i updated my online copy of my forum thread about weird things i've seen disassembling nes games
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@Xkeeper that Wanpaku Graffiti thing seems like a possible way to record demo play during development, and then they disabled it for the release? either way, it's cool. I know some games try to write to cart RAM they don't have and then read it back and if they get the correct value they know they're being played on a disk copier, as a form of piracy detection…
@atinyfairy almost certainly it, yep, and i think someone pointed out adventure island ii (by the same developer) appears to have similar code
my favorite are the really weird ones that write to *ROM* areas (and not just for mapper changes or the like). a few arcade games do this