Worst copy protection?

[Coagulus]

Lenslok was awful on the Spectrum, I rarely got to play the game I'd legally bought. glad it never made it to the Amiga!

[StarEye]

I loved the Monkey Island compy protections, though. I liked code-wheels in general, as long as they were a bit inventive and in spirit of the game (like the MI ones). Unfortunately, not the majority of them did, many of them were just hard to read letters or numbers.

[boing_1000]

Originally Posted by StarEye

I loved the Monkey Island compy protections, though. I liked code-wheels in general, as long as they were a bit inventive and in spirit of the game (like the MI ones). Unfortunately, not the majority of them did, many of them were just hard to read letters or numbers.

Agreed. Monkey Island's was funny. I wasn't even mad when I couldn't find the code wheel at times. However, I think Budokan The Martial Spirit had the most annoying copy protection. Don't really know why, it just annoyed me. I know, wonderful reason right there

[jotd]

Flashback had you flip all the pages to find the correct shape and enter the 6 digit number, once at start and then twice at later stages of the game.

I heard about some Electronic Zoo title which had a code prompt with a timeout !!

God I HATE password protections, and I always loved removing them

But whan I think of it I also hate disk protections. Sometimes very tough to remove. Fortunately there are specialists out there (Codetapper, Galahad, the late Mr Larmer ...)

[TCD]

Originally Posted by StarEye

I loved the Monkey Island compy protections, though. I liked code-wheels in general, as long as they were a bit inventive and in spirit of the game (like the MI ones). Unfortunately, not the majority of them did, many of them were just hard to read letters or numbers.

I guess you mean the ones from the SSI RPGs. Somehow LucasArts have 'stolen' the codewheel idea from that games, but made it so much better. Were there any other games with codewheels?

[laffer]

Certain games, like Indiana Jones 3 (the adventure game) made the copy protection part of a puzzle.

Oh and Sierra games often had the copy protection not at the start of the game but rather a little into the game.. I read an article (or an interview or something, I don't remember) once saying they did this so that if you pirated the game, you'd still get to play it a little before you encountered the copy protection.. and by that time, you would hopefully like the game so much that you would buy it.
Like a demo, somewhat.

[TCD]

It was like that when I played Eye of the Beholder for the first time. Got to the ladder at the end of level one and there was the copy protection. I really went to the computer store and bought a copy back then It's a nice way to give a 'demo' and remind the player he has to pay for the whole product.

[StingRay]

Same for Rings of Medusa II which was released by Kid's Blow ;D Once you finally managed to leave the dungeon, you were greeted by a nice little manual protection which of course wasn't cracked.

Funny. Thanks for the memories. Having just signed up for this forum I realise these things are back. 'Please click on the picture that shows, A BAT.'

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by jotd

God I HATE password protections, and I always loved removing them

But whan I think of it I also hate disk protections. Sometimes very tough to remove. Fortunately there are specialists out there (Codetapper, Galahad, the late Mr Larmer ...)

I always found removing disk based protections much more entertaining than those password protections. After all, it's not that hard to remove the custom disk format per se, the "standard procdure" is always the same (load bootblock, rip the first loader (optionally you may have to decrypt it like in the case of Pango), use the loader to create an image/rip all files (depending on the game;D) and that's basically all that has to be done. Creating a working "backup copy" can sometimes be hard but creating an image can be done easily most of the time.

I think interpreter based protections are MUCH harder to crack than any MFM (Waxworks, Monkey Island, Future Wars etc.). And "normal" password protections are not very interesting to crack except when there is a bit more to them (Whales Voyage, Settlers, The Clou! etc. pp.).

But that's just my highly unbiased point of view.

[TheCorfiot]

Monty Pythons Flying Circus, and the awful cheese idenification.

[mrbob2]

I remember zeewolf, having to identify different vehicles, alien breed and worms for the black on black writing, fate of atlantis code wheel, and one where it was word x from page x line x? could be x-com enemy unknown.......

[DamienD]

Another World had all types of symbols.

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

Were there any other games with codewheels?

Not really for copy protection but one of the first "codewheels" I remember was the Rocket Ranger "Secret Decoder Wheel"

[laffer]

I'd like to mention that I much prefer manual based copy protection (and similar systems) to disk based copy protection.

Especially with floppies, it's very important to make backups and I would gladly go through the inconvenience of having to type something in rather than ending up with a corrupted floppy later on

I wish they used something like that still, I hate copy protections that tie the games to the media they come on!

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by laffer

I'd like to mention that I much prefer manual based copy protection (and similar systems) to disk based copy protection.

Especially with floppies, it's very important to make backups and I would gladly go through the inconvenience of having to type something in rather than ending up with a corrupted floppy later on

I wish they used something like that still, I hate copy protections that tie the games to the media they come on!

yep. but some titles had both, like Elvira 1; did Lotus 2 had some disk copyprotection too in addition to the code to be entered?

Frontier, if i remember correctly, had a "search the word" protection, only it did not stop you from playing for a wrong one, but it would ask you periodically and maybe remembering and adding up the errors. so that you were stopped sooner or later.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

yep. but some titles had both, like Elvira 1; did Lotus 2 had some disk copyprotection too in addition to the code to be entered?

Elvira doesn't have any disk protection but yes, games with both, disk and password protection, weren't uncommon (f.e. the already mentioned Lotus, F-19 Stealth Fighter, FATE-Gates of Dawn)

Frontier, if i remember correctly, had a "search the word" protection, only it did not stop you from playing for a wrong one, but it would ask you periodically and maybe remembering and adding up the errors. so that you were stopped sooner or later.

Yes, see my earlier post about the Frontier protection somewhere in this thread. It's still the winner for me as it even asked you again(!) to look up a word from the manual when you entered it correctly! Bloody annoying.

[musashi9]

I liked the Prince of Persia protection check

Drink the potion matching the letter # on page # line #
Then you enter 2 rooms full of potions with letters above them.
If you get it wrong you die by drinking poison :P
At least it gave you some type of interaction when entering the protection code

but you can bypass this check by putting a few FFFFFs in the right place, fooling the game into thinking you have already passed the protection check
I believe this protection check was removed in the German original version by putting the same FFFFs in the right place :P

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Elvira doesn't have any disk protection but yes, games with both, disk and password protection, weren't uncommon (f.e. the already mentioned Lotus, F-19 Stealth Fighter, FATE-Gates of Dawn)

Yes, see my earlier post about the Frontier protection somewhere in this thread. It's still the winner for me as it even asked you again(!) to look up a word from the manual when you entered it correctly! Bloody annoying.

yep sorry for Frontier i misread that post... the warm weather is melting my attention away. soon, i will be like that --->

Elvira: did not the disk 5 or 4 had some longtrack or something? i remember i had errors or problem even with nibble copy, in xcopy (which i know, it's not a reliable method to say there was a protection). just curious.

[Anubis]

The Settler protection was funny. (3 images match with page number)

I had original but disliked to open manual every time I play the game (had HD at the time), so I numbered all pictures and just had a list with pages and symbol-number combination.

Dune II was one of those that I got but couldn't play because of protection. It's also one of the games that I finally got for PC but at the time WarCraft and simillar games where much better to play, so I never finished Dune 2.

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

yep sorry for Frontier i misread that post... the warm weather is melting my attention away. soon, i will be like that --->

No problem

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

Elvira: did not the disk 5 or 4 had some longtrack or something? i remember i had errors or problem even with nibble copy, in xcopy (which i know, it's not a reliable method to say there was a protection). just curious.

No, neither Elvira I nor Elvira II had any longtracks, it were all plain and simple DOS disks. I guess your disk was knackered. =)