Spyro Had One of the Coolest Anti-Piracy Measures Ever | Tech Rules 

Hey, everyone! Sorry if I sound a little weird in this video; I was recovering from being sick at the time of recording, but I didn't want to delay the video any longer than I already did. Feel free to correct me on anything I messed up on, and I'll add it to this comment! EDIT: Proto pointed out to me that the random crashes were actually a problem on my end, not the crack protection. Sorry about that! (And yes, I accidentally called the immortal scorpion an unkillable crab demon. Fight me.)

That final bit of anti-piracy is so brilliant though... “The Adventure Continues” as it wipes your game. Oh yes, the adventure never ends.

"I would enter a stage and end up in a comepletely different world" OHHHH, SO THAT'S WHY THAT HAPPENED. MY MOM GOT ME A PIRATED GAME

My dad used to crack games for me as a kid. Spyro was the only one that was store-bought and I can finally understand why.

”They even thanked the coders for giving them such a difficult challenge.” I have to hand it to Paradox: they’re some polite pirates.

**adds pirate protection to discourage pirates** **More people pirate the game because the pirate protection is so cool**

everybody gangsta til the penguin starts speaking German

10:15 the "saved successfully" is probably the biggest middle finger they could have given

I'm just surprised that Zoe actually voiced the hack warning. the devs took this piracy very seriously

That's why I never finished Spyro. Had a copy like this and never understood why the eggs kept disappearing. Then I reached the final boss and boom... all eggs were gone and my save file erased. Never tried Spyro again.

Imagine a young kid's confusion when they got this game for Christmas, having no real idea what piracy and chipped consoles really were, and all this started happening. Yup. That's what happened to me.

The final reset has the same energy as when I once played a modded Skyrim, a random encounter had a mage challenge me to a wizard battle, and he said the phrase, "You call that magic? I'll show you real magic!" and then proceeded to CTD me and that save was now corrupted. It was by far the strongest mage I have ever seen. He rewrote the player out of existence as if I was someone in Yugioh GX season 4.

Imagine playing Spyro as a kid, unknowing that it was a pirated copy, and suddenly the characters start speaking German

Yes, the rocket crashed in into the balloon. Took me years but I finally figured out that my parents bought me a cracked version

I was one of the victims, I did not have access to a legit copy of this game whe I was a kid, literally all retails around my region had the cursed Paradox version and I had to push through all of the game's copy protection during gameplay while blaming the stores for making "low quality copies" as I'd call them. Unbeknownst to me was the fact that the game itself was trolling me all those years. I remember clearly speaking to Zoe and seeing that dreaded text that I was playing an illegal copy of the game and that really scared me at the time, to hear a videogame character get out of role and break the fourth wall as if it knew what was happening in the outside world. Missing eggs, missing gems, having to rebuy characters or stuff to be able to access previous stages.... I never experienced the language switching problem though. Oh boy so many things went wrong and I persisted every time just to have a shot at the final boss, see if I could beat her before the game decides to pull the plug and erase all my data. I used to remove the memory card when attempting the fight so that my save wouldn't get overwritten. But when I tried to load the save again there'd always be several things missing, including the freaking vehicle that you need to get across the other worlds would randomly disappear and I'd have to redo stages and hope that I could get it back. I'll never forget when I somehow managed to glitch the game to send me into the super bonus stage, the final level you can go to when you beat the game 100%. I was never able to 100% the game due to the anti-piracy stuff so I really have no idea how I entered that place, but I only managed to do that once. When I turned the game off and loaded the other day I couldn't get back and again lost a bunch of progress. My kid self deserves a medal for all of the persistence I had to go through all of this shit. It was very rewarding when I played this game again years later with an actual working copy this time, I beat it 100% and closed this case forever. That shit felt like my greatest achievement in gaming history.

There’s something about most anti-piracy messages in games that makes them so terrifying, even when most games don’t use jumpscares to drive the message home. It just makes you feel hunted and unwanted. The game KNOWS you’re doing something bad.

Aaah.... so it's an anti piracy system... I remember when was I still a kid, I bought this Spyro game from one of a big PS game store. I and my big bro love Spyro games. So we bought it instantly without thinking too much. That time, I was still a pure little kid who didn't know that pirated disc exist. After a long fun run, the game reset itself around the endgame part. But what i did that time? Together with my brother, we *did it all over again* . We thought it just how the game supposed to run. We keep trying it again and again. More reset happened, and we gave it another run. I remember that we even reached a stage when we could complete the early to mid game part in just some hours.The loop continued until one day, our PS broke and we ere forced to stop. So yeah... we never finished it lol. More than 10 years passed, I got my hand on a PSX emulator. I downloaded the Spyro 3 iso, and challenged it with my emulator. And that time, I cleared it (since it's cracked properly lol). Sadly my big bro died from illness several years after our PSX broke. So I, alone, finished our revenge to the "Impossible to complete" game. You can rest in peace brother... I defeated our enemy!

Now you understand why 90's brazilian kids have trust issues

This is gonna sound really dumb, but I've always been a little bit scared of these types of things. Like not SCARED, scared, but it's kinda spooky to me

"Unfortunately the final boss contains the most evil trick of all.." RU-vid hits me with an ad lol. Nice timing

10:21 i love how you can tell you see the "1" and IMMEDIATELY open up the atlas because you know something is very wrong

there should be a speedrunning category for this

“Pirates at bay” is the most underrated line in this whole video

This is actually kinda creepy in a way. Especially at the end when it just boots you to the beginning without anything.

I remember when I was a kid, my dad got me a copy of Spyro Year of the Dragon. I didn't realise at the time it was that paradox hacked version and I was so confused because in my one, after fighting Spike (or losing should I say) it would take me straight to Midnight Mountain. I never got to experience Evening Lake 🤣

the "Software Terminated" screen gives me chills for some reason. Lol

Game:"I may not be able to stop you, but I can certainly *break you* "

Spyro 3 normally: normal game Spyro 3 anti-piracy: LITERALLY DARK SOULS DIFFICULTY

Terraria's piracy protection was genius. There was an achievement where you have to travel a really far amount by foot. But the game would lag as you walked since it would check every step. And the devs made sure you never finish the achievement by making sure it resets as soon as you close the game when you complete it.

meanwhile in the UK... "hey look that guy has a quest for me!" "Вы украли эту копию, так что теперь я вырву ваши глазные яблоки.."

Cracked Spyro still runs better than Fallout 76.

I'm seeing some comments regarding people's experiences with their pirated copies of this game, and how they reacted when they suffered the fate that happens at the end. It got me thinking: the purpose of having anti-piracy in games is to motivate people to purchase the real copy. A lot of comments send pretty much the same message of "this frustrated me so much that I never touched Spyro again!". In my personal opinion, this frustration kind of defeats the purpose of giving it an anti-piracy; because not only do players fail to buy the real copy, but they don't buy any other past or future Spyro games. Sure, they may understand that those problems wouldn't occur if they had just bought the real game but the frustration and irritation they faced may continue to haunt them afterwards, thus discouraging them from buying it

I'm not really a Spyro fan but, I agree! The anti-piracy measures they put in place were really creative. Kudos to the developers for thinking outside the box!

7:50 I am german, so that confused me for a second, since that was actually a normal Text to me

Now I want to see 100% speedruns of the pirated version of this game.

“Yeah, Anti-Piracy doesn’t sound like the most interesting topic...” That fact sure has changed!

My favourite is Garry’s Mod where it gave you a fake error message about the textures or lighting or some crap and then when people reported it they were exposed as pirates

"[...] The idea they came up with was simple, but *very* effective." _it's a simple spell but quite unbreakable_

Cracked Spyro seems like a challenge run that a streamer would do.

“Ok, so Anti-Piracy may not seem like the most interesting thing to talk about at first glance, but here me out.” And now the RU-vid Algorithm is recommending a lot of us with Anti-Piracy videos and we are all really enjoying watching them. I guess that’s different than “talking” about it, but it’s got me interested.

When you showed the clip of the reset mid-bossfight i thought the game had saved just as the boss attacked, so when you tried to reload your save you'd load in then die instantly

Doing hours of painful research for something nobody asked for? Now _THAT'S_ a hero.

Gamer: “All right, I reached the final boss!” Game: “I’m about to end this pirate’s whole career.”

“Anything causes a crash” *breathing in paper Mario crashes the game*

7:52 that is the best german penguin I've ever seen in a Spyro game.

when I was little my parents couldn't afford original PS1 games, so one of the pirate games I had was Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon. The same version you played, in fact. Thankfully my game wasn't nearly as glitchy as yours was, but boy oh boy, do I still remember having to go back to allll previous worlds every single time I unlocked a new world to retrieve a single lost egg from all previous levels - my game only deleted the very first egg from all levels, and without the first egg from each level you can't move on to other worlds, which meant I was forced to go back if I wanted to play the levels in the new world I'd just unlocked - and even more vividly I remember when the game screen went black during the last boss fight and the save file was wiped. now, imagine this: a seven year old, an eight year old, and a six year old, all crying for all their lost progress, unconsollable; that was me, my sister and my cousin. MONTHS of playing. GONE. we LOVED Spyro, but that day we put it down and never played it again. about a decade later I told this story to a friend of mine, and he explained what had happened - we didnt understand back then because english wasn't our first language - and then he magnamiously borrowed me his copy of Spyro. I spent my summer break trying to not only finish the game but also catch all eggs and gems, and it was soooo satisfying. like avenging my seven years old self. Spyro is an incredible game, and even though it betrayed me the way it did, I still love it with all my heart. I read that article a few years ago, and honestly? it's GENIUS. what they did was amazing, not to mention hella creative, and although I still remember how painful it was losing all my progress I don't blame the devs for it. TLDR: great video! sure brings back memories :')

shoulda had skullgirls on the list of fun anti-piracy. that one is genius. pops a cryptic message up after you beat the game, about the square root of fish. people post it on forums or twitter like "whats this" and boom, busted.

This makes me think there could be so many creative ways to troll people with anti-piracy measures. Just replace a needed key item with a regular item. Like in a cracked OOT, Zelda just throws the Fairy Ocarina to you in that cutscene. Have fun with that!

After seeing this video, I'm incredibly glad that I had a legal and legitimate copy of this game and played it on a regular PlayStation with no modchip. I remember taking the game to my friend's house and not being able to play it there because his PlayStation had a modchip.

You know, if developers really wanted to, they could use these features to make one hell of a creepypasta game

And eventually the game crashed so much that Spyro randomly turned into Crash Bandicoot

I remember having a pirated copy of Spyro cause it came with the playstation my parents got at a market when I was a kid, and ironically I actually kind of loved all the weird stuff that would happen in it. like the game plays like normal for the first chapter or so, and the save fairy is like "lol sorry spyro, but you're in a hacked copy of the game, shit's gonna get weird from here on out.", then some levels just have no music, now the textures for this cutscene model are all bugged out, then suddenly you're like halfway through the game, then you are suddenly fighting the first boss again, but they're green now, and whoops, now you suddenly have Moneybags blocking you from a level even after paying the toll, and uh oh, now you're stuck on this mega cursed silent loading screen and have to restart the game. but then every now and again it would just work like a normal copy of Spyro 3. it's weirdly nostalgic in a childhood trauma kind of way.

I remember having an issue with this game when I was a kid, I don't remember paying too much attention to that fairy's message, nor the glitches like spark's color changing to green, but there was some area with some astronaut monkey where the game was always crashing, and some odd random stuff were always happening until it hit the point where my save file got corrupted. So I guess I just had a pirated copy of the game.

Imagine going to your friends like: “Yo, did you get the new Spyro??” “Yeah, I picked it up about two weeks ago.” “It’s really hard! I’ve barely made it to Midday Gardens! Do you know how to get more health?” “...” “What, did you beat it?”

"If that's confusing to you, think of it like morse code taken to the extreme." It wasn't confusing until you said that..

This is "silent but deadly" in action

I'm still amazed at how high quality your videos were so early in your channel's life. You absolutely deserve the subs you have.

Now I know the meaning of Zoey's message... I didn't knew english at the time so I thought it was no big deal :"^ I remember I started crying when my game was erased after the final fight with the Sorceress... But here in Mexico it was very difficult to actually find a LEGAL version of any PS1 game insted of a cracked version, basically you had to buy your own games at street markets for less than a dollar (I think Year of the dragon costed less than 5 mexican pesos) Now I feel a little bit frustated... Good part is that with Reignated Trilogy I'm going to be able to finally complete Year of the dragon; legally this time!

4:42 “Keep pirates at bay” Intentional pun??

Zoe: "I'm sorry, Spyro, but you seem to be playing a hacked version of this game." Childhood Memories: [quivering] amigoingtojail?

"you can still play, we just wont let you win"

0:15 That is the least intimidating thing I've ever seen, "the the levels" "your allowed to play"

Tech Rules: plays a pirate game to review its anti-piracy system FBI: wAiT,tHaTs ILeGaL

This has endless potential for a lets play

Chipped PlayStation with most games: Understandable, have a great day. Chipped PlayStation with Spyro: *H O L D U P*

*_Eventually, Spyro stopped thinking._*

Omg.. and my stupid young ass thought my disc had too many scratches xD I basically struggled to the end. Lost everything And thought I won lmao

This unironically gives me such a cool idea for a boss. It looked like the Sorcereress cast Spyro back intentionally to the very start. If a boss seemingly intentionally did that, thats both genius and infuriating

When I was seven, I was sent a PS1 by my grandfather. Of all the games it had, Spyro was my favorite and I spent hours playing it after school. I thought this game repeating was just because my PS1 was probably broken since my grandpa and my uncles used to play with it. Now growing up, I just realized how being a kid really is. You don't care about things at all, and I didn't remember being frustrated aside from being defeated by enemies or bosses. I only had fun.

After Zoe gives the message would be a perfect time to turn the entire thing into a horror game and make the pirates never pirate again tbh

We used to disk swap to play different regions. Load a disc of your region (you had to play with the lid open, with the little "lid closed" button wedged or stuck down) during the orange Sony logo, quickly swap discs. This video has just explained to me why that worked.

Jon, from the GameHut channel, pioneered this type of anti piracy scheme on the Amiga: 1. Simple copy protection to keep honest people honest. 2. Game detects more advanced attempt at cracking: allows crack as if normal, fooling pirates into thinking their job is done. 3. Game stops working halfway through.

I remember when I was in kindergarten and I had my dads ps1 and a cracked copy of Spyro 3. the game ran fine and didn’t encounter anything unusual, until I got to the final boss, I remember getting attacked by what felt like an unavoidable attack which instantly put me on a loading screen and loaded back in the first area, was probably the first time I ever walked out of my room to vent lmao (I was probably 5-6 at the time) I do remember trying to turn the ps1 on & off in hopes to recover my save, and I also remember asking my dad to get another memory card because I kept loosing my save file when I died on the last boss and blamed the card not the illegitimate Disc lol! I found this video because I searched up “Spyro 3 anti piracy because I was curious if anybody else had any similar experiences from 17 years ago lmao.

Me: I mean sure eggs keep disappearing and its annoying going back but the games not that unplayable German: Ich bin kurz davor, die Karriere des ganzen Mannes zu beenden

Hold up. This is your SECOND VIDEO?! You sound like you'd have years of experience!!! That's so cool!

It almost feels like a haunted copy. I love this stuff.

As a kid I had this version and somehow managed to get to the snowy super bonus world. THAT'S when things get seriously glitchy, let me tell you!! As soon as I was old enough, I bought a proper copy of the game and played it properly. Loved it.

When my uncle bought me the pirated version, we had no idea it was pirated. Zoey wasn't there to tell us that. Everything was fine in the first world because we could 100% everything available to us at the moment... but things started getting weird starting from the second world. I couldn't get every gem in certain worlds no matter how hard I looked. I was even more confused when I unlocked Sparx's ability to detect gems and he couldn't find anything despite the menu saying that I didn't find all of the gems. I started to feel that there is something wrong with the game but had no idea what it was. And of course, when I went to battle the Sorceress, it didn't let me finish the fight and resetted EVERYTHING. I was so shocked that I remained speechless for a while. Losing all that progress was just... 💔💔💔

I would love to see speedrun attempt on an incorrectly crack version of the game.

Hello TechRules! This video is an absolute classic and is extremely well made. I would appreciate it if you made a similar video on one of your favorite games with cool Anti-Piracy. Thank you!

I know absolutely zero about anything related to spyro, and I still found this video incredibly fascinating.

When I was a kid, I tought that the game was supposed to run like this, and I literally completed the game Twice, When I was on the boss I took out the memory Card to when it reloads I didn't lose my file... In Brazil, pretty much every console was Modded, due to the prices, And it was so fun to go throught this, that when I played it the original way, I Tought that it was missing the mechanic LoL

This channel has a long and bright future. Keep up the excellent work!

I love all your videos! I rewatch them all the time, especially this video and the 3ds video. I find them so interesting

I played this game so many times that i managed to find a way to go to the bonus round anytime i wanted, that was sureal for a 9 yo to crash the game like that. Plus: my native language is portuguese, so at that time i couldnt get what was happening, thus never able to figure it out what that piracy message was about. Every friend who has attempted this game had a "trick" to clear the game, but none ever worked. One time i simply got tired of it and moved on, but this game, till this day, is one of the most memorable to me, and one that i have played the most at my childhood. Only as an adult i could figure why all of this happens

I had a pirated copy of this Spyro game as a child, I remember making it to the second boss in the game but being intimidated to fight them, so I went back to the first boss to fight him again as a warm up. When I beat him the game acted as if I finished the game and I was sent to this bonus round with just tons and tons of gems. I didn't explore it much because I thought I'd be able to go back but I've never seen that bonus level ever again.

About 10 years ago my older brother got an emulator so I could play this game on our computer and I remember weird things happening like eggs disappearing and moneybags demanding bail money for characters that I already freed, but I struggled all the way to the end where my save was reset at the final boss. 6yo me wasn't smart enough to know what anti-piracy was so I thought it was normal and there was a time limit to defeat the final boss, so I proceeded to struggle through the game again only to reach the final boss and lose everything... again

Oh my god! Yes! All these issues you talked about, i had em all! I thought that my version was pirated by amatour, or its becouse of the trainer... This video brings so many memories, thank you!

10:49 In other words, your "Adventure Continues." That is AWESOME lol.

"it eventually does always get cracked." Handball 17 has gone uncracked for over three years now.

You've been blessed by the algorithm ¡Congratulations man!

I could not imagine getting to the final boss and having to start all over. Anyway, great informative video! Now, I will continue playing the Reignited Trilogy without worry of the anti-piracy measures.

Someone: goes to the final boss All the eggs he collected: ight I'mma head out

Duuude, I never knew what was wrong with this game until this video. The Spyro trilogy were my favourite games growing up, but my PS1 and all my games were cracked, so I had to suffer through all that you mentioned in this video... Since I loved YOTD, I played to the end so many times, hoping that I would eventually be able to beat it. And let me confirm your suspicion: No matter how many times you start over at Sunrise Springs, the game will ALWAYS delete your save file when you get to the Sorceress. In fact, in my case it wouldn't even let me start the fight, as opposed to the clip you showed in the video. I even tried removing my memory card before entering the fight so it wouldn't let the game save when it got me back, but the outcome never changed, despite the sheer amount of tries I did. It was pure hell, man.

Cracked spyro loses the pause button, requires to get through the same areas over and over to beat a boss, becomes extremely difficult. Basically it becomes dark souls

I loved the cracked version of Spyro. The effects are hilarious to me, and yes, I made it to the sorceress.

I almost never clicked on something so fast, as someone that loves this type of stuff, being someone big into games, but understanding the makings and security of such games, I couldn't stop laughing. I feel so bad for you, but after having a horrid day, I needed a laugh, thank you for this, and man, was it a fun video for me. Cheers for the good sports in the piracy community and the devs who made this video possible.

Spyro kept crashing? Does that mean crash keeps spyroing?

I was a trial tester for the Sony office in foster city and we tested year of the dragon. I'm the reason the underwater tunnel is passable🤙🏻

Way back in the Spyro 3 days, when I was just an English-illiterate kid (English isn't my first language), I played Spyro 3 all the way up to the point where the game boots your out of the final boss and resets your progress before I realised that something was wrong. My kid brain just presumed that all of this was supposed to happen. I got really angry at the game and told all of my friends not to play it because it had a bad "feature" that would force you to collect everything again after the last boss.