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Earthbound

Olden Lore

Hilariously Evil Anti-Piracy Protection in EarthBound [Video]

by James Plafke | 11:15 am, February 15th

Nowadays, piracy protection usually focuses on prevention rather than punishment, but back in The Day, before technology allowed constant Internet connections and horrible, system-degrading mechanisms, developers had to get creative with piracy protection. The above video shows one instance of how EarthBound, known as Mother in Japan, got clever and sneakily evil with their protection: At the boss fight with Giygas, the game freezes and forces the player to reset, and when they return to the saves menu, they discover the game erased their save file, causing them to lose all of their progress. EarthBound games are oldies, so the piracy protection focused on checking if the game was using a cartridge copier. At least back then, one could find humor in the ways developers dealt with piracy; now it’s all constant Internet connections and registry edits.

(via reddit)

EarthBound Composer Hirokazu Tanaka Gathers Other Hirokazu Tanakas, Has Them Sing About Being Named Hirokazu Tanaka

by Robert Quigley | 9:32 am, March 19th

EarthBound, the SNES game that brought us Super Smash Bros.‘ Ness, was one of the great console RPGs of the ’90s: it was funny, self-aware, and also had great gameplay. It also had a kickin’ soundtrack, composed by Hirokazu Tanaka, who also composed soundtracks for Mario, Donkey Kong, Metroid, and a number of other classic games. Tanaka even got a credit on Buckner & Garcia’s classic 1982 arcade game rock album Pac-Man Fever for providing some of the sounds behind “Do the Donkey Kong.”

Recently, Tanaka gathered together ten other random people also named Hirokazu Tanaka and had them sing a song of his composition called the “Hirokazu Tanaka Song” (“Tanaka Hirokazu no Uta”), the moral of which is that even though they didn’t choose to be called Hirokazu Tanaka, they’ve all come together for the sake of a name, and “there’s only one of me in the whole wide world.” Not only is it a strange novelty single, it’s also really, really catchy:

Read on...
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