piracy

[MSC]

Same as other people, i tended to get the pirate, and if i liked the game, buy the original. There were some exceptions of course. The sports and multi event games interested me the most, simply because i had two good friends to play them with. Sad as it may sound(aged between 18 - 23) , we would arrange gaming nights to paly sensi, goal, summer/winter/world games, PGA golf etc. We would play all through the night, then sleep during the day!! Just typing this brings back some great memories. I have never got rid of anything commodore based and this thread caused me to venture into my loft to see just what i had saved:

A1200 with 040 8mb accelerator, 210mb HD & Squirrel Cdrom with over 80 boxed originals and about 60 pirated games. We had two fantastic computer shops locally who always had great selection, in store testing and were reasonably priced. (One of the shops was tied to the original Gremlin Graphics which was in the premises next door)

Under more rubble i found

A600 with no FD (robbed it for the 1200)
A500

C64 Vanilla modern look
C64 Chocolate brown old look

1541 5-1/4" disk drive and over 100 original C64 games of which around 20 are disk based originals, and International Soccer on cartridge! Another 100 ish copied games. Oh and Action Replay Mk3

I Had a C16 but my parents sold it to buy my C64. Was out of my hands back then.

I Don`t care if its all now worth diddly squat. That`s pretty much my whole youth sat up there! Just going through the stuff has brought back some great memories.

Thanks Jim

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[killergorilla]

I'd say that around 10% of my games were pirated and in total I had around 150-175 games at most. I voted for 25% pirated because it was the closest to my situation.

Originally Posted by MSC

I Don`t care if its all now worth diddly squat. That`s pretty much my whole youth sat up there! Just going through the stuff has brought back some great memories.

Thanks Jim

That's the thing about disks, they can rot but unless you abuse a serious amount of drugs & alcohol your memories never will

P.S. Let me know if you plan to sell that accelerator & Squirel CD-ROM, they might be worth didly squat to you but I'm looking for them

[Shatterhand]

I am pretty much like Burseg... I only had pirated games because that was the ONLY way to have the games here in Brazil.

This reminds me something that Akira once said, which is also very true for me. For a long time, I didn't thought I was pirating stuff, for me that was the way EVERYONE would get their games, as I HAD NEVER SEEN any other way...

C'mon - speak she/he who voted for the "None - I never once had a pirated disk in my collection" !

It would be stupid contributing to this thread if you never had a disk collection, so I can only imagine you had a collection of very few disks or were very rich/spoiled.

Originally Posted by Jim

C'mon - speak she/he who voted for the "None - I never once had a pirated disk in my collection" !

I'm still wondering who else only had pirated games like me. Confess whores. No need to be ashamed of this, it's nowhere near voting for bush.

[BenniP]

I had two pirated games.
1. Batman - The Movie
2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Up to the time were I met WinUAE I didn't really know there were pirated and cracked games
All other games were orginal, from my dad who had a great collection.

[synchro]

Always bought the originals of games i really wanted even though i usually had the copies first but theres nothing like the feel and weight of the real box is there

Copies were handed to me on a plate but i would never have bought those anyway so i could take them or leave them.............Course i usually took them

But in all fairness i didnt know i was doing wrong i was only 28 years old...............

[Eny-]

Bought 10 or so...

[synchro]

Originally Posted by Eny-

Bought 10 or so...

What ....Copies ???

[T_hairy_bootson]

The funny thing about trading was I was getting more games than I could possibly play. The reason for this was I knew eventually contacts would dry up and I could go back and try games I had never played. Also certain contacts had stupid ways of doing things... like trading disks one for one so I kept all sorts of crap on the off chance another guy didnt have them and would trade them for stuff I actually wanted.

I would really only buy games I absolutely could not get from contacts... or were something special and worth the high price we were charged for them... Or Bargain bin games I had never heard of or were just plain old.

One of my contacts had a whole bookshelf full of floppy disk boxes (each contained about 80 floppies). At one point I did work experience at an Authorized Amiga Dealer. And as much as this upsets the caps team... The games came in not shrink-wrapped, we usually tried them out or tried backing them up and then shrink-wrapped them our selves.

btw... this was all before the A1200 and cheap harddrives

[petza]

i started out life on the spectrum (i cant beleive i said this but i told my m8 the spectrums graphics were cool) i bought every single spectrum game, i have over 100 games i never pirated any games at all,and no did my m8s thats because they were so cheap every one could afford them,all 8 bit games cost around the same price.
when i bought my ST(i bought it first because no one at school had amigas it was all ST's and specys)
every 16 bit game cost 30 quid wich was a total rip off
if they rip us of why should'nt we rip them off by pirating
piracy was rife on the amiga and ST
the software companys probabaly made more cash of the 8 bit games,they were cheaper but they sold much more of them

everyone breaks the copyright law
recording flims of the tv is ilegal
so is recording songs of the radio they would have to lock up the entire population of the earth if they enforced the copyright law


most
spectrum games were made by people in there bed rooms they did the coding,gfx and sound themseleves
DIzzy by codemasters was written by 2 boys

[BippyM]

Is this post about:

a). Piracy on computers (1st Paragraph)
b). Piracy of films/tv/music and in general (2ns paragraph)
c). Bedroom coding?? (3rd Paragraph)

If it's a). could you state why you think software companies ripped us off?
if it's b). then go somewhere else as this isn't the place to discuss non-amiga
if it's c). Start a new thread about bedroom coding, what happened to it and the effects it had on the community back then!

[Peanutuk]

@petza: You are Fred. I claim my £5.

[petza]

Originally Posted by bippym

Is this post about:

a). Piracy on computers (1st Paragraph)
b). Piracy of films/tv/music and in general (2ns paragraph)
c). Bedroom coding?? (3rd Paragraph)

If it's a). could you state why you think software companies ripped us off?
if it's b). then go somewhere else as this isn't the place to discuss non-amiga
if it's c). Start a new thread about bedroom coding, what happened to it and the effects it had on the community back then!

so u think paying 30 quid a game is fair ??
i had no choice but 2 pirate games it was either that or get no games i could only afford a few amiga games i was poor ,my mother had to save up for months to buy my amiga that was my best christmas ever,i only got 1 quid pocket money,it would take me 30 weeks to buy 1 game thats nuts,no ones going to pay for something when they can get it free.
i havent copied a single game since my amiga thats because im not poor anymore

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by petza

so u think paying 30 quid a game is fair ??

If it's a good game and you play it then yes!

Originally Posted by petza

if they rip us of why should'nt we rip them off by pirating

Part (only part) of the reason game development stopped on the Amiga was because piracy was so rife!

.....

[petza]

Originally Posted by Methanoid

Even FAST understood at that time that decent games sold. Amazing that Dungeon Master sold so many.. sure many pirate copies but most half-decent pirates boot the class games. Shite like Dalek Attack was never gonna sell originals!

dungeon master was my favourite amiga game i bought it for my miggy and ST
your right

if a game rocks it sells
if its crap it wont

[BippyM]

Threads merged

[petza]

Originally Posted by AwoL

I ticked "a dozen or so originals" but in fairness, i had a hell of a lot more originals than that, it's just i tended to have a lot of pirated sofware too. hell, in 1995 i had over 1200 disks, i guess these where about 150 coverdisks, 10 to 15 original amiga titles, with 7 cd32 originals too, the original games that came with my amiga 500 batman pack, the amiga 600, amiga 500+, amiga 2000, amiga 600hd (same as a600).
obviously today it;s a little different, i only have 500 floppies now, as those 1200 got lost in a house move, luckily ive replaced almost everything i lost thanks to back2roots and the like, and i now have 8.5gb games/apps/demos on two dvd's and 2400+ games on 5 cd's.... oh yeah and 3.7gb on my pc... i just don't want to risk any amiga software ending in oblivion, so i've earmarked a 40gb drive to download aminet too, it's just finding the time to do it. i must admit though, i tended to get pir8 software often before it was released, if it was good (walker, pinball fantasies, alien breed 3d & 3d-II, alien breed tower assault, xenon 2 megablast, the killing game show, blood money) i bought it, if it sucked, i hadn't wasted £25.

piracy didn't kill the amiga. commodore did. Long live amiga!

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once i started getting passed the 300 disk mark i bought a harddrive buying 300 blank disks is more expensive than a harddrive

all those games u listed rock walker was awesome gr8 fun