Excellent response, Codetapper! I always hated the Mortal Kombat games on the Amiga because of the agonizing loading routines; I had no idea that the originals performed better. I know the reviews were very kind to the game(s) and I couldn't understand why the loading was never addressed.

Another game that fared well with the critics, but I despised because of the loading was Road Rash. I will have to assume that this is another case where the cracked version performed inferior to the original.

And let's face it - no single-parted game can be considered equivalent to an original. There may be an exception to this rule, but it would be hard to imagine.

It seems the best way to get an Amiga game is a WHD or JST version! They tend to stay true to the original, remove the protection, don't glorify themselves with intros and greetingz, are complete, avoid disk-swapping, and offer options the original didn't (better compatibility, training modes, quit key, etc.)

And with that, I will once again tip my hat to the great Codetapper...

WHD/JST
 

The main problems with originals were:

- Many couldn't be installed to hard disk.
- Many punished the buyer with annoying manual and password protection schemes, whereas owners of pirate versions didn't have to worry about this.
- Many didn't work on newer Amigas.

The great thing about WHD/JST games is that they solve all these issues!

Codetapper couldn't have said it better :) There are lots of differences, in all formats. C64 games suffered from this too, however, you can dump originals and use them with emus and whatnot, something you can't do with Amiga games.

I'd like to backup my originals, but sice I can't get them back onto disks, I'm stuck :(

Well, I have a bunch of C-64 originals, but aren't they copy-protected, as well? Some of them I am pretty sure are. I know the tapes can be dumped in their complete form, which is very cool.

I suspect that ultimately there will be a solution to the Amiga copy-protection issues. But for me, the WHD/JST solution is by and large the most successful solution. I will be sending my list of originals to Codetapper, but I'm not going to bother until I have my A2000 up and running, since the list is useless until I have a transfer method. And I get additional originals added to the list weekly.

I think copy-protected C64 games can be imaged, but then again I could be wrong. Anybody with an XE1541 cable want to shed some light on this subject? :)

Imaging Amiga originals
 

Just for my own curiosity I downloaded some of the UAE source for reading disk images and downloaded some of the Factor 5 games in their original-with-protection-ADF format to see how they worked, very simple but clever!

As a test, I wrote a ripper to rip the original Winter Camp game into an ADF file and was pleasantly surprised that it works! (More annoying as my WHDLoad version for real Amiga's isn't quite finished yet!)

Winter Camp happened to be a good example of a game which is just a custom MFM loader rather than a game with other copy protection tricks - that I have found yet anyway :)

I fear Rob Northen Copylock protected games will not work with this ADF method (as the copylock checks for multiple syncs and I don't think the format allows this yet) and possibly some other protection systems (speed checks on particular tracks for example) will not work but there are quite a few originals out there could be easily made into ADF versions if required.

[JST/WHDLoad versions are of course superior as they have smaller filesizes and you don't have to insert the disks on a multiple disk game to make them work]

Gee, thsi is REALLY interesting. I'd love if I could dump my originals onto ADFs. That way, if a disk fucks up I can replace it :)

Winter Camp - that title creeps up again for the second time today. A game I know very little about. Likewise for Summer Camp. Do you have this game, as well?

Any/all info on these games would be great. I saw Summer Camp for sale on ebay about 6 months ago and was intrigued by the title (what, is it like the film "Meatballs" or something?) Then today I learn of Winter Camp and just have to know what the games are!

Sure as the coming of Christmas this year. ;)
I remember that "head-bumpers" very well ... game loaders that really sort of TORTURED the 1541's heads -- so it's no secret: many ppl still claim that their 1541 wouldn't have "passed away" so early if they hadn't played _that_ (original) game so much.
SSI and EA (ohh mercy!!) also had "nice" game-loaders with a good bunch of protections in it, making copying "almost" impossible (unless you had some special tools).

But as you surely know, many crackers didn't want to use their brains to remove the copy-protection: they just froze the game and wrote a loader which would load the freeze. I bet that's why 80% of all C64 games available in the net are freezes. Frankly, I HATE them.
BUT (now back on topic) I wouldn't doubt the existance of freezes as well with cracked Amiga games.

Codetapper:

Brilliant. Your Winter Camp ADF is 1.9 MB in size, correct?

Summer Camp
 

This is Summer Camp...


Removed screenshot

Thanks, Cody! Heh, it's great to have you back. Where would we be without your wonderful screenshots!

Actually, last night I found some info on both games, which were origined, I believe, on the C-64. Both games were released by Thalamus. "Summer Camp" (1991) came first, followed by "Winter Camp" (1992). I believe the first game fared better than the second, but I look forward to playing both since I prefer that sort of platform-ish fare. I think I found copies of both for sale, so I should probably purchase them while I still can. In the meantime, I do have the C-64 versions to muck with...

Winter Camp ADF size
 

Yep, I dumped about $3100 bytes of MFM data per track (except the bootblock obviously) which gave a size of around 1.9Mb yes. I haven't done disk 2 yet, but it seems to be the same disk format although at least 50% of the disk appears blank so that one maybe around the 1Mb mark....

I will release an ADF imaging tool shortly for people that want to do it...

PS: God knows how to get past that annoying ice skating section at the start of the game, you have to waggle for bloody ages before you can get to the actual game. The WHDLoad version will have this screen OPTIONAL so you can just play the actual game!

How very cool! I can't wait!

Has anyone got a copy of the crack for either game (Summer Camp, Winter Camp) that they can post in the meantime?

Well, if you have Cruncher Factory as a real amiga disc, and can dump it to ADF for me, that would be great.