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Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

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Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#81

Post by Ntrails »

abra0 wrote: post #75
skocznymroczny wrote: post #71

Interesting, I remember the speed skating issue being a problem in the copy I had back in the 1990s, but I don't remember the issues in other games like downhill and such. People usually find these gameplay based copy protections amusing as in "hehe stupid pirates let them play a broken game", but I have bad memories of them because I often had them trigger when playing legit copies of the game. All it took was havin…

Tbh it still puzzles me why gameplay degradation specifically was chosen as a way to try to discourage piracy. I imagine many more people hit the degradations, thought the game was just buggy and abandoned it, compared to people who were motivated by bad gameplay to give the developers money. The mindfuck angle is pretty effective though. This article wouldn't have been written otherwise.

I have a vague memory of a "game-dev studio tycoon" sim game which, if you played the pirated version, would have your sales taper off super hard and you'd go bust because pirates. There was, however, an explicit nod to this happening and it was at least clear that the failure was making a point

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#82

Post by detaro »

Ntrails wrote: post #81
abra0 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tbh it still puzzles me why gameplay degradation specifically was chosen as a way to try to discourage piracy. I imagine many more people hit the degradations, thought the game was just buggy and abandoned it, compared to people who were motivated by bad gameplay to give the developers money. The mindfuck angle is pretty effective though. This article wouldn't have been written otherwise.

I have a vague memory of a "game-dev studio tycoon" sim game which, if you played the pirated version, would have your sales taper off super hard and you'd go bust because pirates. There was, however, an explicit nod to this happening and it was at least clear that the failure was making a point

it was indeed "Game Dev Tycoon": https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/game-dev-tycoon-devel...

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#84

Post by shkkmo »

jhbadger wrote: post #47
miek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned "early Prince of Persia" being 2007, I thought I might blow your mind by pointing to the 1989 game :)

It's a bit like how most people think Wolfenstein started with the 3D version in 1992 and have never heard of the 1981 original.

That isn't really the same situation. The 1981 "version" is a stealth game that is pretty much completely unrelated to the 1992 game except through name, inspiration and theme.

The 1992 game was able to use the wolfenstein name because the trademark had lapsed the the original company had gone backrupt. While the 1992 game was originally intented to include stealth gameplay, none of those gameplay features from the 1981 game really made it into the final version of the 1992 game.

Key here is that M.U.S.E. sold no rights to id software, did not bless the 1992 game in any way, and there were no personel in common between the two games. They can't really be considered as part of the same franchise

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#85

Post by thijson »

_mlbt wrote: post #3

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.

The ones I remember had a red tinted window that would reveal the hidden word. If you tried to photocopy it using a black and white photocopier the words wouldn't be visible anymore. Now in hindsight, I guess you could have photocopied the whole wheel with some red mylar on top of it.

I remember removing the copy protection from space quest. There was a later check that checksumed the copy protection code. That complicated the crack.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#86

Post by dole »

eej71 wrote: post #42
fnord77 wrote: post #31

I remember an old Apple ][ game that someone had copied from somewhere and it got passed around by us jr high school students. It was some sort of "Defender" style game. Apparently cracking ("Cracked by the Nibbler") caused some obstacles to become invisible. You could play the game for a bit but you pretty quickly crashed into one of these. Wish I could remember the name of the game. I would have liked to played a l…

You could be thinking of gorgon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_(video_game)

I'd never heard of Gorgon but had to've run across Nasir's name at least once during my gaming years... and wow, what a pedigree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasir_Gebelli

Had 3-D World Runner for the OG NES, played it again a few weeks ago doing some handheld emu hacking and couldn't put it down.

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#87

Post by fnord77 »

eej71 wrote: post #42
fnord77 wrote: post #31

I remember an old Apple ][ game that someone had copied from somewhere and it got passed around by us jr high school students. It was some sort of "Defender" style game. Apparently cracking ("Cracked by the Nibbler") caused some obstacles to become invisible. You could play the game for a bit but you pretty quickly crashed into one of these. Wish I could remember the name of the game. I would have liked to played a l…

You could be thinking of gorgon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_(video_game)

Now that I started looking for it, I think it was Repton because I remember buildings.

I think the crack protection was pretty clever - it let you play a couple seconds of the game to get a taste of it. If I had the means I would have bought it, but I was a poor 14 year old

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/game/apple-ii/repton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repton_(1983_video_game)

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#88

Post by junga »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #80
candl wrote: post #34

Not DOS, but I remember playing a copy of Settlers III and was surprised when iron smelters produced pigs instead of iron.

That one was quite famous. Also the CD came with some sub-channel data, that only one program was able to copy. It had sheep on it but forgot its name

That must have been CloneCD then: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CloneCD

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#89

Post by ajkjk »

cevn wrote: post #74
miek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you mentioned "early Prince of Persia" being 2007, I thought I might blow your mind by pointing to the 1989 game :)

I loaded this up recently on Genesis and it actually blew my mind how smooth the animations were for the 'parkour', to find out it was all mo-capped and faithfully recreated into pixels. I had no idea people were doing this in the 80's.

This book [1], which is the creator's diaries from the time annotated with lots of memoir-ish details, is really really good and talks about how the motion capture came to be at length. It's also just a very enjoyable book, not to mention very physically beautiful.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Making_of_Prince_of...

Re: Uncovering the mechanics of The Games: Winter Challenge

#90

Post by miek »

RIMR wrote: post #53
miek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

To be fair, a lot of those groups aren't any of the same people today. 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.

Article for reference [0]. It's amazing how far people's baggage will follow them (though the impact here is probably minimal). Wild that a former Fairlight member became San Diego Republican Party Chairman.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240406015231/https://www.latim...

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