Earthbound + SNES powerpak?

[charles__99]

I'm finishing school soon and want to enjoy a play through Earthbound. I have a powerpak but also have the original cart and guide. My question is, does the powerpak cause the anti-piracy thing to kick in? My original cart doesn't have a working battery right now and lost my bit to open up the cart to replace it.

Let me know as I'd have to get a bit asap,

Thanks so much,
Cheers as always :D

[Shulamana]

You can find ROMs with the anti-piracy measures patched out.

[charles__99]

You can find ROMs with the anti-piracy measures patched out.

Having trouble finding that patch :(

[Zoe F]

The anti-piracy measures were put in so pirates would have a more difficult time making and selling cheap bootleg carts. A lot of pirates improperly dumped games, paid little attention to things like the amount of SRAM a game requires, worked to hack title screens and copyright information, etc. A lot of Nintendo's later games had similar anti-piracy measures in place.

Though I haven't personally tried it, a properly dumped ROM should work perfectly fine on the Powerpak. If you're still nervous about it, use the Earthbound (U) [f1].smc ROM image that's floating around the Internet. It should be easy enough to locate.

[madman77]

The anti-piracy measures were put in so pirates would have a more difficult time making and selling cheap bootleg carts. A lot of pirates improperly dumped games, paid little attention to things like the amount of SRAM a game requires, worked to hack title screens and copyright information, etc. A lot of Nintendo's later games had similar anti-piracy measures in place.

Though I haven't personally tried it, a properly dumped ROM should work perfectly fine on the Powerpak. If you're still nervous about it, use the Earthbound (U) [f1].smc ROM image that's floating around the Internet. It should be easy enough to locate.
The protection was more about preventing users from using copiers back in the heyday. Pirate carts were far less rare than copiers, especially in the Far East. Improper dumping has nothing to do with it, if the games weren't properly dumped, the shops would not be able to sell the resulting ROM on floppies as was extremely common. The main protection scheme was that of SRAM size checking, if a cartridge that didn't use SRAM was able to read/write from the copiers SRAM, it knew it was being run on a copier. Likewise if a cart used a smaller SRAM size than the copier's, it could read/write to the upper address range and determine it wasn't running on an original cart. The powerpak should automatically limit the SRAM properly.

[charles__99]

The protection was more about preventing users from using copiers back in the heyday. Pirate carts were far less rare than copiers, especially in the Far East. Improper dumping has nothing to do with it, if the games weren't properly dumped, the shops would not be able to sell the resulting ROM on floppies as was extremely common. The main protection scheme was that of SRAM size checking, if a cartridge that didn't use SRAM was able to read/write from the copiers SRAM, it knew it was being run on a copier. Likewise if a cart used a smaller SRAM size than the copier's, it could read/write to the upper address range and determine it wasn't running on an original cart. The powerpak should automatically limit the SRAM properly.

Here's to hoping that I don't get to the final boss and have it all for not :D@_@

[madman77]

Here's to hoping that I don't get to the final boss and have it all for not :D@_@
The only protection I remember that did something like that was Aladdin. You couldn't beat the first boss because there was a SRAM check. I think there was another check that prevented you from going in a door to advance in the level. There was another game that did a similar thing, but I can't recall which one it was. Aladdin sticks out in my mind, though, since it was one of the first I remember back in the day with multiple in-game SRAM checks. Prior to that the checks were at boot.

[jperryss]

The only protection I remember that did something like that was Aladdin. You couldn't beat the first boss because there was a SRAM check. I think there was another check that prevented you from going in a door to advance in the level. There was another game that did a similar thing, but I can't recall which one it was. Aladdin sticks out in my mind, though, since it was one of the first I remember back in the day with multiple in-game SRAM checks. Prior to that the checks were at boot.

Previous discussion here on DP about copy protection and Earthbound's final boss:
http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?132475-Earthbound-(SNES)-copy-protection