Comments on: Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: Matt

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 18:17:23 +0000

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum version of ‘Elite’ had a thing called a Lenslok, which was a plastic lens that allowed you to read a jumbled-up code on the screen. Tricky to use and unreliable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenslok
http://www.birdsanctuary.co.uk/sanct/s_lenslok.php

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: dogmusher

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:43:06 +0000

Leisure Suit Larry, to start it would ask you questions that most kids would have no clue about. Nixon, politics, music, etc. That is why I am so good at Jeopardy now. Amazing how fast you can learn!

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: Lord Flame Stryke

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 01:13:07 +0000

You are correct about the Railroad Tycoon game, looking up the names of the trains. It would show a picture of a train and you’d select the proper name from the list of all the trains in the game.

It had a nice feature, though, that if you failed the copy protection check, the game still allowed you to play, but limited you to running 2 trains, while succeeding at the copy protection would allow you to run 20+ trains.

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: jtb

Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:09:05 +0000

And then there was “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?”, which came bundled with a printed copy of the “1990 World Almanac”. From time to time (at startup? I can’t recall), the program would challenge you with a question like, “What’s the population of Zambia?”, which you’d then have to dutifully go look up.

I think they billed this as an “educational feature”. Of course, because the info in those Almanacs goes out of date so fast, it soon evolved into a “historical feature”.

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: Eric

Sat, 12 Aug 2006 05:08:13 +0000

These codes?

http://eager.back2roots.org/CHEAT/o/ohnomo.htm

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: Blitzvvolf

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 17:01:48 +0000

I still haven’t figured out the right passcodes for my old “Oh No! More Lemmings!” game. I’ve been wanting to play that for a loong time.

I think my favorite copy protection was in Return to Zork where Mrs. Peepers would ask you questions from the manual. “Now we’ll have a little… pop… quiz…” If you got them wrong, you would die. Loudly.

How I love that game.

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: gnome

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 10:22:10 +0000

Valid point there RedWolf.

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: RedWolf

Fri, 11 Aug 2006 07:30:47 +0000

I personally find the suggestion that the StarTropics “water note” is a form of copy protection to be absurd (as the Wikipedia currently does, as of this writing — that may change soon). It’s certainly not a very good method of CP since the key to breaking it is universally “747″ on every instance of every game and could be provided easily by the person making copies of the game. But you must also rewind to 1990 when StarTropics came out: How many people in the US (where StarTropics was solely released) had the capability to successfully copy and sell a pirated NES game (much less play it)? Ok, so somebody could have sold pirated copies in Asia, but they could have easily printed “747″ on the label. Even if they didn’t, people would have still bought and played the game at least half-way through, not knowing there was a form of “copy protection.” So once again the “copy protection” wouldn’t work.

Don’t believe everything you read in Wikipedia.

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: medarch

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:22:57 +0000

The original SimCity used to have a giant table of numbers, too lightly printed to be reproduced by your standard office copy machine. I copied by hand and 20% of the sheet from a friend, then I would restart the game until it asked me for a number from the part I copied!

Comment on Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes by: Jeff

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:43:14 +0000

It goes into detail about the letter here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarTropics