1984, Jet Set Willy was released. A great game that every kid at school wanted. Of course we all wanted a copy, but it cost £8 here in the UK, which was several weeks’ pocket money.
Copying games then involved finding a kid whose Dad was seriously into Hifi and had a stackable stereo system, then we’d copy it with their tape to tape system. But JSW had this as the cassette inlay.
How this works? When the game loaded after about 10-15 minutes, it would ask what colours were in Grid square A5, or H9 etc. Get it wrong twice and the game would exit and you’d need to start over.
(If you’re wondering what happens if you’re colour blind - you could write to the publishers and if they accepted your complaint, they would ask you to send them the game and would give you a cheque to cover the refund)
Of course, kids are determined and inventive, and this was well before photocopiers or digital cameras, so we would spend our lunchtimes with pencil and paper writing down every single combination…
It was a good game, with some great music, but really really hard.
(Credit to https://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue45/2/1.html for the picture, and the page also goes into more depth)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for Amiga I think it was which came with a photocopy proof translation table that you used with a red piece of translucent plastic overlay, which would reveal the codes underneath.
Or maybe that was Zak McKracken.
Both amazing games. I remember the Monkey Island 2 one also, but I think we had cracked versions for all of those games anyway tbh. :)
ye Monkey Island was easy to photocopy :D
I remember in my local PC shop, they had a whole binder of copy-protection mechanisms they would photocopy from when they sold you a pirated game :D
A simpler, objectively better, time. We really were lucky as fuck to be born to live through that age, because what came before it was kind of not so great, and the way shit looks today still ain’t great. But there was a time sandwiched in the middle that was almost peak society.