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BTW whoever fascinated by the copy protection techniques of legacy systems should also check out this book: "Tome of Copy Protection", from ID (yeah the original Idea from the Deep).
I still remember, back in the mid 90s, playing it with my brother and some friends. We spent so much time trying to beat the default bobsleigh time, land a 100+ meter jump in the ski jumping event, or survive that dreaded third lap in skating. But no matter what, we just couldn't pull it off.
Years later, I even gave it another shot under Dosbox, thinking, "Alright, I was just a clueless kid back then. Now it's my time to shine." Nope. Still couldn't do it.
Turns out we obviously had a cracked copy. But honestly, trying to actually buy a game when you’re a 12yo in mid-90s France (obviously without any Internet connection) wasn’t exactly easy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And Razor1911 is still active! Both on the demoscene and on the warez scene.
Amazing. Their leader was busted a long time ago so I thought they were toast. Razor, Class, Fairlight, and some others hold a special place in my heart. (I know nothing of their politics)
Fairlight was pretty problematic back in the 90's politically, they even did a fairly controversial nazi-themed demo. Definitely not the vibe they give off today.
While they are somewhat effective at making pirates miserable, I have my doubts on whether they are actually good at driving sales. Keeping pirates from enjoying the game isn't a victory for the developer, generating sales is...
> As it turns out, “FAB” stands for Fabrice Bellard, who next to being the original developer of widely used programs such as FFmpeg and QEMU, is also the creator of an executable compression utility called LZEXE, developed in 1990. Is there anything where you don't find Fabrice Bellard along the way if you just dig deep enough?
> If you look at the source code of the decompression engine of PKLITE, you'll notice that it looks like the one of LZEXE.
Amazing that GOG was so lazy that they didn't check to ensure their DRM removal was complete, before offering it for sale. Hopefully this will motivate them to do a proper fix.
My favorite copy protection scheme was where you needed to enter some text from the printed manual that came with the game. The disks were easy to copy but the manuals required significant effort. I also just really miss printed game manuals.
I hated the one on F-15 Strike Eagle II on the C64; game itself was great, but you needed to look up in the manual what colour deck crew vest was displayed on the screen prior to the game starting. I played it on a B&W TV.
"The “Razor1911” crack (1991) Finally, we get to the only crack that actually works properly. Congratulations to Razor1911 for being the only ones not fooled by the game’s trickery." No surprise here! I was never all that deep in the Warez scene, but every nerdy kid in the early 1990s knew that Razor 1911 were the most l33t game crackers around. It was kind of a mark of quality on any game. If Razor 1911 released it…
And Razor1911 is still active! Both on the demoscene and on the warez scene.
My favorite copy protection scheme was where you needed to enter some text from the printed manual that came with the game. The disks were easy to copy but the manuals required significant effort. I also just really miss printed game manuals.
It was massively annoying even if you had bought the game though. Also later games that wanted the CD to be in the drive to be played.