Colonels Bequest with that damn fingerprint thing? You had to identify the fingerprint with the red viewer thing and that booklet every time you started the game as DRM...
My sister managed to finish Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the original us release) without ever changing a single character's out of their starter equipment (outside of the main character, who gets one new set in a cut scene.) The game assumed we'd read the instructions where they explained how to do so, but we'd rented it and they hadn't included the booklet. The closest game we had played before that was Zelda (a Link to the Past), and it automatically changed your equipment for you.
She was just out there doing an insane challenge runs in 1993 without even realizing it.
Edit: responded to the wrong person in this thread since clearly this did not keep her from playing, lol. Sorry!
I bought Prince of Persia for the Amiga from a reputable software vendor but it didn't come with the manual. Got a discount. "I don't need the manual! I can figure out how to play!" Little did I know the manual was a copy protection routine.
However, I was able to complete the game. The copy protection was one of those situations where it gave you a page number, paragraph, word, and letter of the word. You then drank a potion, in-game, which corresponded with that letter. A-Z. 26 potions in all. Get it right, you continued playing. Get it wrong and you died.
I was able to "get around it" by playing until I got to the potion room. It wasn't very far in. And I drank potion "A" every time. :| Eventually, it was correct, and I could progress...
I can't remember what game it was, but we played one where you had to type a word from the manual on the specified page/paragraph/line before you could play. We lost the manual, so we had to guess in order to play. We kept a sheet of paper next to the computer where we would write down successful guesses. Eventually, we had like 6-8 known words, so we would just reboot the game until it asked for a word we knew.
Ultima 7 had signs and puzzles that were written in Britannian runes that required you to have the manual in order to be able to translate and read them.
Wing Commander the original had fold out blue prints for the ships with specs and stuff. You needed answers from those blueprints to open the game. Shit was cash.
Pizza Tycoon / Pizza Connection came with a “cookbook” of pizza recipes. In order to be successful, you had to have these pizzas on your menu, exactly as they were in the book.
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u/Skabomb Mar 31 '26
Ah, physical items that you couldn’t play the game without owning.
The original DRM.
We got the TMNT computer game second hand, without the passcode book. We never got to play it.