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

[Argo]

A good share of my Amiga software was off site backup for friends. Though I did purchase quite abit of my own.

[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.

[magnetic]

Runequester

Good thread. One of the main things that killed the amiga 3rd party software development both games and productivity was Rampart Piracy!

[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.

[kedawa]

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.

One of the main things that killed the amiga 3rd party software development both games and productivity was Rampart Piracy!

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

[Retro_71]

Piracy didn't kill the Amiga (do you really want to go down that line of argument its been down to death).
But since starting to dig through my games (both original and not) and testing what works and what doesn't i have seen what rune has been talking about some originals don't work (disk are ok) where as the crack versions do... also vice versa.
speaking of which i came across Historyline is it any good??? never seen it before.

P.S I have a steam account with alot of games (and so does my son) but I still use "crack" games.... sometimes it nice to play without having the remember to put a DVD in or most cases they get rid of some annoying problems
P.P.S Not that games these days are all that great getting pretty boring great/realistic graphics are all nice and good but alot of times they forget game play.

[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.

[Retro_71]

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!

[cv643d]

AMOS sold what,   4000-5000 boxes?  Piracy no problem. , no not at all lol.

[foleyjo]

Some of the cracktros (is that what you call the cracking intro screen) had really good music and visual effects on both the Amiga and C64.

[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.

[Cool_amigaN]

Runequester

Good thread. One of the main things that killed the amiga 3rd party software development both games and productivity was Rampart Piracy!

I heavily disagree on the games' part of your statement. Game development ended because of three factors:
1) A500.
2) AGA introduced, somewhat late (1.5-2 years earlier would have made a small difference imho).
3) Commodore died.

Let me clarify, the A500 was the blessing and curse of the platform. By far the best seller of Amiga lines and a miracle machine for late 80s. Mostly geared towards users who couldn't afford to spent a small fortune to upgrade or buy a more powerful machine. The ECS chipset was stressed out with Superfrog as Team17 stated. Simply, no gaming company could make a better looking / faster scrolling game for the vast majority of amigans. Also, having no HD or CD (problems that partially continued pledging the A1200 as well) was a huge drawback. Looking back in 1993, I think that even Psygnosis had figured it out since that was the year they released the most titles for the PC, throughout their long history in the industry! The ERA where games would be coming on CDs was emerging. Bigger space was needed, HD space for storage was needed where most of the users in Amiga platform had neither.

The AGA chipset even when introduced was "too little too late". AGA couldn't compete in the long run with the GFX war pushing up the performance on the PCs. Companies such as Matrox, ATI, 3DFX introduced chipsets in 1995 that could crush AGA.

Commodore in order to kept going should invest humongous amount of money in R&D. Take a look on the titles released 3 years after A1200 and 2 years after Commodore died http://www.csoon.com/top10096.htm . I mean, a huge upgrade on the GFX was needed, CPU at least at 100Mhz, HD/CD included, 32MB min Ram needed. Not even mentioning the improvements needed to be done on AOS so as to take advantage of all the above.

BTW, looking at the above link, there are games that not even my Samep667Mhz/OS4.1. can play truly flawlessly, with a modern FPS rate, lol.

[brenry]