So it's only a few days left before the next most anticipated Mario title, Super Mario Galaxy is released over in Japan. As usual with big releases it's already been floating around the net for several days now (the English version too!) but, scene discussion forums have been going rampant due to what appears to be a new copy protection, preventing most users with modded Wiis from playing the game. Trying "backup" copies of the game gave the message "Error #001: Unauthorised device has been detected."

Unfortunately (or should that be "fortunately"?), it didn't take long before new firmware updates were released to bypass this detection. Currently only the D2CKey and Cyclowiz chips work with the game but it shouldn't be long before others follow suit.

Good effort from Nintendo. Maybe if they keep trying pirates will get annoyed at the trouble they need to go through to play the games and start buying them instead. The protection methods they come up with will have to last much longer to achieve that kind of affect, though.

That said, being able to play "backup" copies isn't always a bad thing in my opinion because there's simply too many games that only keeps my interest for less than a few hours so, it's good to get a trial run first. Just take Super Paper Mario for instance. I had to drag myself through most of that game.

I actually have Mario Galaxy pre-ordered for the PAL November 16th release date. A while away but I can wait. I still want a good region-free solution for my PAL console though so I can play some Japanese games!