Fake Dragon Quest IX ROM punishes overeager pirates

by JC Fletcher { Jul 8th 2009 at 8:00PM }

Okay, let's get this out of the way right up front: Downloading what you think is a ROM of the Japanese release of Dragon Quest IX, days before it even comes out, is not cool. It turns out that it will probably also end up being hazardous to your DS.

DS Scene reports that a file going around, labeled "Dragon Quest IX JPN DSi Enhanced NDS iND," is actually not Dragon Quest IX at all, but rather a malicious program that can overwrite a DS's firmware and render systems unusable. The program is disguised as a hentai slideshow called "DS Owata," which is itself disguised as Dragon Quest IX.

Our advice in this case is to do your very best not to be a pirate and just buy the thing when you can. Square Enix booby-traps its legitimate games against piracy anyway.

Tags: dragon-quest-ix, piracy, rpg, square-enix

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

TwEE @ Jul 8th 2009 8:44PM

Holy Karma Batman!

Author X @ Jul 8th 2009 8:44PM

"Square Enix booby-traps its legitimate games against piracy anyway."

You know, there's no reason to believe that was anything but a weird glitch. I recall someone trying to trumpet Henry Hatsworth as having been pirate-proofed because they tried it in an emulator, and some enemies had infinite health - just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean it was sabotaged. Being someone that works with computers all the time, I find it far more likely that it's just a random glitch (all it does is jump to the final screen of the game, and it was fixed for pirates quickly anyway) than some kind of Earthbound-ian sadistically diabolical anti-piracy booby trap that doesn't say anything about piracy or copyrights.

Janus @ Jul 9th 2009 7:12AM

"all it does is jump to the final screen of the game" Except this final screen also enables New Game+. The one that showed up then did not.

Meh @ Jul 9th 2009 7:27AM

it's weird that a "glitch" would show up when the player goes through any door AND the playtime is over 20 minutes.

sony boy @ Jul 8th 2009 8:50PM

that's frikin genius. that's what i would do for all the roms for the psp. get them all fucked up because they're downloading illegaly.

Sly @ Jul 10th 2009 10:12PM

most PSP ISOs are straight rips from UMDs. the publishers would have to sabotage every single copy of their games, even legitly bought ones. they wouldn't risk losing all their sales completely just to make pirates stop pirating.

Rehm @ Jul 8th 2009 8:58PM

Cue anti-piracy freaks in 3... 2... 1...

bm @ Jul 9th 2009 4:55AM

Cue pro-piracy parasites in... oh, wait.

xSHiNOx @ Jul 8th 2009 9:13PM

wow. i wonder who did this.

Jinsenken @ Jul 8th 2009 9:43PM

So...people with phat and lites are cool tho right?

(Not that I'm encouraging piracy, just curious)

xSHiNOx @ Jul 8th 2009 11:55PM

why would they be cool? this fake rom destroys all firmwares including the dsi.

Josh @ Jul 9th 2009 1:20AM

Yeah, piracy ain't cool, but this is pretty douchey, as well.

At least SE probably has nothing to do with it, haha.

Tim Parsons @ Jul 9th 2009 3:28AM

this is why you test a ROM in a Virtual Environment First!

Cheesus(Crust) @ Jul 9th 2009 3:31AM

They should do shit like this in all roms, teaches people to buy.

Sunny @ Jul 9th 2009 3:37PM

Or just teach people to smarten up and install the FlashMe firmware.

CSP @ Jul 9th 2009 3:53AM

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=19004

"According to retailers, this figure is higher than previous Dragon Quest games. "

Oh no this is totally wrong. Too many people have R4s and will pirate the game instead of buying it. The sales projections are ALL wrong. In the past you had to either use disk swap techniques or hard mod your PS2 in order to get pirated games, today you do not need to even touch your DS so it's much easier...

so more people will pirate...

so it will sell worse than the PS2 games...

WAKE UP YOU FOOLS

Alilatias @ Jul 9th 2009 1:46PM

I will stand here and laugh like crazy if this turns out selling more than VIII did. Which it most likely will, seeing as the class system is modeled after III and VIII (much more emphasis on III), of which III is the most popular DQ game by far.

Egonny @ Jul 9th 2009 8:20AM

Oh yeah, and for the porn lovers: it also bricks your DS, unless you have a DSi.

http://kotaku.com/5310666/hey-pirates-beware-of-fake-dragon-quest-ix-hentai-boobies

Nightwish @ Jul 9th 2009 8:56AM

*Yawn*

Freudian Lemur @ Jul 9th 2009 11:49AM

The game isn't even out in Japan yet, and the ROM has been released on the internet. Even funnier is that the piracy protection has already been bypassed. Before the official release. Poor Sqeenix...

nocturnalkami @ Jul 9th 2009 1:15PM

Meh If you do you, you don't you don't. I'm not one to pass judgment on either person.
I tend to be skeptical with the whole doomsday thing. The idea that everyone everywhere will start downloading instead of buying. That companies will fall into an abyss while pirates scream "aaar ther' b a new treasure chest ta download!"... Or something like that. Many people buy the games and will continue to do so.
I buy the games I love to show my little ounce of support. The biggest reason I own a DS is to play the RPGs that have been coming out as of late. Yeah... I love RPGs above all else. And Square Enix. Oh and Phoenix Wright.
Besides isn't announcing the fact the games will have booby-traps of any kind just taunting those waiting to crack it so they can go "Hahahaha Check Mate!!!"

Sunny @ Jul 9th 2009 3:06PM

This isn't really new. It's been going around since the early days of cracking the DS in 2005. A hacker named DarkFader, who was one of the first to start running custom code on the DS, released a trojan to wipe the firmware out. He felt he wasn't getting enough recognition or something when the scene started moving a lot faster after his work.

This is probably the same trojan code.