed is one that allows the Alien Resurrection disc to act as a boot disc to play PlayStation games on any burned CD-R disc without the use of modding. This novelty method works with any PlayStation model (as long as you have something to block the tray disc sensor on newer models so you can swap out the disc with the tray open), and must be done after unlocking the level selection menu (you can save after unlocking this menu so you do not have to unlock it again if you want to perform the disc swap trick). Once that is unlocked, go back to the Options menu and enter the code Left on the D-Pad/Up on the D-Pad/Right on the D-Pad/Down on the D-Pad/Right on the D-Pad/Up on the D-Pad/Left on the D-Pad/Square/Triangle/Square/Triangle/L1. The "bonk" sound will again be heard if the code is activated. Next, go back to the Cheat Menu and set the level selection to Level 6 and Section 1. Then while highlighting Section 1, hold down L1 (Note: it's imperative to keep holding down L1 for the remainder of this method) and press X. The screen will turn black and the Alien Resurrection disc will stop spinning, at which point you can swap out the disc with a burned CD-R disc of any PlayStation game you desire. While still holding L1, hold Square and Triangle, and then release all three buttons to boot the burned CD-R game.

When asked by YouTube channel Modern Vintage Gamer, Piper revealed that the latter cheat code had never been disclosed to Sony when the game was sent in for certification as Sony would have immediately sent the game back and forced the developers to remove it since it acted as a backdoor for playing pirated games, and he believed that no other developers who worked on the game were made aware of it either. In a YouTube comment, he explained that he only revealed the codes now because it had been so long since the game's release and he did not want to hold onto the secret for the rest of his life. According to him, the intent of the feature stemmed from Alien Resurrection potentially being planned as a multi-disc game, with the feature being implemented as a test to see if discs could be changed without resetting the PlayStation. Unlike standard multi-disc games that function with the PlayStation's built-in ability to swap out discs through an API call to maintain memory data without fully resetting the console, Alien Resurrection has code that loads an .exe file on any burned CD-R disc you swap it out with to start that new game up while bypassing the PlayStation's anti-piracy protection check.
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Anti-Piracy, Bonus Content, Cheat, Development, Early Idea, Easter Egg, Piracy, Secret, Technology, Test
person MehDeletingLater calendar_month December 23, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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GamesRadar article:
https://www.gamesradar.com/after-23-years-developer-reveals-he-snuck-a-cheat-code-past-sony-that-turns-a-cult-classic-horror-game-into-a-godsend-for-retro-enthusiasts/

Video demonstrating the cheat codes (with link to Martin Piper comment):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRB7iUCX4KQ&;lc=UgxY-VgMjlsrZyWx01J4AaABAg.9yVrngKLtP59yVsLHbNHfR
Platform: PlayStation
subdirectory_arrow_right Game Boy (Platform), Game Boy Advance (Platform), Game Boy Color (Platform), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (Platform), Sega Master System/Mark III (Platform), Arcade (Platform), Nintendo Entertainment System (Platform), Neo Geo AES (Platform), Sega Game Gear (Platform)
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Attachment In 2018, rapper Soulja Boy attempted to sell his own line of video game consoles, called the SouljaGame line, sold for $149.99 for a console and $99.99 for a handheld. Advertising claimed that the consoles would be compatible with a variety of consoles' games, including modern platforms like the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. They obviously did not have such compatibility, and were rather a generic retro emulator console one could find on small business-oriented retail websites such as Wish and AliExpress loaded with pirated and modified games sold at a markup. Game libraries featured included the Neo Geo, NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Game Gear, and PlayStation. The only difference from these pre-existing consoles is a photograph of Soulja Boy printed onto the box. He would eventually stop selling SouljaGame consoles, with the website for the console redirecting to Nintendo's 3DS website.
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Celebrity, Complaint, Emulation, Legal Affairs, Piracy, Plagiarism, Technology, Website
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 18, 2023
comment Comment (0) | Source
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Soulja Boy selling SouljaGame line article:
https://variety.com/2018/gaming/news/soulja-boy-selling-cheap-consoles-1203084022/

Soulja Boy ends sales of SouljaGame line article:
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/01/02/soulja-boy-stops-selling-souljagame-game-consoles

SouljaGame unboxing and teardown showing the packaging:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo-qNU7Qu3k

Rerez video reviewing the console SouljaGame was based on, showing the console list:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqXuAuTFXpA#t=595
Mr. Blobby
Mr. Blobby (1994)
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Amiga games are infamous for containing rude and sometimes violent messages in their code aimed at pirates (or "crackers"). Mr. Blobby serves as an exception to this, instead containing a tongue in-cheek message seemingly encouraging the practice of putting "cracktro" opening titles before pirated games:

"Space To Let - Sectors Are Free For Your Intro!"
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Easter Egg, Hidden Message, Piracy, Unused Text
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 10, 2023
comment Comment (1) | link Source
Tetris
Tetris (1992)
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The soundtrack to CD-i Tetris was illegally released on vinyl by UNFORTUNATEFACE in 2020 - although composer Jim Andron was initially opposed to the release, when he contacted UNFORTUNATEFACE he discovered that they had been setting aside royalties from the vinyl release for when they could eventually contact him.
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Complaint, Music, Piracy
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month November 6, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)
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When The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched, a player who acquired the game early posted an image of them playing it and tagged multiple accounts associated with Nintendo to provoke them. This would be responded to by former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime with a quote from the movie Taken. While the gaming press and many fans thought this was humorous, it also received major backlash (particularly from people who had already grown to dislike Reggie due to his comments on the blockchain and the police force, and allegations of Nintendo's corporate culture during his tenure) due to Reggie directly quote-retweeting the post for all of his audience to see, screenshotting the post without censoring their username when the user took precautions to protect themselves from the audience attracted by Reggie's post, and using a quote that - in its original context - was a death threat, which only intensified when it was discovered that the user in question was 16 years old at the time.
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Anti-Piracy, Complaint, Corporate Affairs, Piracy, Real Life
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 23, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
MaxPlay Classic Games Volume 1
MaxPlay Classic Games Volume 1 (2004)
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In the PS2 version of MaxPlay Classic Games Volume 1, you can find a full pirated copy of Metroid Fusion in the folder "DELETE_ME". It was likely used to test the compilation's emulator.
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Console Difference, Emulation, Mistake, Piracy, Plagiarism, Unused Content
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 10, 2023
comment Comment (0) | link Source
Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair (1983)
subdirectory_arrow_right Dragon's Lair: Escape from Singe's Castle (Game)
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In the Amiga version of Dragon's Lair, the copy protection coder of the game left a message to crackers. The message says:

A message to crackers: Nobody wants copy protection. All it is designed to do
is give a program a fighting chance. Now we realize that there is a great
competition to see which group breaks this game first, however, if you do
break it, please consider this: If you let this game out early after release,
and there are few sales, it will be very difficult to justify followup games of
this type. Nobody benefits; not the developers, not the users, and not the
Amiga community. Please reconsider holding on for a while and not letting
the game suffer. The decision is yours.

This message apparently worked, as the Amiga version of Dragon's Lair: Escape from Singe's Castle contained an additional message from the game's copy protector Randy Linden once again asking crackers to wait to crack the game and thanking them for listening with the first game. This message reads:

Once again, a small note to pirates and crackers: I thank you very much for delaying the release of DL1,
but must once again ask you to please wait with Escape. We have tried to provide the Amiga community
with the best possible game for your money (unlike many other companies), and hope that once again
there will be enough sales into the future to support yet another game we are planning for the Amiga:
TERMINATOR! Please consider delaying your release of Escape. As more and more quality companies leave
the Amiga for the more profitable IBM, C64 and Nintendo markets, it is up to you, the users, to show
which computer is truly Visionary. Randy "Irwin" Linden
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Anti-Piracy, Console Difference, General, Hidden Message, Piracy, Version Difference
person SonicManEXE calendar_month January 1, 2015
comment Comment (0) | Source
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