Game copy protection was an art form, as well as #cracking these protections. This cat and mouse game evolved over time, with protections including more and more complicated and well-hidden checks trying to identify poor or quickly made cracks. The best protections hindered the release of a crack long enough for the game to hit enough initial sales. After the initial sales the eventual release of a crack would no longer hurt (much).
Rewind to 2025 and legal purchase of early 90s PC games from palaces such as COG: Apparently, there are plenty of releases that have the poor crack built-in, and where the anti-crack checks kick in, making the game unplayable. The irony is that the only way to play is to get a proper “real crack”.
Cool write-up of the protection in “The Games: Winter Challenge” and the associated problems of “legal releases”:
https://mrwint.github.io/winter/writeup/writeup.html
#retrogaming #hacking
@harrysintonen@infosec.exchange SSI had the best copy protection in the 80’s. Those games were so text heavy, rather than shipping more floppies, they shipped huge manuals and the game was like “just read pages 89-91 for dialogue”.
Disassembling a code wheel and taking it to the copy machine was one thing. But a 100 page manual?