How big of a pirate were you back in the day?

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:05 pm

I did absolutely zero piracy with my Tandy CoCo2 as I knew precisely zero other people that had one. So, I paid whatever price RadioShack dictated for all my software.

Going into the PC era, there was so much available as shareware that I just went with that for the most part. If it was worth having a complete version, I could pick it up in my neighborhood Electronics Boutique. Having a Tandy 1000HX in the 90s meant that most software that could run on it was already pretty cheap, even for a teenager. Sierra still put out a version of King's Quest V that was compatible, using Tandy 16-color graphics and on 720k floppy disks. With Sierra games, I played them a lot and had to do a lot of disk swapping, so I made backup disks to play from, which worked great. I mentioned in a review on Prodigy (!!!) how nice it was to be able to run KQV from copied floppies and that was my first exposure to online scolds. The tut-tutting was VERY loud and DEEPLY felt by even suggesting that you could play the game without the original disks.

Now, I don't pay for any software other than console games and Steam games made by my friends. Everything else is all open-source, unless it's paid for by an employer.

evlthecat · Post by **evlthecat** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:12 pm

Avast ye swabby, we did a lot of high seas adventures back in my day. We had to step it up a notch from just typing in code from the back of magazines. I remember that was the main reason I got a job at Godfathers Pizza when I lived in Washington; so I could afford the 300 baud modem. That and hacking into the order computer at work so we could print out stuff. Couldn't afford both the modem and the printer you know. The balance to my mischief was I had to prep-cook at 6 a.m. on the weekends to get the stuff off the printer before the manager got in. We must have spent many a bleary-eyed weekend on various BBS's sending messages, and downloading whatever we could get our hands on. I think the first game I ever plundered was Nemesis The Warlock and second for sure was Elvira The Arcade Game. After that it was a blur..

I even remember one of the smarter guys in our group setup a BBS over a Terminal Node Connector and was transferring data over the radio waves. I think we had people from Denmark who logged in through the setup. Pretty amazing stuff for the time.. That is what I miss the most, the innovation, and not being separated by hundreds or thousands of miles from people who hold a similar interest (except the guys in Denmark ? ), or waiting for the next Con. to get together. Most of the developers I worked with throughout my career could not care at all about hacking hardware or software just to see what made it tick or how to get it to work in ways it was not developed for..

Sorry went off the deep end... Great topic... Brings back the memories of late nights and creative friends..

Have a wonderful day!

iGregory · Post by **iGregory** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 6:35 pm

What's a pirate's favourite letter? You'd think it was Rrrrrrr.... but ye'd be wrong... it's the C.

Yeah... software piracy on my old 64... Is there a statute of limitations on this stuff?

Did anybody else have a copy of MULE where the 'store' was scrambled and you had to 'feel' your way though it?

ZeroByte · Post by **ZeroByte** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:19 pm

Just linked a short clip of it because the whole video is more cringe than I can handle.....

evlthecat · Post by **evlthecat** » Thu Apr 15, 2021 10:55 pm

LOL.. Lets add another verse shall we.

As soon as it rolled out the door, the artists, the programmers, and designers got 1/10 the amount made by the share holders, the CEO and upper management, when they made you sign away your creative rights for working at their company, and then they paid some idiot like me to make a video to try and shame others who realized the scam, and tried to get some of our intellectual property rights back by having a little fun.

It doesn't roll off the tongue like the dude in the video, but I was improvising and I have had a beer or two...

BruceMcF · Post by **BruceMcF** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:43 pm

My only big act of piracy back in the day was extending the WordPefect 5.0 for DOS lab site license into an off site license for my Amstrad PPC640 at home. I had a work study job in the Library at college, and could afford some computer magazines, and most of my C64 programs were type in programs from magazines. I paid retail for TheWriteStuff from BusyBee and for an Assembler from some software house ... the first well worth the money, the second far from it ... and got a C64 version of fig Forth, but and a handful of cartridges, but commercial software was the minority of software I had on disk. And when I got my DOS computer I relied heavily on shareware and public domain from disk collections and the young pre-WWW internet ... where our department paid their teaching assistants better than some departments, but it still wasn't enough to buy a lot of commercial DOS software.

After the WriteStuff word processor for the C64 in the late 80's, the Mix Power C Compiler was my main commercial software purchase in the early 90's until after I got my first full time teaching position in Australia in 1996.

EMwhite · Post by **EMwhite** » Fri Apr 16, 2021 9:42 pm

My only big act(s) was the time I 'cracked' a few dozen titles, removing copy protection and slapping 'our' boot screen loader on the front-end. Oh, and the time I wrote a phone calling-card hacking utility that harvested valid codes that I could use to call my girlfriend to avoid long distance phone charges while I was in college. Also, I had a blue box that I built and would use it on pay phones.

Just kidding.

borgar · Post by **borgar** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 8:42 pm

I laughed out loud reading this tread. I have to admit I also had an extensive collection of "offsite backups" on the C64. I had a nice archive of games saved with turbo tape and several notebooks containing indexes with tape number and counter position for each "backup".

My only defense is that I stopped any nefarious practices as soon as I started to earn enough money to actually purchase games. I have certainly given a significant amount of money to the industry over they years and have bought a lot lot more games than I will have ever have time to play (according to my backlog on Steam, GOG and PSN, not to mention all the un-played physical disks etc.)

Seems a bit unfair to be honest. Back in my C64 days I had plenty of time but no money for games. Now it's the opposite, not enough time to play all the games I buy ?

Falken · Post by **Falken** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:01 pm

I had basically all my games from "other people" . The center of a distribution group lived almost straight across the street (until the cops busted him and I shamefully stayed away out of fear). I got myself "Green Beret" and "Testdrive II" for the C64 as originals though. I think that was all I got back in the day. The disks (original and copies) are still at my parents, probably deteriorated into unreadability. In the end, entropy wins.

Falken · Post by **Falken** » Sat Apr 17, 2021 9:05 pm

19 minutes ago, borgar said:

Seems a bit unfair to be honest. Back in my C64 days I had plenty of time but no money for games. Now it's the opposite, not enough time to play all the games I buy ?

I have the same. One of the reasons I rarely buy games anymore and playing all my "backlog" of games. I had the joy of expectation, so I want to actually experience them. Currently finished one and it felt really good. Now playing the bonus campaign.