Michelin Rally Masters: Race of Champions (PlayStation)

Michelin Rally Masters: Race of Champions
Developer: Digital Illusions Publisher: Infogrames Platform: PlayStation Released in US: October 24, 2000 Released in EU: March 16, 2001 This game has hidden developer credits. This game has anti-piracy features.

Hidden Credits

Present at 0x50104 in SLUS_012.29.

GTELIB V1.0 (c) DICE 1996
GTE-X-LIB featuring DANNii (c) DICE 1998

(Source: Original TCRF research)

Anti-Piracy

Some PlayStation games released after 1998 (especially in PAL regions, like Europe, Oceania and South Africa) contain the LibCrypt protection system developed by Sony, in order to curb modchips and illegal copies on the system.

The LibCrypt functions on the software level in two ways: by detecting a modchip upon bootup of the game and by detecting an illegal copy through a 16-bit key located in the subchannel data of the disc. The first check is to see whether or not a modchip is installed on the system. As earlier modchips are active by default, all that is necessary to detect one is for the program to return data from a modchip. If it detects it, the game crashes immediately. This was mitigated by pirates with so-called "stealth" modchips, which turn off immediately when loading disc region data during boot-up. However, the second check now comes into play. The second part functions as a part of the game. It decrypts the 16-bit LibCrypt data key stored in the subchannel of the disc and stores it in the coprocessor of the system. If the data is incorrect, the game implements its anti-piracy measures. As most CD burners cannot properly replicate subchannel data on the disc, a pirated copy, whether burned directly to another disc or as a disc image, trips the anti-piracy measure by default.

A modded system allows for a backup, a pirated copy, or a legitimate copy of the game from a region different than the console, to start normally. However, with LibCrypt, the game can crash, freeze or perform tricks to prevent pirates, depending on the title.

In this case, the game starts out fine, until the player choose any race to play. The loading screen will hang indefinitely, making the race not available.

This unfortunately prevents the PAL version from being played on a PlayStation 3 due to the software emulation config not having an entry for the game thus setting off this measure. Note, however, that this protection is not present in the North American version.