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The masters of Commodore 64 games

spillhistorie.no

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Re: The masters of Commodore 64 games

#6

Post by ryandrake »

The part about the "copy protection" schemes was sad/amusing. So much work put into cracking and anti-cracking, and even cracking for the purpose of legitimate distribution, and wasting memory on profanity-soaked rants to the hackers... Everyone involved in the story looks back at it as "fun" and "challenging" but all I see is wasted time on everyone's part and software that is more difficult to use. Here we are, 40 years later, and DRM is still with us and they're still hopelessly trying.

Re: The masters of Commodore 64 games

#8

Post by classichasclass »

ryandrake wrote: post #6

The part about the "copy protection" schemes was sad/amusing. So much work put into cracking and anti-cracking, and even cracking for the purpose of legitimate distribution, and wasting memory on profanity-soaked rants to the hackers... Everyone involved in the story looks back at it as "fun" and "challenging" but all I see is wasted time on everyone's part and software that is more difficult to use. Here we are, 40…

The C64 protection methods that drove me most up the wall were V-MAX! and Rapidlok, especially since V-MAX! existed in several different variations. Man, those were a pain. Harald Seeley (Alien Technology Group, who developed V-MAX! and WarpSpeed, and did a number of ports for companies like Cinemaware, was in my hometown of San Diego) eventually explained a lot of the tricks later on. Some good discussion here https://diskpreservation.rittwage.com/?pg=vmax and here https://diskpreservation.rittwage.com/dp.php?pg=rapidlok .
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