Analog 'copy protection technology' used in early PC games

ByStefan Roßkopf

Everything such as music, games, movies, etc. has been converted into data and can be used on the Internet, but along with that, "illegal" act of illegally hacking data and distributing it free of charge is also increasing. Manufacturers and hackers are doing riffing on the boundary line of copy protection technology, but this battle has been done even in the 1980s game where the Internet was not yet common. It was used at that timeOld school"Copy protection technology" is summarized.

VC & amp; G | Old-School PC Copy Protection Schemes
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◆ Code Wheels
"Code Wheels" is an early analog copy protection tool, used in PC games from the 1980's to the early 1990's. Code Wheels is a combination of two pieces of cardboard cut out with small one, with letters, words and clipping windows on the outer and inner peripheries. When you are playing a game, you are asked to enter words at the outer circumference and inner circumference at a specific point, words that are out on the window, etc. If you can input correctly you will be able to play the continuation of the game.


Although it is a very simple mechanism copy / protection, it was difficult to copy by handwriting, so at that time it was adopted by many PC games as a means to some extent.


Although I have not used it much, "Alone in the Dark 2" said that copy protection using a card with cards with a trump and a window with cutouts was used. This mechanism is actually issued as a problem such as "place a queen of spades on top of the 3 diamonds and read the 2nd column of the 1st line" in the game, if you enter the picture indicated by the instruction in the game It was said that it was a system to proceed to. In the 1990s when color copying machines were not yet popular, it seems that copying duplication could also be prevented.


◆ Manual Lookups
Copy protection, which was as common as Code Wheels, was something called "Manual Lookups". You do not have to prepare something extra like Code Wheels, instead use special illustrations and letters written in the game manual book. For example, in the game "Railroad Tycoon", I could continue the game by searching for a specific train that was drawn in the manual and entering the correct one.


"Sim City" has a red page in the manual and has entered "in the game, line 88, line 4" etc. in the game. Although it was a rather hard-to-read page, he said that he was doubling as a countermeasure to prevent it from collapsing and being unreadable. These games seem to have worked to some extent because they can not set up games without manuals or can not advance games.


◆ Maps
"Ultima"Comes with a high-quality cloth-made color world map, and players will get optional items that excite the game. In the game, you may be asked as "copy latitude of town in ○ ○" as copy protection. You can continue the game if you find the place from the world map, but most of the letters areRunesSince it is written in, it is necessary to translate these characters.


◆ Cracks
In game software "Game Guru", a 3.5-inch floppy disk is bundled separately from software, and in it there was written a program which can change player data called "Game Enhancer" only three times. This program can not be used when floppy's write-protect tab is enabled, and it was programmed not to be used again once installed, so even if you pass some used floppy to the same operation There was no such thing. However, it is considered to be only this game that actually used this technology.