Games used to come with books to read, and their anti-piracy measure was to give you a page number and tell you to enter the first word on the page to activate the software.
Of course, you’d copy that floppy and write the code word on the label for your friends.
Oh yes! It’s also so similar to that “new computer smell” when a laptop’s fans would kick on for the first time out of the box. I dunno if that’s a thing anymore…
That smell is Christmas to me. That was the only time we typically got new NES or Super NES games, and lord I loved that smell of fresh print and plastic.
You could copy the manual on a xerox machine. Of course some publishers were smart and printed the manual in such a way it any copies came out as an illegibly dark mess.
So naturally you took a legitimate manual, manually transcribed it, and made copies of the copy.
IIRC, it was Greg Norman’s Shark Attack that had a thing where it would give you a small pixel art picture of the top-down view of a golf course, and you had to go through the game manual and enter in what page that golf course picture appeared on… so we just got a photocopy version of the manual
Lol I had one like that - I made a copy for a friend, but it wasn’t just one code word, it could be any one of about a hundred - but he was dedicated, he figured it out somehow over the course of a few weeks.
Games used to come with books to read, and their anti-piracy measure was to give you a page number and tell you to enter the first word on the page to activate the software.
Of course, you’d copy that floppy and write the code word on the label for your friends.
I miss manuals.
Used to rip open the shrink wrap with my teeth and pour over the manual in the backseat of the car on the way home when I was a kid.
i used (and still use) to rub shrink wrap with my fingers until it deteriorated so much it ripped apart, it was so much fun
Did you open the box and stick your nose in it and take a deep wiff of that new game smell?
Oh yes! It’s also so similar to that “new computer smell” when a laptop’s fans would kick on for the first time out of the box. I dunno if that’s a thing anymore…
yup, for a more prolonged experience you could also smell the interior of new cars, back when you could actually afford one
That smell is Christmas to me. That was the only time we typically got new NES or Super NES games, and lord I loved that smell of fresh print and plastic.
You could copy the manual on a xerox machine. Of course some publishers were smart and printed the manual in such a way it any copies came out as an illegibly dark mess.
So naturally you took a legitimate manual, manually transcribed it, and made copies of the copy.
IIRC, it was Greg Norman’s Shark Attack that had a thing where it would give you a small pixel art picture of the top-down view of a golf course, and you had to go through the game manual and enter in what page that golf course picture appeared on… so we just got a photocopy version of the manual
I’d forgotten about that. Thanks for the nostalgia. :D
Lol I had one like that - I made a copy for a friend, but it wasn’t just one code word, it could be any one of about a hundred - but he was dedicated, he figured it out somehow over the course of a few weeks.
now I’ve got that jingle stuck in my head