Copy protections in games

7sr2z3fely84g5

The internet is one of the tools now used in activating copy protection on games and apps,before that you had your software in a big bulky box with codewheels/manual/stripsheet in box,have you any memories of them?.

gouche

I remember playing Powermonger I think it was, and you had to go to a certain page in the manual to look up a number or phrase or something. Was a bit of a pain, think you had to do it each time you played a new game.

Retr0gamer

I never really experienced it thank god. I think most of my games were budget games with no copy protection and I got into gaming with my C64 in 1990 so it was pretty late so I missed out on rubbish like the Lenslok system. I do remember my friend with an amiga having a lot of trouble with code wheels and stuff. It drove my friend to pirate cracked versions of games he already owned.

LoGiE

I remember when I bought Frontier: Elite II which required info from the manual. Problem was it didn't tell you, you had entered a wrong code so later on my save became useless

I read on article on piracy during the c64 era a while back. It was very interesting so I'll try and find it again and post it here.

7sr2z3fely84g5

lenslock was hillarious,it might had not worked right if you had a very big or very small tv.

Items on black dark paper,terrible for anyone who might had bad eyesight.

Amiga had an unique if not rubbish protections,pc port of games allowed you to install on hard disk,mig ports usually did not allow it or some games it did,but some you had to create book disk for it to run off the HD,which made it useless if the bootdisk was corrupted,robocop 3 came with a dongle

Zak mccrakken,thrown you in jail if the game was pirated,foward to 0.50 to see -

Jimmy Bottlehead

Metal Gear Solid had that infamous part where you needed to check the back of the case to get the right Codec frequency to continue in the game

horgan_p

Teenage mutant ninja turtles - deep deep maroon pages with black writing.
I remember one of the monkey islands being fairly devious as well ?

LoGiE

Pierce Full Cub wrote: »

lenslock was hillarious,it might had not worked right if you had a very big or very small tv.

Items on black dark paper,terrible for anyone who might had bad eyesight.

Amiga had an unique if not rubbish protections,pc port of games allowed you to install on hard disk,mig ports usually did not allow it or some games it did,but some you had to create book disk for it to run off the HD,which made it useless if the bootdisk was corrupted,robocop 3 came with a dongle

Zak mccrakken,thrown you in jail if the game was pirated,foward to 0.50 to see -

I had a HD installer for Mortal Komat II on the amiga. In fairness it made it playable as the game didn't recognise a second hard disk thanks to some crap programming (Thanks Probe!)

I remember the Dongle that Ocean released with Robocop was cracked before it's offical release. There's some good info on the forums of the ocean experience

Retr0gamer

Jimmy Bottlehead wrote: »

Metal Gear Solid had that infamous part where you needed to check the back of the case to get the right Codec frequency to continue in the game

God felt like such a dope for that. Was looking at he serial number, barcode, everywhere there was numbers looking for the frequency. Ended up ringing every frequency until I got it. Only occured to me afterwards to look at the screenshot. Total fail.

Welease

Pierce Full Cub wrote: »

lenslock was hillarious,it might had not worked right if you had a very big or very small tv.

Not only that.. but the original copies of Elite had the wrong Lenslok's shipped with them, and the original code didnt work properly

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/26/editrl.htm


iirc remember Jet Set Willy came with a colour code chart.

batari

Oh yea, I remember there were plenty of games that needed you to re-write a whole manual to be able to find the word on page 19 to load it.

I remember when Premier Manager came out first for the Pc, with a wheel for different jersies, we all thought, fcuk it, they're onto us now!

BTW, Geese Howard, you're not a fan of the Stone Roses by any chance??!:P

7sr2z3fely84g5

LoGiE wrote: »

I remember the Dongle that Ocean released with Robocop was cracked before it's offical release.

An almighty embarrassment for them,the discussion
http://oceanexp.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=memory&action=display&thread=209

As written in page 2- http://amr.abime.net/review_1181

Earthbound-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmyoV1bkXNI

7sr2z3fely84g5

batari wrote: »

BTW, Geese Howard, you're not a fan of the Stone Roses by any chance??!:P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R89oERKCaU

batari

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh9mp_syc8c

Ah you can change the name, but ya can't change the typing style :pac:

Pyongyang

X Copy 3. That is all.

Dark Savior

horgan_p wrote: »

I remember one of the monkey islands being fairly devious as well ?

Aarrgh,if you don't have Dial a Pirate ,you aint playing the game matey:D




I remember Rally Cross Simulator for the C64 by Codemasters had a screen upon loading,that if you entered the code wrong three times you had to reload it again.The letters on the bloody piece of paper were printed by a microdot.It was worth it though as it was a cracking little game.

DinoRex

LoGiE wrote: »

I remember when I bought Frontier: Elite II which required info from the manual. Problem was it didn't tell you, you had entered a wrong code so later on my save became useless

I know. I loaned my copy to a friend and got it back with the manual missing...

When ever you docked at a space station the police would ask for a word from the manual and they'd blast the f*ck out of you if you got it wrong.

Chronoquest was the absolute worst though.

It came with a sheet of tracing paper with a grid on it. Each cell on the grid was probably about .5cm wide. You had to overlay it on the box and you were given a grid reference and you had to say what colour was in that cell. The trouble was that this was the cover of the box:



It's filled with gradients!

LoGiE

Dark Savior wrote: »

Aarrgh,if you don't have Dial a Pirate ,you aint playing the game matey:D




I remember Rally Cross Simulator for the C64 by Codemasters had a screen upon loading,that if you entered the code wrong three times you had to reload it again.The letters on the bloody piece of paper were printed by a microdot.It was worth it though as it was a cracking little game.

That takes me back. I bet if I had a look in the attic I could find Monkey Island II boxed with wheel.

DinoRex

I ashamed to say I had to photocopy and build a new dial-a-pirate wheel to go with my pirated copy....

Same with Monkey Island 2's Voodoo wheel... it was a voodoo thing, wasn't it?

Mr.Saturn

Pierce Full Cub wrote: »

An almighty embarrassment for them,the discussion
http://oceanexp.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=memory&action=display&thread=209

As written in page 2- http://amr.abime.net/review_1181

Earthbound-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmyoV1bkXNI

I'm sorry, this is horrid of me and I would've blown had it happened to me during my runthrough, but that's slightly brilliant.

mondeo

Grand Prixx which would have been bundled with my amiga has an annoying protection on it, you have to flick to a differant page in the manual for a code everytime you load it. Unfortunately I dont have the manual so could never play it . Looks like an epic game to.

7sr2z3fely84g5

GP manual here- http://www.simracingworld.com/files/download/539-f1gp-full-english-manual/

Was given away as cover cd with AF,key words page 97- http://amr.abime.net/issue_267_pages

mondeo

Pierce Full Cub wrote: »

GP manual here- http://www.simracingworld.com/files/download/539-f1gp-full-english-manual/

Was given away as cover cd with AF,key words page 97- http://amr.abime.net/issue_267_pages

WOW thanks!