Anti-Piracy Measures

[Revoltor]

Prince of Persia had a cool one where you could play for a few minutes till you came to this room with various potions. The only way to proceed was to drink the right one that the manual referred to.

Choose wrong and die.

[arjue]

monkey island had a cool one.

[Master]

I didn't even think to write an article about it until after I made the post. But if I do (given my laziness, not real likely), TNL gets credit.

I was just giving you crap because its a very "toss me some ideas" kind of thread. No worries.

[toxic]

Zak McCracken had the worst of all time. They had a code sheet, with the answers obscured by multi-colored random noise. You had to put a red filter (piece of plastic) over the code sheet to read the answer. Just to stop people from photocopying it. Stupid.


I think Bard's Tale 3 had one of those "Code wheels". I actually took the time to photocopy my friends, and individually cut out the little slots in it, just so I could play the game.


So, copy protection has improved ... but most of the time (Pirates! comes to mind) it is pretty oppressive and pointless.

[Shapermc]

I used a fake serial on Half Life to take it online (for the rare times I did) to play a friend. I found the game for like $10 new and bought it just to support something I had been using for free. When I got home and installed the new one with the real serial it told me that I was using an invalid copy or something. I guess I deserved that. I have never actually played the version I paid for.

Also that story with the iPod, yea. I am finding that out with some of my game soundtracks. I had to download the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack because I could not get it off the CD. What ever.

(tangent: I also bought my iPod so that I could clear up some space on my harddrive. Well it appears that this thing is a bitch to use and you have to have some kind of copy of the mp3 somewhere on your PC. I don't know why. I can't change titles of songs or add them to any playlists if the file is not on my PC. WTF apple?)