The most badly cracked Amiga game - Page 2

Methanoid · 24 March 2004, 10:09

On a DVD-R its 4.37Gb but its more than double that on a dual layer DVD. The way to tell is to pop the thing in a DVD-Rom if you have one and look at the disc size. I doubt v much that these "old" games would be big even given the option of prettier graphics.

How much R the DVD games?

Enverex · 24 March 2004, 10:30

Quote:

Originally posted by Methanoid
On a DVD-R its 4.37Gb but its more than double that on a dual layer DVD. The way to tell is to pop the thing in a DVD-Rom if you have one and look at the disc size. I doubt v much that these "old" games would be big even given the option of prettier graphics.

How much R the DVD games?

Actually it isn't quite double, it's 8.4GB.

Swordlord · 25 March 2004, 05:58

I hope I'm not wrong; I think it does say 4.37 GB, indeed. But, you know, it has that footage about the DL craze in the '80s and the commercials for the other Digital Leisure games...

Why do you want to know?

7-Zark-7 · 26 March 2004, 18:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Swordlord

Akira: I'll try to use WHDLoad and see what happens. (But is there a guide somewhere?)
I like this game, because I like all games with knights, monsters and other stuff, I like cartoons and I don't mind simple control at all. What games do you like?

Akira likes playing 1st person 3D shooters,(especially sequels!), on his Windoze PC in between lameulating!

We had to bar him from going on about Half-Life 2, Doom III, UT2004!

Although the Dragon's Lair games were his 2D faves in the old day's too, Big fancy GFX & no gameplay depth-Akira always prefers fancy looks over gameplay depth & variety!!

*runs & hides whilst Akira starts up a chainsaw!*

Swordlord · 27 March 2004, 01:31

Hehe! Nice...

I wonder why he started to hate the DL games, though.

He's lucky. There are tons of 3D shooters, and they are still being made. I'd like to play more traditional 2D action games, but unfortunately everything's gone 3D now.

7-Zark-7 · 28 March 2004, 13:24

Swordlord, please read my previous post with tongue firmly planted in cheek-just wait for Akira's reply to see what I mean!

You can occasionally find some of the old classic style in modern clothes-Maximo plays right up to its 2D ghosts'n'goblins gameplay roots, for example.

Swordlord · 28 March 2004, 22:22

Maximo, you say? Thanks, I'll surely look it up.

Galahad/FLT · 29 March 2004, 22:53

Whilst some games haven't been cracked properly, the stats speak for themselves. Of all the games ever cracked, perhaps only a paltry 6% haven't been done properly.

Also one thing to remember, is that back in the days of 14,400 modems, removing a game intro was essential because of the long transfer times. Some groups would remove the intro, others would leave them in. Some groups would leave them in, and further release another version with the intro removed.

Yes, some games have recently cropped up as not being cracked properly, but they are in the minority.

To quote : "Cracks frequently don't work"

Sorry Fiath, but thats simply not true and you know it. You also by your statements over emphasise the complexity and competance of some of the copy protection systems out there. The fact is, at least 50% of all cracks were 10minute cracks at best because of the coding style of programmers.

As for Dragons Lair, you are talking about a game that takes up a lot of disk room, and is quite tricky to crack. You also have to consider that Rob/Quartex didn't have half the tools/hardware we take for granted now to crack games like Dragons Lair. I could probably do Dragons Lair in a fraction of the time it took Rob to do it, but I wouldn't be so confident of doing it quicker with what he had to use to get the job done.

Methanoid · 29 March 2004, 23:04

I have fond memories of Rob's abilities from my time in QTX. He came out of retirement for a crack for us, Heimdall by Core Design.

Unfortunately the Crystal courier team were bigger than us and their crack predominated even tho we were first but it was the quality of the crack that I remember.

CSL crack asked you to enter anything for the password when asked.

Rob's crack for Quartex removed the whole check routine and the bit that asked for entry. You never even KNEW there had been copy protection.

I also have fond memories of a session with The Surge/Quartex when I was sending him a title to crack by 14.4 HST modem. I upped the first game to his private BBS and started the 2nd. He cracked the 1st, had it repacked and ready for me to download before the 2nd title had even finished uploading.

On that day we released 3 of the 4 titles that came out. Crystal beat us on PP Hammer, cracked by NOMAD with a nice plasma/copper effect crack intro.

What some people forget when they look at "crack quality" is the huge time pressures the crackers were put under.

Even the greats made boo-boos. I have nothing but respect for NOMAD's work but Marc made a fair few mistakes. The people were human after all

fiath · 29 March 2004, 23:33

Quote:

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
Yes, some games have recently cropped up as not being cracked properly, but they are in the minority.

To quote : "Cracks frequently don't work"

Sorry Fiath, but thats simply not true and you know it. You also by your statements over emphasise the complexity and competance of some of the copy protection systems out there. The fact is, at least 50% of all cracks were 10minute cracks at best because of the coding style of programmers.

It is true, otherwise we would not have said it. Cracks frequently do not work. This has been seen time and time again, and the issue comes up and up again. That is frequent, is it not?

Sure, (probably) there are many more cracks work than do not, yes they are (probably) in the minority. But that doesn't get away from the fact they there are tons of cracks out that that do not work, and anyway, what use is any of that if you do not know for sure?

Cracks are bad m'kay?

Quote:

You also by your statements over emphasise the complexity and competance of some of the copy protection systems out there.

What statements? The stuff on our site? That is not exactly me...

Sure, there was lots of stupid stuff out there, but there is very clever stuff too. Saying "some" means nothing. "some" stuff was very silly, sure. But "some" stuff was very very clever. No offense, but we really should know. 1549 games preserved so far....

I guess the Dragon's Lair stuff was not intended for me.

fiath · 29 March 2004, 23:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Methanoid
What some people forget when they look at "crack quality" is the huge time pressures the crackers were put under.
[/B]

Exactly.

Actually, I think we wrote exactly that somewhere...

Quote:

Even the greats made boo-boos. I have nothing but respect for NOMAD's work but Marc made a fair few mistakes. The people were human after all

Absolutely.

And think of all that money spent by publishers to make sure that the game worked as it should.

You can't really get close to that with one to a few guys in a few hours.

But then, I doubt that crackers thought their efforts might be used in the long term.

Galahad/FLT · 30 March 2004, 21:04

But, if you say "cracks frequently dont work", then I judge that to mean cracks as a whole.

If you kept on attempting to play the Fairlight version of Hook/Ocean over and over again, it would not work correctly. There is a reason for this, because it hasn't been cracked properly, so it goes that it "frequently" doesn't work.

If I play Alien Breed 3D Team 17, also released by Fairlight, it works all the time, no cracking errors are present, the only thing that will make the game fall over is a programming error.

Similarly, if Back to the Future 2, Battle Command or Chase HQ don't work, its not because of the 'complex' copy protection, it is for other reasons.

You say "tonnes" of them don't work, but don't attempt to come up with a figure.

My answer to that would be :

Most cracks work fine
Some cracks have introduction sequences removed, but overall this doesn't affect the overall enjoyment or 'experience' of the game.
There are some versions released with cracking errors that were subsequently updated to fix those errors, but unfortunately, these versions don't always get copied over the duff versions.
There are some games that have never been properly cracked until the advent of WHDLoad and the like.

To say "cracks frequently dont work" is obviously not true. For it to be frequent, it would have to be a very regular occurence.

To be a pedant, I would say "some cracks dont work", that is a more inclusive and honest statement

Also, without going into greater detail, you blame cracks for r/w errors. You don't really think a cracker is going to goto the trouble of releasing a game that can't be copied do you? That would pretty much make cracking it a redundant point.

You also over estimate the competancy of some games programmers. Some games work by virtue that they are cracked. Speedball 2 doesn't work on o2o+ machines for the sole reason that its copy protected, same with Double Dragon 2, same with countless other 'ingenious' copy protection schemes.

I'm sure IFW has laughed out aloud everytime he looks at a game loader to see the stepper routine timed by a cpu DBRA loop.

Sometimes cracks don't work, because the game itself is barely capable of running on the machine it was 'designed' on.

Just a thought from a pedant!

andreas · 30 March 2004, 21:42

Quote:

Originally posted by Galahad/FLT
Sometimes cracks don't work, because the game itself is barely capable of running on the machine it was 'designed' on.

No wonder if the so-called "crack" is in fact an Action Replay freeze that maybe only works on the kickstart version it's frozen with! Talk about KS 1.2-only "cracks"!

Galahad/FLT · 30 March 2004, 22:10

Quartex
Paradox
Fairlight
Black Monks
Prestige
Zenith
TRSI
Skid Row
Paranoimia
Defjam
Angels
Genesis
Oracle
Nemesis
Ministry
Dual Crew Shining
The Company
Delirium
Thrill Kill Kult
Classic
Vision Factory
Freestyle
Bamiga Sector One
Medway Boys
Agile
......... name me one game any of these groups released that was an Action Replay Save All crack?

Therefore I don't consider 'homebrew' action replay 'cracks' an issue!

CPC464 · 31 March 2004, 00:23

Personally Speaking one of the worst cracked games I came accross was "GENESIA"

Turn out this was not cracked at all as there were 2 sets of secutiry the first was cracked but the 2nd wasn't

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr what a dissapointment and I loved this game

andreas · 31 March 2004, 01:12

@Galahad
Not surprising. You only named the real "renowned" groups; no one of them would ever have dared do an AR freeze type crack. The 'dissing' from others would have broken all bounds

Ah another one to name here as bad:
Exile ('cracks' released in 1989/90).

Overdoc · 01 April 2004, 16:16

I once posted a thread with all bad cracks I have come across:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3747

Quite a lot of them had the problem that there was a password protection, but not only at the start of the game, but also later in the game ! Of course this 2nd protection has been overlooked by some crackers.
Some examples I remember were Flashback, Thargan, Brian the Lion, Bumby's Arcade Fantasy, Waxworks

Some others were just released 'as is' without cracking because the protection couldn't be noticed at first, e.g. Gods, Leander and I think there was another one.

I still wonder whether the problem with the end-of-game monster in D.N.A Warrior is in the original itself, of if it is just a crack error or maybe a hardware compatibility issue ? ( I tested 2 different cracks and both had the same problem )

Galahad/FLT · 01 April 2004, 17:53

There was one version of Brian the Lion not properly cracked, but there were at least 4 different groups who released that game that I can recall and they all did get the second protection check.

The most commonly spread version of Flashback was the Interpol version which was the French version converted by the group to English. Any other released versions would have been a waste of time as it was 100%

But yes, others did escape undetected. Bumpys Arcade Fantasy definately being one of them.

Amiga1992 · 01 April 2004, 20:21

I got to disagree with the point that an intro doesn't make for the experience, I always hated that I was missing something. Of course you could of tell me "then why didn't you buy the blimin' game", and the simple answer is that in Argentina original games did NOT EXIST, so if you wanted software for your computer you had to copy it. If you had a bunch of friends with teh same computer, grand, you swapped with them. Alternatively you had to go to a place where they charged you for copying the stuff (lame, I know). all local "crackers" operated like this. I say "crackers" because thsi is teh name they put themselves to but what they actually did was, at the most, make an intro with RSI Demo Maker or something, remove the original intro and slap theirs in it. Absolutely lame. and to top things off they distributed the stuff ONLY for a profit! but anyway...

I now remember two games that gave me trouble. Jurassic Park ECS never accepted the passwords so I gave up on it for not being able to advance. And Ruff n Tumble gave me the same shit. Could it be due to bad cracks?

andreas · 01 April 2004, 23:59

Quote:

Originally posted by Akira
Ruff n Tumble gave me the same shit. Could it be due to bad cracks?

Possibly, but you must have come VERY far in this game then?
The first levels I played had no password protection at all.

29 March 2004, 22:53	#28
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,994	Fiath... tsk tsk! Whilst some games haven't been cracked properly, the stats speak for themselves. Of all the games ever cracked, perhaps only a paltry 6% haven't been done properly. Also one thing to remember, is that back in the days of 14,400 modems, removing a game intro was essential because of the long transfer times. Some groups would remove the intro, others would leave them in. Some groups would leave them in, and further release another version with the intro removed. Yes, some games have recently cropped up as not being cracked properly, but they are in the minority. To quote : "Cracks frequently don't work" Sorry Fiath, but thats simply not true and you know it. You also by your statements over emphasise the complexity and competance of some of the copy protection systems out there. The fact is, at least 50% of all cracks were 10minute cracks at best because of the coding style of programmers. As for Dragons Lair, you are talking about a game that takes up a lot of disk room, and is quite tricky to crack. You also have to consider that Rob/Quartex didn't have half the tools/hardware we take for granted now to crack games like Dragons Lair. I could probably do Dragons Lair in a fraction of the time it took Rob to do it, but I wouldn't be so confident of doing it quicker with what he had to use to get the job done.

30 March 2004, 21:04	#32
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,994	Not wanting to be a pedant...... But, if you say "cracks frequently dont work", then I judge that to mean cracks as a whole. If you kept on attempting to play the Fairlight version of Hook/Ocean over and over again, it would not work correctly. There is a reason for this, because it hasn't been cracked properly, so it goes that it "frequently" doesn't work. If I play Alien Breed 3D Team 17, also released by Fairlight, it works all the time, no cracking errors are present, the only thing that will make the game fall over is a programming error. Similarly, if Back to the Future 2, Battle Command or Chase HQ don't work, its not because of the 'complex' copy protection, it is for other reasons. You say "tonnes" of them don't work, but don't attempt to come up with a figure. My answer to that would be : Most cracks work fine Some cracks have introduction sequences removed, but overall this doesn't affect the overall enjoyment or 'experience' of the game. There are some versions released with cracking errors that were subsequently updated to fix those errors, but unfortunately, these versions don't always get copied over the duff versions. There are some games that have never been properly cracked until the advent of WHDLoad and the like. To say "cracks frequently dont work" is obviously not true. For it to be frequent, it would have to be a very regular occurence. To be a pedant, I would say "some cracks dont work", that is a more inclusive and honest statement Also, without going into greater detail, you blame cracks for r/w errors. You don't really think a cracker is going to goto the trouble of releasing a game that can't be copied do you? That would pretty much make cracking it a redundant point. You also over estimate the competancy of some games programmers. Some games work by virtue that they are cracked. Speedball 2 doesn't work on o2o+ machines for the sole reason that its copy protected, same with Double Dragon 2, same with countless other 'ingenious' copy protection schemes. I'm sure IFW has laughed out aloud everytime he looks at a game loader to see the stepper routine timed by a cpu DBRA loop. Sometimes cracks don't work, because the game itself is barely capable of running on the machine it was 'designed' on. Just a thought from a pedant!

30 March 2004, 22:10	#34
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,994	A note on Action Replay cracks.... Quartex Paradox Fairlight Black Monks Prestige Zenith TRSI Skid Row Paranoimia Defjam Angels Genesis Oracle Nemesis Ministry Dual Crew Shining The Company Delirium Thrill Kill Kult Classic Vision Factory Freestyle Bamiga Sector One Medway Boys Agile ......... name me one game any of these groups released that was an Action Replay Save All crack? Therefore I don't consider 'homebrew' action replay 'cracks' an issue!

01 April 2004, 17:53	#38
Galahad/FLT Going nowhere Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: United Kingdom Age: 50 Posts: 8,994	Some of the titles you mention.... There was one version of Brian the Lion not properly cracked, but there were at least 4 different groups who released that game that I can recall and they all did get the second protection check. The most commonly spread version of Flashback was the Interpol version which was the French version converted by the group to English. Any other released versions would have been a waste of time as it was 100% But yes, others did escape undetected. Bumpys Arcade Fantasy definately being one of them.

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24 March 2004, 10:09	#21
Methanoid Retired Quartex Sysop Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Roman Verulamium Age: 58 Posts: 1,873	On a DVD-R its 4.37Gb but its more than double that on a dual layer DVD. The way to tell is to pop the thing in a DVD-Rom if you have one and look at the disc size. I doubt v much that these "old" games would be big even given the option of prettier graphics. How much R the DVD games?

25 March 2004, 05:58	#23
Swordlord Registered User Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: T/C Posts: 80	I hope I'm not wrong; I think it does say 4.37 GB, indeed. But, you know, it has that footage about the DL craze in the '80s and the commercials for the other Digital Leisure games... Why do you want to know?

27 March 2004, 01:31	#25
Swordlord Registered User Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: T/C Posts: 80	Hehe! Nice... I wonder why he started to hate the DL games, though. He's lucky. There are tons of 3D shooters, and they are still being made. I'd like to play more traditional 2D action games, but unfortunately everything's gone 3D now.

28 March 2004, 13:24	#26
7-Zark-7 Zone Friend Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Brisbane/Australia Posts: 1,270	Swordlord, please read my previous post with tongue firmly planted in cheek-just wait for Akira's reply to see what I mean! You can occasionally find some of the old classic style in modern clothes-Maximo plays right up to its 2D ghosts'n'goblins gameplay roots, for example.

28 March 2004, 22:22	#27
Swordlord Registered User Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: T/C Posts: 80	Maximo, you say? Thanks, I'll surely look it up.

29 March 2004, 23:04	#29
Methanoid Retired Quartex Sysop Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Roman Verulamium Age: 58 Posts: 1,873	I have fond memories of Rob's abilities from my time in QTX. He came out of retirement for a crack for us, Heimdall by Core Design. Unfortunately the Crystal courier team were bigger than us and their crack predominated even tho we were first but it was the quality of the crack that I remember. CSL crack asked you to enter anything for the password when asked. Rob's crack for Quartex removed the whole check routine and the bit that asked for entry. You never even KNEW there had been copy protection. I also have fond memories of a session with The Surge/Quartex when I was sending him a title to crack by 14.4 HST modem. I upped the first game to his private BBS and started the 2nd. He cracked the 1st, had it repacked and ready for me to download before the 2nd title had even finished uploading. On that day we released 3 of the 4 titles that came out. Crystal beat us on PP Hammer, cracked by NOMAD with a nice plasma/copper effect crack intro. What some people forget when they look at "crack quality" is the huge time pressures the crackers were put under. Even the greats made boo-boos. I have nothing but respect for NOMAD's work but Marc made a fair few mistakes. The people were human after all

31 March 2004, 00:23	#35
CPC464 Junior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: York Age: 54 Posts: 393	Personally Speaking one of the worst cracked games I came accross was "GENESIA" Turn out this was not cracked at all as there were 2 sets of secutiry the first was cracked but the 2nd wasn't Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr what a dissapointment and I loved this game

31 March 2004, 01:12	#36
andreas Zone Friend Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Germany Age: 50 Posts: 5,857	@Galahad Not surprising. You only named the real "renowned" groups; no one of them would ever have dared do an AR freeze type crack. The 'dissing' from others would have broken all bounds Ah another one to name here as bad: Exile ('cracks' released in 1989/90).

01 April 2004, 16:16	#37
Overdoc Commodore Collector Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Austria Age: 53 Posts: 944	I once posted a thread with all bad cracks I have come across: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3747 Quite a lot of them had the problem that there was a password protection, but not only at the start of the game, but also later in the game ! Of course this 2nd protection has been overlooked by some crackers. Some examples I remember were Flashback, Thargan, Brian the Lion, Bumby's Arcade Fantasy, Waxworks Some others were just released 'as is' without cracking because the protection couldn't be noticed at first, e.g. Gods, Leander and I think there was another one. I still wonder whether the problem with the end-of-game monster in D.N.A Warrior is in the original itself, of if it is just a crack error or maybe a hardware compatibility issue ? ( I tested 2 different cracks and both had the same problem )

01 April 2004, 20:21	#39
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	I got to disagree with the point that an intro doesn't make for the experience, I always hated that I was missing something. Of course you could of tell me "then why didn't you buy the blimin' game", and the simple answer is that in Argentina original games did NOT EXIST, so if you wanted software for your computer you had to copy it. If you had a bunch of friends with teh same computer, grand, you swapped with them. Alternatively you had to go to a place where they charged you for copying the stuff (lame, I know). all local "crackers" operated like this. I say "crackers" because thsi is teh name they put themselves to but what they actually did was, at the most, make an intro with RSI Demo Maker or something, remove the original intro and slap theirs in it. Absolutely lame. and to top things off they distributed the stuff ONLY for a profit! but anyway... I now remember two games that gave me trouble. Jurassic Park ECS never accepted the passwords so I gave up on it for not being able to advance. And Ruff n Tumble gave me the same shit. Could it be due to bad cracks?

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