• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Games used to come with books to read, and their anti-piracy measure was to give you a page number and tell you to enter the first word on the page to activate the software.

    Of course, you’d copy that floppy and write the code word on the label for your friends.

    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I miss manuals.

      Used to rip open the shrink wrap with my teeth and pour over the manual in the backseat of the car on the way home when I was a kid.

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            8 months ago

            Oh yes! It’s also so similar to that “new computer smell” when a laptop’s fans would kick on for the first time out of the box. I dunno if that’s a thing anymore…

          • CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world
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            8 months ago

            That smell is Christmas to me. That was the only time we typically got new NES or Super NES games, and lord I loved that smell of fresh print and plastic.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      8 months ago

      You could copy the manual on a xerox machine. Of course some publishers were smart and printed the manual in such a way it any copies came out as an illegibly dark mess.

      So naturally you took a legitimate manual, manually transcribed it, and made copies of the copy.

    • Omgpwnies@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      IIRC, it was Greg Norman’s Shark Attack that had a thing where it would give you a small pixel art picture of the top-down view of a golf course, and you had to go through the game manual and enter in what page that golf course picture appeared on… so we just got a photocopy version of the manual

    • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Lol I had one like that - I made a copy for a friend, but it wasn’t just one code word, it could be any one of about a hundred - but he was dedicated, he figured it out somehow over the course of a few weeks.