StarTropics on the NES. Was it Anti-Piracy or just a fun gimmick? 

It isn't invisible ink. The hidden message is a watermark. You don't even have to get the letter wet to see the message. You can read it just as easily by holding a bright light source (like a flashlight) behind the paper. Watermarks are created by strategically manipulating the thickness or density of the paper at select areas during the manufacturing stage until the desired hidden image or message you want is achieved within the paper itself. By holding a bright light behind the paper you can see the watermark due to the amount of light that passes through the paper.

@@josephjones7828or you could just figure out the code logically. It took me about ten seconds.

That's because it's...Very fucking Nintendo.

It was the same for me. I remember at first being confused about what "letter" the game was talking about and assumed it must have meant something in-game. It was such a thrill realizing it was referencing a real-world object. I also recall being extremely nervous putting the letter into water, worried that it would ruin it and thinking how stupid I'd feel if I was wrong. In a pre-internet era where you couldn't just look up the answers to whatever questions you had and you were left to figure puzzles out for yourself, this one really made you feel like you were Sherlock Holmes. I've never had a gaming experience quite like that before or since.

The first commenter completely missed your point. Yes I remember this as a kid. My mom and brother and me played this game. When we got to point point where you had to add the water for the ink to show, it was awesome. Memory I will never forget! So awesome.

I remember running into the same problem. In my case, I bought a used copy of the game and it was missing the manual and letter. I remember just putting random values in and I was just thinking "747" as in the jet airliner and it friggan worked. I wrote it on the cartridge (come to think of it, I wonder if I still have it down in the basement). At that time, there was no just looking it up on-line. You either had to find the letter itself, find a magazine that have published the code (oh how I remember as a kid looking through those magazines on the magazine rack at the store), ask somebody that you know that may have played the game, brute-force it/guess at it, or call the Nintendo hint line (and rack up some charges).

I owned a copy so it never affected me, but I remember one time at a local place called Videoland I came in with a sharpie one day and wrote the code on the cartridge before putting it back on the shelf. The funny thing is about 20 years later I was talking to some random guy at work and he commented about how one time he rented startropics and was glad that someone wrote the code on the cartridge. He refused to believe it was me though lol

@@adamb89 Not all heroes wear capes!

747

I did the exact same thing, including it being a rented game. I literally just commented about it and then saw your comment. That code is permanently seared into my brain.

Realistically, though, the cardboard packaging and the loose paper inside (mostly promotional flyers) were not retained back then by most buyers of video games. It was generally only the plastic sleeve, if that. So this was generally not fun, but annoying and aggravating, to the extent that Nintendo's hint line had a dedicated script for it, apparently.

It worked for us! It was epic and still in the top 10 all time video game moments for me. It was awesome.

I vaguely remember this. I don't recall how I got around it. Probably word of mouth, same as since the 80s.

Ive had a bootleged copy of MGS1 so I tried every freq. manually till I found the correct one for Meryl. I think as a kid I was stuck around 2 weeks at that part until I figured it out.

If you try to call Campbell after 3 tries, the game will eventually add Meryl to the contact list

This always confused me as a kid since they say the back of the CD Jewel case but by that time in the game you have in game CD from the ARMSTech President so I always thought it had to do with that. Eventually I either called Campbell enough or just did every codec number until I called her. But when I found out it was on the back of game case, along with all the Pycho Mantis secrets, blew my mind. Still a Great Game! :)

IIRC that wasn't meant to be copy protection or anything. That was just Kojima being insane, as he is.

I remember me, and my friend renting the game, and it did not have the manual, or anything with it other than the plastic rental case, and after about 10 minutes putting in random codes he yells out 747 at random, and worked, we did not dare call the hint line to rack up those fees on my parents phone bill, or we would have gotten a good yelling at LOL!!

@@CommodoreFan64I love that you beat the copy protection through good ole brute force… haha I miss the infinite time and no internet days, I did so much dumb stuff like that. I remember not being able to beat Dr. Robotniks Mean Bean Machine on SEGA, so I just typed in codes until I found one that worked and got me to the later levels, haha

@@ImSquiggs Yep I had NES, and Game Gear Game Genie devices, and would play around typing in random codes writing them down on notebook paper, and marking notes when one of them worked with what it did, putting in it a composition book and I still have the little composition book in my filing cabinet at home, I had one code that allowed Mario in SMB 1 to walk over the top of every level without falling, so I could beat the game in like 5 minutes lol!

How much was the hint line? $4.95 first minute, $2.95 each additional minute? And did they talk really slow? 😆

@@SteveBennet500 LOL you're close when you consider inflation as it was $1.50 a minute, or $3.86 in today's money if you calculate the inflation from when the Nintendo Power Hotline started in 87, and no telling how long you would be on hold for, or how long it would take to answer a question depending on how complex it was. So let's say the call was ten minutes, then it would have been $15 in 87, or $38.64 in today's money, which is more than the price of a budget indie game on the Nintendo eShop, just to get a simple game hint that might, or might not help you. YIKES!!! So like I said my parents would have yelled at me, and tanned my hyde for making a phone call like that!!!

I got this game second hand in a pile of games my mom bought together. It was some time around... 1992 I think, and it didn't come with the code. :/

Some of us got lucky and guessed the right number after a couple of attempts. My first attempt was 007.

I literally never finished it back then because of the code.

I’m sure they printed it in Nintendo Power magazine sometime. Also, I think it was a gimmick to get some people to call the Nintendo tip phone line which cost $.

Those of us that didn't have a computer or internet. I mean, no one I knew had a computer growing up.

I tend to think because the game is packed with references more common in the west, 747 was chosen to refer to the Boeing plane model. Once you dipped the letter and found out, that wouldn't have been easy to forget on repeat playthroughs.

Unless there is a passenger plane theme in the game I think it could be an east-west numerology thing. 7 is considered a lucky number in Japan as well as most everywhere. 4 is considered unlucky though. So you have two points of luck divided by unluck. 7 is apparently also somehow (yes, I googled this.. ;) specifically of some importance in baseball. Which is of course a story aspect in the game. Don't remember clearly if some rise and fall equivalent could also be part of the story though.

​@@robintstYeah, especially with Nintendo of America being in Washington, 747 seems pretty obvious to be a reference to the plane, which Boeing made in Everett, WA from 1968 to 2022. It's like how when they translated Mother, they changed the city names to places in Washington (or at least on the west coast). Thanksgiving became Merrysville (Marysville, WA), Halloween became Spookane (Spokane, WA), and Valentine became Ellay (L.A., as in Los Angeles, CA).

​@@AltCutTVNo passenger plane, but the code allows the submarine to travel to the necessary destination.

There was a story, maybe from EGM, where someone lost the manual, so he and his friend bruteforced guessing every 3 digit number in order.

and other fun one is including a letter and map - a useful one - with an RPG. Imaging buying a text game and it starts out with those physical artefacts, for a game, that is factually only text on a screen. It really boost the immersion to reference the map.

I would call it anti-rental, not anti-piracy as it can be solved with time, but being a rental means there is little time.

It's the opposite, really. Realistically, back then, many parents did not hang on to the loose paper in a video game package or the packaging itself when the kid got a video game. That all went in the trash on day one. NES games came in plastic sleeves, and that was generally all that was kept, if that. So this was more than anything an annoyance waiting to happen.

@@sarowieThis is one case where hindsight will lead you astray. People buying video games back then (often parents for kids) were used to loose paper in the cardboard packaging. Generally, this was promotional crud, flyers and the like. And it all went in the trash. People were not looking for fun multimedia games hidden in video game packaging. So, this was more than anything an extreme annoyance waiting to happen.

@@MegaZeta Whenever I got a game as a gift from my parents, they always gave me the complete, unopened retail package. They never opened the box, throw away all the inserts and box and just gave me the bare cartridge. I am willing to bet that is the case for the majority of people that got games as gifts. It was the same with all my friends at the time as well (believe me, I remember during Christmas vacation, going over to friends/cousin's houses and playing the new games they got as well). More then likely the letter got lost due to the kids not realizing it, or more likely, due to rental or buying the game second hand. In my case I did get StarTropics second hand. It had the manual, but was missing the letter, so it was the ol' "guess at the code and hope it works" thing for me.

😊😊

I would suspect that if you called the Nintendo girlie they'd tell you the code as well

So you still didn't understand that this is just CLICKBAIT. Very disrespectful.

We're glad to have ya around brother 😁

I'm ninety-nine percent sure that Nintendo Power posted the code. I had Nintendo Power for years as a kid and I'm pretty certain that it was in there

I rented it for a weekend and got jack squat. In school the next Monday, some kids heard me complaining and squared me away. Of course it was too late by then.

Thats interesting!

That's EXACTLY why I still remember it to this day! 747s were THE coolest passenger aircraft at the time.

@@2WhiteAndNerdy "at the time" eh?

I too believe that this is the inspiration for the code, the Japanese carriers have a particularly rich history with the 747.

so the boeing 747 that is a great easter egg

In my opinion it was an attempt to stop rentals. Nintendo sued and won against Blockbuster for copyright violations for photocopying the instruction books after they lost for Blockbuster renting games. That's why Blockbuster had to rewrite the book in their own words and photocopy that.

I still think it was a neat way to make the game more immersive

@Rodville I can see that point for sure and considering Nintendo (and Sega) were vying for the top. Nintendo even had the lawsuit against game genie (and many other suits). But considering this game game out in 1990 and their last game came out in 1994. Not that I played every game in between those dates, but there was ample opportunity to do this to many games in that period

Those were the days. The NES and SNES days was such a magical time, and the developers, regardless of what their other intentions may have been, did it in a way to simply be fun. It just felt neat with little things like this growing up.

A few of us also had internet access and a few places online (on BBS and newsgroups) to find answers at the time this game came out.

I wonder if it was a return and the person simply didn't package the letter back in when they brought it back? He wouldn't be the first time that Toys R Us did something like that... Probably why they are no longer around LOL

@@undrhil The likes of Amazon are why they are no longer around, and those are actually worse when it comes to customer service.

@@undrhil I've had Walmart sell me sealed games with no disc in them. My guess was that someone took out the disc, shrink wrapped it again, and returned it. So something like that is certainly believeable. Thank you friend.

@@undrhil It wasn't You could tell it was never opened until I did.

I had a top loader in those days

It's pretty cool they did this as a part of the adventure.

This is what I think. Also odd the game had a puzzle that required outside knowlege to complete. The piano thing.

I tend to agree. If it was an anti-rental feature, it could easily be circumvented by someone writing "747 MHz" on the cartridge.

I wonder how many people had lost the letter by the time they come across the part of the game vhere you need it...

@@mistertagomago7974 Oh man, getting past the piano was one of my biggest triumphs as a kid. Of course, my mom helped me by pointing out the parrot's message was a reference to the musical scale...

I don't miss it. It's basically the only nintendo game I owned that I didn't beat. I beat dragon warrior, final fantasy I, and star tropic II, but I couldn't get the stupid submarine to move in star tropics I. That stupid code was more infuriating to me than being half way done with final fantasy and my little brother deleting my save.

It's kind of fun, but also annoying. I keep the book that came with The Island of Dr Brain in my bookcase because there's no way I am going to remember those navigation coordinates for the first puzzle, when the game picks from a couple of dozen and I easily go a year between playing it in DOSBox (used to be in native DOS when it was new). Used to look up the periodic table for the material analysis puzzle when I was younger, but by the time I finished school I'd gotten good enough at chemistry that I could solve it off the top of my head on the hardest difficulty.

I know right. I tried to make the notorious jump in TMNT on the NES for a whole weekend. I accidentally walked right over it and was mad. Social media would have been nice. I always thought that games were masterpieces when they were made. I would take it as a personal failure not to figure things out. I learned that games can be junk.

NES games were often rented in clear plastic boxes then. Some had aftermarket instructions attached to the ‘door’ of the box. The instructions had the Permastruct brand.

The local video store when I was a kid had a strange deal. Game rentals were just $1, but if you wanted the manual, it was an extra $2 deposit.

Good deal. Game rentals were $3 in my area. I’m sure many manuals weren’t returned, so they started the deposit idea. In my area, stores included the manuals for a few years. They eventually gave up on that, so you had the Permastruct manual or nothing.

Fr

Huh?

@@johncurrey2387 Some of the other videos that this guy (Modern Vintage Gamer) made have the text „MISTAKES WERE MADE” in the thumbnail.

Prepare for disappointment

The doctor said the same thing when I was born

Not just that, but if this was not an anti-piracy/anti-rental measure, then it could simply be implemented directly into gameplay, meaning that people _could_ spread the answer, but it would be seen as a spoiler and not a godsend.

Don't forget the revelation that he really did have bananas in his ears!!

@@curseyoujordanshow I remember reading Nintendo power after I beat the game and realizing the pics in the ending were the hand sketches in the magazine.

Oh, that's clever. StarTropics was one of two games that used the MMC6 mapper (the other was the original StarTropics). So it's likely that a pirate would have to alter the code to make it compatible with whatever mappers they had, whether they be clones of more popular mappers or pirate originals.

That's the comment I came to look for 🤣

Not Mike Hawk?

Ahhhh, you beat me to it! 😂

I said.....

2006!!!

Probably not the paper anti-piracy. Paper is cheap. The real "cost" of anti-piracy is a bit more complicated. Its the immaterial loss of consumer trust. When through anti-piracy legitimate users are bothered to use their products at all. A good example would be securom, that was notorious for never working right. So it was very possible to insert your real CD and cant even play the game because of some obscure error, that only happens on your maschine. In general the PC anti-piracy was way more notorious for being really malicious. The anti-piracy on consoles was often more benign, since the console itself was a form of close-garden anti-piracy method.

My assumption is that these items cost publishers pennies per sale. They'd probably have to lose an unimaginable amount of money due to piracy before the cost of items such as code wheels and extra info printed in manuals would even start to matter.

I would guess the manufacturing itself was pretty costly, much more than including these paper and plastic stuff, but it's just a guess. While cartridge making was a big industry which makes manufacturing cheaper, making non standard DRM stuff wasnt so i dont really know.

Nah, most of it is probably due to the ubiquity of cameras, photocopiers, and the ability to post images on the net.

mass printing a piece of paper probably cost a penny or whatever relatively small compared to the cost of a game, and in a way, because of the way it is done, was kind of an interactive element for the consumer. Some kids probably had a good time putting the paper in water and seeing the invisible ink the zoda's revenge one doesn't include a code wheel or anything, just some code within the game, so it added nothing to manufacturing costs, just the time of the programmer and when you are putting code that renders the game unplayable, there is the risk that if you implement it wrong, that you could render legitimate games unplayable. I'm not an expert on the rom on these cartridges, but in general life things degrade. (like VHS, floppy disks, etc) If an older copy of Zoda's revenge has a single bit of it's title screen degrade, It would affect the checksum, and the legitimate copy of the game would fail the legitimate copy test and run the piracy code

PAL versions of Codemasters games such as Micro Machines and Dizzy used the same method.

Homie-S

yeah, Star tropics are no joke difficulty also owing to the controls being iffy. ST2 is a good game with better controls.

This is probably true for a lot of games. I tried playing The Legend of Zelda without the manual and it was very difficult for me to progress.

Ummm... actually, "in that era" was the time where making notes or even drawing maps while playing games was somewhat normal. Today is the time where this has become unthinkable.

@@silkwesir1444 Some of my fondest gaming memories were drawing my own Zelda maps. Good times.

@@silkwesir1444 great times, I remember drawing all A Link To The Past maps on graph paper, indicating enemies and items locations

@@silkwesir1444 Eh, I won't deny I attempted to make one for that Forest Maze in Secret of Evermore... of course, I made one single botch (or the game was messing with me; that maze is a pain in the ass and there are VERY few landmarks) and basically rendered everything beyond a certain area completely null and void, at which point it was back to the "bumble around and hope for the best" approach. To this day I have no idea how I managed to make it through. (I was slightly annoyed years later when it turned out there was a trick to the maze that involved looking for certain elements in the background; you can get through the maze in no time if you know the trick in question.) I think most of the problem was that I wasn't even in junior high at the time, and the idea that graph paper was a thing that existed hadn't even occurred to me, so I ended up taping about six pieces of paper together in an attempt to make said map. I freely admit that I prefer the "Etrian Odyssey" approach where they just give you all the tools you need to make a map inside of the game itself, with no need for outside materials. I had fun making THOSE maps, especially since they gave you a LOT of tools.

It was comically easy in the late 80s. I don't know what universe you were living in.

@@dacueba-games The point is, you needed specialized equipment which only few people had. Most people were not even aware of the possibility.

If I can learn how to find and patch out anti-piracy measures on old games, I will certainly have a look at it. I know MVG made a video showcasing his successful attempt at breaking an anti-piracy measure, I will try and look that up for a general idea on what to look for.

@@Operational117 I wish you luck and hope you can figure it out. Star Tropics 2 never sold very well (one of the last games on NES in the SNES era) and since it was also locked to North America, most modders out there have no clue about it's anti-piracy measures. Back in the day I played the full game legit and beat it, but these days I just want to run through it with some god cheats active, but it's always a gamble on if it will trigger the piracy checks.... sometimes yes... sometimes no. Only advice I have is save often and disable cheats when it triggers, lol.

@@philg8556 UPDATE: I am first gonna say that since I don’t have the physical copy of the game itself (or any later-released versions, since Nintendo has completely closed off legal purchase points), I am not able to reverse-engineer it in a clean-room situation. Thus, I am not legally allowed to share any patch files that removes the copy protections. Also, even if Nintendo decided to release it on the NSO, that would not be a true legal ownership of a copy, but rather a (revocable) license to play. Also, the ROM I found (which I verified with no-intro) works in emulators as-is; no copy protection gets triggered. However, the Real-Time Corruptor (RTC Vanguard) came in clutch; I was able to modify the ROM to trigger the first copy protection measure: the blinking screen effect. After almost a week, I believe I have successfully identified (and neutered) this first copy protection measure. Once again, however, I am not working in a clean-room situation, so whatever patch file (and explanations and guides) I create can’t be shared (even though I believe statistically speaking it would be 100% identical to whatever patch file, explanation and/or guide someone in a clean-room situation would create). I believe the only way for me to achieve a clean-room situation is to legally own a copy of the game one way or another (for which I don’t) and dump the ROM myself. And even then, Nintendo’s stance towards emulators (and even dumping of copies you legally own) is still hostile.

iirc you could just badger Campbell for it or brute force it.

Metal Gear Solid also came to my mind too. At the time it just seemed like one of the many different things that Kojima did, such as the controller port swap. Maybe it was anti-piracy, maybe not 🤷🏻

Ooohh yeah! That's right! That was kind of cool. Perhaps kojima did it as a throwback to star tropics... Though I wouldn't be surprised if Metal Gear on the NES or MSX also did something like this.

Metal Gear 2 also does have the same method.

Only two hundred possibilities, so brute force is trivial, I did so when I rented The Twin Snakes as a teen lol

I remember that being the only time I was thankful my parents forced me to take piano lessons!

I bought the Nine Inch Nails album "Year Zero" on release day. Friends had some LSD, so I took it and put the black CD in. When it finished, I ejected a white CD covered in gold circuit-board print. My friends all though I was tripping when I pointed it out. Turns out it had a thermal coating to make it change colours. You can see the example on the album's wiki page. Calling the "United States Bureau of Morality" was freaky, too. It says to call them if you or anyone you know listened to this album. When you do, it says agents are on their way to contain you.

I need to elaborate on this. See, we _rented_ Zodas Revenge from Blockbuster, and we had no way of knowing about that frequency thing. later on we'd buy the game from a flea market, sans booklets nice. we had to call Nintendo power who actually gave us the code 🤷🏻‍♀️ so I'm unsure if they even knew it was supposed to be so on the hotline