Cracked games. The more things change...

[runequester]

Most of my amiga games back in the day were cracked and copied. I did buy what I could afford or reeeeally wanted (Alien breed 2, historyline, space hulk and a few others). Anyways.
 
It always seemed there were a few different types of crack:
 
1: Bad cracks that would cause the game to crash randomly (or didn't actually crack it at all. Supposedly Hired Guns has some sort of nasty trick in the cracked version)
 
2: "Generic" cracks. Game is pretty much identical to the released version, just with an intro added. F.x. Alien Breed 2. I owned the original, and I now have a cracked version. No difference as far as I can tell. (no copy protection in the original)
 
3: Trainers added. Games where a trainer or other cheat function is added. Back in the day, these were always popular.
Nowadays, I dont really care for them as much.
 
4: Improvements. The original Space Crusade refuses to work on an A1200 as far as I can tell, even with relokick. There's one crack out there, I've found, that works flawlessly.
 
 
The few games I have nowadays on my PC are either open source, or they are indie things that I don't feel bad coughing up 10 bucks for. Thats all linux gets in any event.
I know quite a few people who pirate PC games largely (or exclusively) and it seems a common argument is the fourth category: Games fixed to run better, on more hardware, more stable (due to removing DRM stuff) etc.
 
I've also had plenty of them experience interesting side effects, attract malware etc from cracked games. You take your risks I guess.
 

The more things change, the more they stay the same

[runequester]

Now that I am thinking about it, the stuff I bought was:
Alien breed 2
Mortal kombat 1 and 2
Historyline
Combat air patrol
Space hulk
 
I know I bought another Team 17 title, but I cannot for the life of me remember which one.
 
I also ended up with a copy of Diggers, but with a German only manual, so I never quite figured out how to play it.

[runequester]

Not trying to pass moral judgement btw
 
When I was a kid, it was what I could afford. Today, I make different choices. I was a bit concerned about posting this thread, as I don't want it to be about the merits or lack thereof of piracy.
 
 
Whether piracy killed the amiga, I dont know. I imagine it didn't hurt hardware sales at all, but it could have pushed developers towards consoles instead.
 
It seems software pretty much stopped dead (with a few exceptions) when Commodore folded, and Escom did nothing to reassure anybody.

[runequester]

A lot of windows programs are cracked for portability as well, so they can run from a USB stick.  I guess that's somewhat like cracking a game to run from HDD instead of floppy.


If piracy killed off Amiga development, why didn't it do the same for Windows and Macintosh?

To be fair, today, PC gaming is at a pretty sad state. But it took the internet and common broadband to get there

[runequester]

speaking of which i came across Historyline is it any good??? never seen it before.

Did you ever play Battle Isle ? Its that, but with WW1 era units.

Its a great turn based strategy game, especially in two player, but the interface is a bit wonky to get used to.

[runequester]

loved Battle Isle. Gee thanks !! now I got to make time to play Historyline.
I think it time i bought more 3.5" boxes........... the pain!

ah, you'll dig it then. Bigger maps in general, more terrain types, more units (and the two sides are a bit more different).
Also, the energy crystals are gone. Instead, each building just generates resource points each turn into a common pool.

You'll need 7 disks for this one, though it does hard drive install.