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Wasn't there some insane puzzle that needed you to consult the manual in Space Quest 6, but the manual was only included in the original release? Something about reconfiguring a Tricorder like device with IRQ and Dipswitches.
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Jul 4, 2014 16:26
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Lurkman posted:There aren't rose-tinted lenses thick enough to make me look back at the Sierra games with any fondness.
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Jul 4, 2014 17:48
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Unreasonable Sierra adventure game copy protection? Here's the list of codes needed to board a flight at the airport in Leisure Suit Larry 5, which you would need to do after about five minutes of gameplay.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:23
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mints posted:Wasn't there some insane puzzle that needed you to consult the manual in Space Quest 6, but the manual was only included in the original release? Something about reconfiguring a Tricorder like device with IRQ and Dipswitches. Not only that - the "solution" in the included book was itself a logic puzzle.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:27
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The most half-arsed was the Amiga game Hired Guns. It only seemed to ask one of 3 questions, one of which was a brute-forcable "How many planets does this particular solar system have?". One of the others was "What class is this planet?", a Star Trek inspired guess of "Uh, class M?" being the right answer.
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Jul 4, 2014 20:04
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This relates to the old copy protection placed on video games, but does anyone remember the little disc-shaped dials that would come with fantasy games- you had to line up certain symbols to get the code to play the game? I remember also Wishbringer had feelies to go with it- you had to have the booklet on the magic items to continue the game.
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Jul 5, 2014 03:55
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Leelee posted:This relates to the old copy protection placed on video games, but does anyone remember the little disc-shaped dials that would come with fantasy games- you had to line up certain symbols to get the code to play the game? TIE Fighter had a similar system way back in the day; passcodes were on every page of the manual and you had to input one every time you started the game, or else the Imperial officer at the desk would stop you from picking a profile(IIRC). Eventually my brothers, or maybe my dad, somehow, in like 1995, tracked down a patch to bypass it.
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Jul 5, 2014 04:02
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When I was in primary school, my class figured out that the 1st word of the 1st paragraph of the 1st page of the Prince of Persia manual was probably "prince", and that we could keep hitting enter until that question came up on the single PC we all shared. Serously Brøderbund, your copy protection was broken by nine year olds. What's up with that?
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Jul 5, 2014 04:27
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Darthemed posted:Unreasonable Sierra adventure game copy protection? aardwolf posted:When I was in primary school, my class figured out that the 1st word of the 1st paragraph of the 1st page of the Prince of Persia manual was probably "prince", and that we could keep hitting enter until that question came up on the single PC we all shared. Back in the day kids would trade photocopies of codes for Leisure Suit Larry 2 where you had to check the photo ID for a phone number.  Colonel's Bequest had one of the most annoying. You got this.  And then had to do this:  Oh and talking about cracking copy protection back in the good old days, here's a tutorial about Prince of Persia.
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Jul 5, 2014 05:52
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 It was pretty easy to just save/load until the mugshot of Bains came up
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Jul 5, 2014 05:56
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I was looking for a picture of the code wheel from Jack Nicklaus Golf and found this charming thing:
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Jul 5, 2014 14:48
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Admiral Bosch posted:TIE Fighter had a similar system way back in the day; passcodes were on every page of the manual and you had to input one every time you started the game, or else the Imperial officer at the desk would stop you from picking a profile(IIRC). Eventually my brothers, or maybe my dad, somehow, in like 1995, tracked down a patch to bypass it. I actually cracked Tie Fighter by using an editor on the exe and just deleting the password list. All I had to do was press enter and it would always acccept.
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Jul 5, 2014 15:23
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Admiral Bosch posted:TIE Fighter had a similar system way back in the day; passcodes were on every page of the manual and you had to input one every time you started the game, or else the Imperial officer at the desk would stop you from picking a profile(IIRC). Eventually my brothers, or maybe my dad, somehow, in like 1995, tracked down a patch to bypass it. Was this only for the floppy version? I had the CD copy and never had to do that, at least that I can remember. Lurkman posted:There aren't rose-tinted lenses thick enough to make me look back at the Sierra games with any fondness. King's Quest 6 will always have a special place in my heart, even if I had endless frustration with it when I wanted to replay it as a kid and the guidebook you needed to complete the copy protection cliffs was lost. The actual puzzles were very fair for a Sierra game!
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Jul 6, 2014 00:41
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Most early CD games didn't have copy protection because the CD was enough. Unlike floppies, they were too large to share via bbs, and no one had a CD burner when they first came out.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:11
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I remember as a kid playing the original Wing Commander at a friends house, and saying how it's dumb that you had to answer a question at the beginning related to stuff from the instructions to start. His father looked at me and called me a dirty thief. He said this while copying the floppies and make photocopies of the book. He was a dick. I do still remember that the max range of the Mass Driver cannons was like 1800 clicks or some crap. Restart till I got that question baby.
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Jul 6, 2014 01:59
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Couple pages back, but I actually own one of those UMD porn discs. Sent to me c.2005 by a guy from IRC in exchange for some PS2 parts IIRC. I guess it's technically nws, so I'll link to it. http://i.imgur.com/jA0bO93.jpg It's pretty much standard pixelated Japanese porn as far as I recall, I don't have a PSP anymore. I'm pretty sure about half the scenes were shot in the back of a tiny hatchback. Note the listed price, Y2310=roughly $25 at the time. pants in my pants has a new favorite as of 04:28 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 04:25
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rape rape date gently caress
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Jul 8, 2014 11:58
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WebDog posted:Back in the day kids would trade photocopies of codes for Leisure Suit Larry 2 where you had to check the photo ID for a phone number. The original, LSL 1 I had didn't have a copy protection, but it had an "age check." When you started a new game, it would make you answer the same 5 multiple choice questions, that were supposed to be above a child's knowledge. The only two questions I remember at the moment are "What does IBM stand for?" and "how many kids were in the Brady Bunch?"
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Jul 8, 2014 13:28
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Or you could just hit alt-x to bypass the age check. 
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Jul 8, 2014 14:06
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I did like how if you put your age as 99 the game would quit claiming it's too risqué and would give you a heart attack.
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Jul 8, 2014 14:17
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two forty posted:Couple pages back, but I actually own one of those UMD porn discs. Sent to me c.2005 by a guy from IRC in exchange for some PS2 parts IIRC. Japan doesn't have a word for "gently caress"?
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Jul 9, 2014 20:37
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Iron Crowned posted:The original, LSL 1 I had didn't have a copy protection, but it had an "age check." When you started a new game, it would make you answer the same 5 multiple choice questions, that were supposed to be above a child's knowledge. I remember one from one of the games about Bo Derek. I didn't know who she was or why she was a "10", but I knew that was the answer.
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Jul 9, 2014 20:41
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Jonathan Yeah! posted:Japan doesn't have a word for "gently caress"? In Japan, using English words at random makes you look cool.
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Jul 9, 2014 21:17
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This isn't so much a failed technology as it is a failed business. In the early days of CD's there were companies rented computer games and their manuals. They were sued, the courts ruled it illegal, and the industry collapsed.
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Jul 9, 2014 21:24
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Back in the day of manual code and codewheel copy protection,  came with a text file that had all the codes. Or the game was properly cracked and you could enter anything.
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Jul 10, 2014 06:28
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RandomPauI posted:This isn't so much a failed technology as it is a failed business. In the early days of CD's there were companies rented computer games and their manuals. They were sued, the courts ruled it illegal, and the industry collapsed. An independent video rental place here used to rent PC games. This was before online activation was a thing, so the only real obstacle was checking to see if the actual disc was in the drive.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:43
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The Bard's Tale 2 would let you play freely without copy protection until you gained a few levels. Then you'd have to go see a trainer and every few levels he'd ask you which city is furthest north or nearest to Thessalonica on the map that came with the game. It sucked because I borrowed it from a friend and had to call him in the middle of the night to dig out the box and spell some fantasy bullshit city name to me. I got stuck when I rented StarTropics for the NES because of something similar. I don't believe it was supposed to be copy protection, more of a cool extra, but at one point in the game you find a submarine that's locked down. You need to tune the radio to the correct frequency to decode a message telling you how to make it work, but nothing in the game really tells you what that is or how to get it. I wandered around for hours on rented time looking for a clue and got a few references to dipping a letter in water, but couldn't figure it out and had to return it. It turns out that the game came with a letter from your missing uncle, it looks pretty innocuous since he's just shooting the poo poo and saying "welp, here's a map. Love, Uncle Steve."  However, you take that letter in real life and dip it in water and it reveals a message in hidden ink:  Pretty cool and blew my mind when I first saw it! The problem is that it's impossible to progress in the game if you can't get the right frequency. If you rented it or borrowed it from a friend, you're just stuck there unless you want to try 1000 different settings. If it was supposed to be a way to stop people from playing without buying it, it's pretty lovely at it since it doesn't ask you for it until about 6 hours into the game. GaryLeeLoveBuckets has a new favorite as of 07:56 on Jul 10, 2014 |
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Jul 10, 2014 07:49
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My dad and I ran into this problem with StarTropics back in the day when we rented it from the corner video store. The manual was long gone, to say nothing of the letter. So my dad sat there and keyed in codes until he got the right one. And then? To save everyone else the trouble, he took a permanent marker and wrote "the code is 747" on the plastic game case. Don't know if it actually helped anyone, but I hope that it did.
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Jul 10, 2014 07:58
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RandomPauI posted:This isn't so much a failed technology as it is a failed business. In the early days of CD's there were companies rented computer games and their manuals. They were sued, the courts ruled it illegal, and the industry collapsed. Wait, what? Why? Isn't it just like game rentals?
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Jul 10, 2014 14:32
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FeatherFloat posted:My dad and I ran into this problem with StarTropics back in the day when we rented it from the corner video store. The manual was long gone, to say nothing of the letter. So my dad sat there and keyed in codes until he got the right one. And then? To save everyone else the trouble, he took a permanent marker and wrote "the code is 747" on the plastic game case. Don't know if it actually helped anyone, but I hope that it did. Your dad is awesome, I didn't figure the frequency out until Nintendo Power said gently caress it and just printed it because people kept throwing the box away. I had to rent it again to get past that part, and at that point the game actually gets a lot more fun.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:38
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Kings Quest III made you type in several sentences worth of incantations when you made spells.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:38
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How about borrowing games on floppy discs at the library? I did that, and my 386 laptop got infected with all sorts of weird viruses. Good times; social engineering at work.
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Jul 10, 2014 14:46
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WickedHate posted:Wait, what? Why? Isn't it just like game rentals? No, because Congress is retarded. http://www.copyright.gov/reports/software_ren.html quote:On December 1, 1990, President Bush signed into law the "Computer Because, see, First Sale shouldn't apply to computer software because those are Different, somehow. Pilsner posted:How about borrowing games on floppy discs at the library? quote:...for direct or indirect commercial gain...
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Jul 10, 2014 14:50
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RandomPauI posted:This isn't so much a failed technology as it is a failed business. In the early days of CD's there were companies rented computer games and their manuals. They were sued, the courts ruled it illegal, and the industry collapsed. With Japan it's illegal to rent out games. This is something that apparently stemmed from the NES days when store owners would create their own bootleg copies to sell. So in 1984 recording groups lobbied for the copyright act to change and make it so games could not be rented out and cut down on rampant piracy. However the ruling still allows copyright holders to give permission for titles to be rented out if they want to, such as SNK having a NeoGeo arcade machine that had a selection of cartridges and the Dreamcast was allowed to be rented out at stores. The hard line on bootlegs and piracy were setup in response to the hoards of shovelware that dominated the early generation of home consoles. Konami sneakily subverted Nintendo's five games a year limit by creating spin off publishers. Their hardliner attitude towards quality did bite them in the end as companies began to find it too restrictive, such as high production licence costs for the 64 or Nintendo defining the number of cartridges allocated to the licensee or being unable to port to competitors for two years. The soft stance on voilence ended up being a sales boom for SEGA as Mortal Kombat pretty much defined that console in an era where the SNES was seen as "for kids" due to Nintendo's tough stance on censorship. They relaxed this largely in he 64 era once there were higher ratings and to better compete with Sony and Microsoft. However, Mortal Kombat II was released uncensored as a result.
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Jul 10, 2014 15:10
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Even the Sega Genesis version of Mortal Kombat was censored. You had to enter the ABACABB blood code, or the DULLARD menu code to turn back on the blood and fatalities. In general, Cheat codes are obsolete. Now games have unlocks and DLC to give you the same things that used to be secretes
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Jul 10, 2014 16:04
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Lowen SoDium posted:the ABACABB blood code 
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Jul 10, 2014 16:23
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Lowen SoDium posted:
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Jul 10, 2014 16:25
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Shovel Knight has like 350 cheat codes and they're all great.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:27
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Butt Mode in Shovel Knight is a thing of beauty.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:39
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WebDog posted:With Japan it's illegal to rent out games. Back in the early-1990s I used to read a lot of imported British console magazines like Super Play and CVG (I live in Australia) and one thing that really really stuck out for me in the letters sections was that they'd always harp about how you couldn't rent out games in the UK and that it was illegal or forbidden or something. Also Nintendo apparently had something to do with it as well? Anyone who remembers care to shed some light on this? A quick Google search seems to indicate that renting games in Britain is all kosher now but I'm just curious about the different situation back then, since adolescent me going to the video store and renting out Street Fighter II for the umpteenth time was a pretty regular thing I did back in the day.
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Jul 10, 2014 16:50
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