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ready.
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 441 |
uncrackable / protected game disks
Hi,
I was wondering if there is any way to protect a disk from being copied / cracked that has not yet been broken. I remember GEOS v2.0 was very hard to crack back in the '80s but somebody managed to do it. |
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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
P-Man's Revenge, written by a friend of mine (Chris Fielding). The game was done in P-Code, thus there was no actual assembly language to really mess with. It was actually a pretty cool game.
Rampar released a 'frozen' version of the game, not being able to crack it. Afterwards, the sysop of NEC's bbs (I forget his name) asked for a copy of the original. Horizon wasn't able to crack it either.
Fortunately there was no 'end game' protection which allowed for a freeze capture. He planned to implement end-game protection but left to program Sony games before finishing his next game.
Somewhere in my brother's basement lies the second game in a half-finished state.
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1153 |
Hmm, whatever that P-Code is, brought to my mind a case that I faintly remember reading about.. which game (and by which company) was it that had a nasty protection, custom disk format and a scripting language combined, which a cracker then reverse-engineered, wrote an own game using the scripting language, and sent it back to the company?
Or was I hallucinating?
Btw. sometimes overzealous protection ends up hurting the gamers most, consider Exile. |
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Krill
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2847 |
Quote: P-Man's Revenge, written by a friend of mine (Chris Fielding). The game was done in P-Code, thus there was no actual assembly language to really mess with. It was actually a pretty cool game.
Rampar released a 'frozen' version of the game, not being able to crack it. Afterwards, the sysop of NEC's bbs (I forget his name) asked for a copy of the original. Horizon wasn't able to crack it either.
Fortunately there was no 'end game' protection which allowed for a freeze capture. He planned to implement end-game protection but left to program Sony games before finishing his next game.
Somewhere in my brother's basement lies the second game in a half-finished state.
I don't think analyzing an interpreter and changing the interpreted protection code for it is too hard. At least not today. :D |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11119 |
it probably just sucked (or was very unknown), p-code stuff never was hard to crack, just a bit messy and timeconsuming.
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Wanderer
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2003
Posts: 478 |
Quote: it probably just sucked (or was very unknown), p-code stuff never was hard to crack, just a bit messy and timeconsuming.
It did quite well in sales in Canada as that was where the distributor was based.
Horizon couldn't do it and he was one of the better crackers.
Think of it like someone using Petspeed or Blitz but being unable to decompile it again, very difficult to work around. I may have the original somewhere still... |
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Mason
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 459 |
Quote: Hi,
I was wondering if there is any way to protect a disk from being copied / cracked that has not yet been broken. I remember GEOS v2.0 was very hard to crack back in the '80s but somebody managed to do it.
Dont get any hot steam about this. Anything can and could be cracked. Protections is just a question about keeping the kids away who cant crack.
For Rubicon it's true, but its more a question of noone doing it than noone couldnt do it. Look at this - Genesis Project released their version in end of 1991 and the official release from 21st Century were in spring 1992. This means most first release groups wouldnt look at it and then you took out the most skilled crackers. You have seen it with another game - Budokan. The game is easy to crack, but noone did it because Dominators did the game a while before it got on the streets.
Since noone of the first release groups did the crack then noone spread the original to others and therefore no cracks. This way of originals that didnt got spread to others happend on several games like Rampart, Street Fighter 2, Cool World, Alien 3 and Nick Faldos Golf.
Since Im sure if you found Rubicon disk original I can find a few who can crack it. I can even think of one guy if he bothered to look at it that could crack it without changing a single byte in the game code but just replace the loader and make it work. |
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Skylab
Registered: Dec 2005
Posts: 183 |
I say I know more than one person able to crack those stuff... |
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AlexC
Registered: Jan 2008
Posts: 293 |
Sorry for resurrecting this old thread but I keep wondering what has happened to Snacky tape protection. Any tape has been mastered using it? Anyone has a tape copy of protected Rubicon? |
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Style
Registered: Jun 2004
Posts: 498 |
Never saw this thread before.
And I respond with my age-old "has anyone managed to crack the disk version of Gunship yet?"
All Ive ever seen are dodgy tape cracks. |
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Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 618 |
Ah Gunship! This is what I was asking Burglar about if he did a version, but I was confusing it with Infiltrator... d'oh!
Should ask him again. :) |
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