A 12-minute video from Tech Rules about how the 2000 PlayStation game Spyro: Year of the Dragon dealt with software piracy:

The video extends upon a 2001 Game Developer article by Gavin Dodd, but Tech Rules adds a good intro about PlayStation’s modchips, and then actually shows the piracy protection in action.

I’m not going to spoil the surprise. Am I fully supportive of the approach? Not sure. PlayStation’s region protection complicates my feelings, and any sort of DRM-esque approach eventually backfires when it comes to software preservation. But you can’t deny what Spyro developers did is a really fascinating and weird approach.

The quote in the title of this post refers to the hackers who eventually did conquer the Spyro’s copy protection system. I guess – and I apologize in advance – game recognize game.