Somebody really liked Manic Miner

[1982dragon1982]

Hello,

I got an original copy of Manic Miner recently, it didn't have an original code sheet with it but instead a hand drawn copy made with Biro and felt tip pen.

I don't know why somebody with an original copy had to do this but I admire their efforts, it must have been a lot of work all those years ago.

Mike.

[snarkhunter]

Hello,

This kind of protection was quite in fashion at the time: Something that could not be easily duplicated (scanners and colour photocopiers were not easily available equipment), so some people would spend lots of time doing this manually...
Manual-based protection were also quite common ("Please enter Word W at Page P, Line L"), but not always so reliable. Then came stronger protections, i.e. set on the media itself (tapes first, then disks).
People like Steve Bak really made woule-be hackers' life difficult in those days: He used absolutely devilish tricks that few were able to fully grasp - let alone defeat.
I remember a time when we would buy software on tape first, then try to remove the protection so we could have the game run from disk afterwards. Tapes were just so unreliable and slow...
But the quantity of tricks one could achieve with a proper understanding of the way WD2797 (i.e. the DragonDOS disk controller chip) worked is truly amazing...
I'm not one of those people - far from it! - , but I had a couple of friend who were genuine wizards and could get any system to reveal everything about itself...

Those were the days... for sure!

[1982dragon1982]

Thanks for the explanation Snarkhunter, I had come across these before.
The only two I have for the Dragon are this and Jet Set Willy.
The other option would have been to take a good close up photo in order to copy it, then wait weeks to get the print back.

Regards. Mike.

[robcfg]

I remember making a B/W photocopy of the Future Wars manual page that was the copy protection, and then filling the right areas with color markers.

With Operation Stealth, I just made an screenshot of the copy protection screen of the game, printed it, and as usual, filled the right areas with color markers.

Does Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner have the same protection scheme on other 8-bit platforms?

[1982dragon1982]

robcfg,

You clearly had the degree of dedication which the person who made this one had.

I have a copy of Manic Miner for the Commodore 64 which doesn't have anything like this, sorry I wouldn't know about others.

Mike.

[robcfg]

Jet set Willy on Amstrad CPC had a similar protection card: Link to CPCPower.

Manic Miner doesn't appear to have one. It seems also that the Jet Set Willy version part of different packs had this protection removed.

On Spectrum, it seems that only Jet Set Willy had a code sheet.

[Sarah]

Ha ha, of course a funny thing about the colour chart is that each colour was mapped to a number anyway, so it could easily be converted to something photocopyable in black and white. I remember typing it out as numbers, just for backup purposes, obviously... didn't take very long really... before setting about figuring out how to bypass it properly.


Edit: Oh, wow, just looked at the 10 page CPC version... wouldn't have fancied typing that one out!

[robcfg]

Heh, no wonder our generation learned asm coding...

It's easier to crack than to copy the codes!!