Anti-Piracy in Amber Gold games

Despite the fact that most Amber Gold games require the manual and have DOS-like copy protection, Amber Gold games are well known for their multiple layers of cruel anti-piracy tactics.

Since Amber Gold, Rhode have used their own APirate technology to detect if a mod-chip is being used.

Level 1
If the game detects that a mod-chip is being used, the game will automatically boot up to an anti-piracy screen featuring a caricatured Amber Gold with an unsettling face while playing a bizzare song (giel.mod, or PIR.MD in the game files.)

However, the technology doesn't work with all mod-chips, as this is a quite early Playstation game. It only works with Zilog Z8-based, PIC16C54-based and PIC16C84-based early microcontrollers,  based on the Old Crow modchip and earlier ones. Later versions of the Old Crow modchip used the PIC12C508 microcontroller, and chips like MM3, Mayomi v4 and ONEchip functioned completely differently and also can be based on PIC12F629 controllers. Those will not be detected at all.

In the Saturn version, this screen will only occur on Model 2 Saturn models - the Model 1 Saturn's motherboard was designed in such a way that it would be quite tricky to implement a chip into it (and as a consequence it is also quite hard to repair.) However, it is still possible to implement a modchip into Model 1 Saturn, and thus the game will jump straight to the next layer of anti-piracy, explained down below.

An interesting thing is that if one were to use Gameshark or Action Replay to access the ID of the room used by this screen, there would be many copies of the same weird Amber Gold model, arranged in a line. Because of how the camera is positioned, this cannot be seen regularly, unless the player enters Level 2 of anti-piracy, explained down below.

Level 2
If the game detects that it has been copied, it will replace all cutscenes after Zero to Hero with this: Hakeem: Amber! Do you know that this game has been hacked?! Amber: Yes, and this is the best occassion to mess with people. In the Playstation version, there are some errors in the sectors of the disc. The error correction mechanism when copying a CD will remove those errors. The game checks for those errors when booting up, and thus, if they aren't present, then this level of anti-piracy will be triggered. The game will use 16-bit RNG to make random things occur, such as replacing all skins with different objects, making vehicles explode, make buildings fly, spawn random enemies or pedestrians, make placeholder textures fly in the sky or even replace all the textures.

However, this only affects the game visually, and the game will still play quite normally until the mission From Laughter to Terror, where the game will begin transporting the player to random locations, and explosions will begin hurting the player.

In the mission Up My Sleeve Valve, the game will be almost unplayable, since the car physics will be completely ruined, sending the car flying at random, and the accuracy of the weapons will be reduced to 1/15. After the first loading screen, the game will transport you to the same room as in the first layer of anti-piracy, with a small clip of the_year_1992.mod (992.MD in the game files) as background music.

After a while, the game will start talking to the player via text, shaming them for pirating the game. After a while, the game will begin deleting ALL save files on the memory card, and then crash.

Level 3
If the game detects that the code for Level 1 and/or Level 2 of anti-piracy have been deleted, the game will change entirely.

It will turn into a sort of weird sequel to Umburr Makes Some Friends Nao, titled "Umburr and Hukyum Experience Violent Diarrhoea." It only has one very simple level, with lack of any scenery besides Chupa Chups logos, no enemies or obstacles whatsoever, which crashes at the very end. The music which is being played is atari-1735 (called MMM.MD in the game files) and the font is the same as used in the official Amber Gold DOS hacking tools.

In the Saturn version this anti-piracy level can also be triggered by copying the game onto a 64MB or more cartridge, which is rare, since most of the time the cartridge slot is used for memory expansions.

Amber Gold (PC)
Although the levels of piracy are the same, the way to trigger them on computers is different.

Level 1
If the game detects that the game license has been removed or is invalid, the game will automatically boot to this screen, which is quite similar to the one in the console versions.

There is extra information in the Windows version saying that the player should contact the developers if the screen appears on a legitimate copy of the game.

Level 2
Unlike in the console versions, this anti-piracy layer will also mess with the sound of the game. The anti-piracy method is the same here.

However, unlike the console versions, the game will actually uninstall itself instead of deleting save files - however, it'll change the wallpaper to a tiled version of the unsettling Amber Gold in the first anti-piracy level.

If the player buys a legitimate copy of the game after alreading having experienced this anti-piracy level, all of the mission music will be replaced by a weird song called nigger man (NGM.MD in the game files.) The game actually keeps track of whether the game was pirated before by making a hidden folder inside the Program Files folder.

Level 3
This here works the same as in the Playstation version. However, a different song is used, called erotica.