10 Video Games That Messed With Your Saves
9. Pirate The Game And You Can't Finish It - Earthbound
Piracy may be the bane of video game developers everywhere, but that doesn't mean they can't have a little fun with it. Case in point: Earthbound.
Anyone who pirated Nintendo's surreal SNES masterpiece back in the day was the victim of some quality trolling from the legendary studio. Adhering to the rule of "three strikes and you're out", Nintendo implemented a three-step program to punish the thieves:
1) Pirated versions of Earthbound would freeze at the start, with an anti-piracy warning replacing the title screen. This could only be bypassed by tinkering with the game files.
2) Anyone who circumvented the warning and started playing the game would be overwhelmed by a vastly boosted enemy count, turning the quirky JRPG into a tedious grindathon.
3) If the player did manage to struggle through the tsunami of enemy encounters and reach the final boss, their reward would be one final, game-ending crash just before the battle started. At which point, their save data would be deleted with no way to recover it.
Vigilante justice, Nintendo style. Certainly beats the heck out of DRM!