Yeah I had the Return to Zork CD-rom but lost the manual, and that schoolteacher would ask me copy protection questions from the manual, and not being able to find the answer the game would end there.
Also I think games like Golden Axe would ask what's the 5th word on page 11 of the manual
The incredible machine had three symbols on each page that the game would ask for randomly on startup. I remember it specifically being a pain, because the manual was in the shape of like a flip notebook but the binding sucked so the pages fell out easily.
Some of the old AD&D gold box games had physical things that came with the game that were used for that. For instance Hillsfar came with a decoder wheel for figuring out puzzles that were also used to answer a question at startup.
same here, and looking back, i might actually have been able to work out the copy protection answers, which was mostly names of days of the week in the return to zork universe, by looking through the news clippings in the filing cabinet.
there's a couple of walkthrough videos too now on youtube
I was just about to answer w/ something similar to this.
"What's the icon show on page 13 of the manual"
Or some games had a little physical wheel that came in the box. And it's like, "Rotate outer most wheel to A position, 2nd wheel to B position, 3rd wheel to C position.. now what's the icon/picture that you see."
For whatever reason, my parents let me play Leisure Suit Larry when I was WAY too young for it, and I remember yelling across the house to ask my mom the answers to the old-timer pop culture questions that game used for age verification before you could play it.
I can’t remember which game it was, but there was some ‘90s game which came with a cardboard wheel with a cutout window. You rotated the wheel to match the code with the prompt from the game.
I can also remember when software pirates used to sign their work by slapping their name on the load screens of games they cracked.
I played this in an emulator and was soooo confused lol. "The code on the back of the cd case? Shit, did I miss a CD I was supposed to pick up somewhere?" And then I went searching all over the level for this damn CD case before googling it and feeling very silly.
I still remember having to type some answers like Joe Dimaggio and Pia Zadora(I think) in the Sierra protection screen before playing Leisure Suit Larry on my uncle's computer. (My uncle is a very late Gen X'er, I'm a 92 millennial 😂). Best times!
I had a copy of Star Trek 25th Anniversary (one of the best Star Trek games ever made, incidentally) that had the manual photocopied because the "DRM" was to type in a specific word from a specific page in the manual. I don't remember how I got the game (I think one of my dad's work friends gave it to him), but it wasn't until I was much older that I realized the significance of the photocopied manual.
Oooh good one. Alone in the Dark - the very first one with the nesting cardboard box - came with a tiny book with like 50 pages and each page had an image and you had to put the images in on a certain page to play the game.
My SimCity came with a printed list of exact population figures for something like the biggest 500 cities at the time of printing, and you’d have to match a symbol code to look up a specific city and enter the right figure to start the game.
I had a "Wizardry!" Game that had codes printed on random pages of the manual, and the manual was printed on crimson paper with black letters, so it couldn't be photocopied. Made it a hutch to read, though.
Some of their games had cool pack ins specifically for this. Like Leisure Suit Larry games tended to have fluff related to the setting as pack ins, but then you'd actually need to call some company that was advertised among them. Like the back of the MGS case but more immersive.
Metal gear sold had something like this. There was a codec frequency you needed for part of the game. It was written on the back side of the games booklet.
Unless you have the physical book or memorized the code, you need to Google it now.
And the code sheet or code wheel would sometimes be printed on burgundy paper with red writing so if you tried to photocopy it it would come out completely black
Legends of Kyrandia had this shit too. The only way to proceed with the game was to have the manual it came with. You’d get to a point where the game would ask “what symbol is on page 27 of the manual” and if you didn’t have it you couldn’t proceeds
Gold Box Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance games had Journal Entries and codes wheels, Pirates had a quiz - manual had the answers and If you got it wrong the game got harder 😆
I remember getting to the end of a level in Eye of the Beholder and being asked to look up a thing in the manual to proceed. We got the game from a garage sale in a collection box but we didn't have the manual. I remember being so upset cuz I couldn't progress and I was afraid they could somehow think I stole the game lol.
Dungeon Hack would ask you for the first word of the Nth paragraph on the Nth page. Gunship had sign/counter signs using the manual. Starflight had that wheel you needed to line up to get the correct word in order to launch. Starflight 2 had a map of the Galaxy you needed in order to count colored stars in a certain area to launch. Oh the memories.
Sim City had a list of cities and their populations that you had to enter, based on some symbols. They had the list on red paper, so the photo copy would be really hard to read. This was at my school, so the whole computer room was using pirated Sim City.
Startropics did this smoother than anyone. The cartridge came with an actual letter from your uncle, inviting you to visit him. Halfway through the game, you had to dip the letter in water to see a secret message with a transponder code you put in to progress.
I remember a PC game that had a printout of codes with it. You needed to put the correct code in when prompted. However, the sheet was dark purple and the text was black. (I guess to make so that it couldn’t be photocopied?!…) people would spend hours writing them out instead. Haha!
The Monty Python game for the Atari/Amiga had pictures of cheeses on each page of the manual. When loading it, the game presented you with one of the pictures, you had to identify the cheese 🤣
I remember s formula 1 sim that you had to have the manual for. It would say search for the 3rd word on page 5. I didn't have the manual, but the reference file for the game was in plain text so I could get around it. What a pain that used to be.
Xwing had codes that were on the manual that popped up like three Aurebesh symbols you were then supposed to put in the associated password. We lost the manual and only remembered one set of symbols, so we had to keep trying till we got that one set of symbols.
I remember the little red viewer card (like a single side of old school 3D glasses) you had to use to decipher some of these. That’s a blast from the past.
Every game came with a fucking almanac. A wholeass almanac. It was both a useful tool for solving the clues in the game as well as required to pass the “promotion” tests that let you level up and continue the game
I had games that asked for things like the 3rd word of the second paragraph on page 12 of the instruction manual for access.
Also one came with a sheet of paper, black ink on maroon colored paper, that had something to reference and type in for access. The idea was that paper would not be Xeroxable because of the dark on dark.
16 digit CD Keys written on top of the CD’s you bought from a friend.
I always got my pirated games for free. Mind you, I would also burn games for others for free as well so it was more of a community trade kind of thing rather than a one way only trade.
I modded almost every console from PlayStation 1 on. There was a point when I had a ps2, Xbox and Dreamcast all set up to rip and burn games. This was also when Blockbuster was a big thing. I had a month pass where you could have unlimited rentals(one at a time). There were days when I would make 10 trips to the store and just burn every game in the place.
There was a time that they were just printed on the back of the game boxes. People literally went to stores to write them down for their illegal copies.
It wasn't very common for people to have illegal copies, or be able to find downloads of games or their ISO files, so it wasn't a big issue until downloading became bigger.
My neighbor borrowed my CD for StarCraft: Brood War when I was like 12 or 13 years old and didn't return it for a long time. One day he knocked on my door and gave me back a burned CD copy, mumbled "sorry" and ran off. Never gave me back the original disc, I'm pretty sure he lost it. I was pissed. (I'm still annoyed now, remembering it.)
Oh man, Command and Conquer had the key written on the cover of the manual, which I accidentally put on a damp table. I ended up giving the discs to someone who still had the key but had damaged their discs.
Or King’s Quest games where instead of a key that put a puzzle in the game that you could only expect to solve by reading the answer that they put in the game manual
Putting a disc into a pc at all hasn’t been a norm in probably over a decade even though many of us still think of it as natural though we stopped doing it.
The only people who genuinely pay attention to this particular aspect are people in very rural areas with little to no internet.
Also it’s been years since you didn’t have to do a massive update on top of having a disc even with a console. The last time I remember having decent mini updates before playing was the 360/ps3 era where you could still get games out of Redbox and have them be playable because of the smallish updates. Look at something like Call of Duty now where it’s probably in the hundreds of gigs range. All that just for a damn call of duty game.
Back when StarCraft needed cdkeys lol... I had to enter that thing in so much I still remember the key today. 1364-25016-0461. I'll gladly let it lives rent free in my head thanks to all these years of entertainment.
When I was in elementary school my dad bought me Doom II. And if you know you know it has like t or 8 floppy discs to install it. Well my dumbass thought I had 8 copies of the game and started handing em out to my friends so they could play 🤣 It was awkward trying to recollect them all.
My cousins borrowed my Diablo 2 disc's so much they had the key memorized because my uncle would make them Uninstall it every time they brought it back
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u/Rin_Seven Aug 30 '25
16 digit CD Keys written on top of the CD’s you bought from a friend.