Manual Check Copy Protection: Difference between revisions
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* Conquests Of Camelot (Doc/Manual Look-up) | * Conquests Of Camelot (Doc/Manual Look-up) | ||
Revision as of 18:17, 19 August 2026
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Manual or Document Check Copy Protection
Description
Originally, Sierra used digital copy protection schemes, like the infamous CPC disk copy protection. Later, they started to use included physical documents like manuals or other included documentation/extras for lookups. Miscellaneous information scattered throughout a manual all meant that photocopying (when possible) could be prohibitively expensive for the target customers and without a world-wide publicly available Internet, digital scans were almost unheard of. For the most part, copy protection methods were an effective low-tech solution to a high-tech problem.
These releases relied a manual or other documentation challenge for copy protection. These challenges were usually a question that could only be answered by checking the release's included manual or other included documents.
Games with Document Check Copy Protection
- Conquests Of Camelot (Doc/Manual Look-up)
- EcoQuest 1 (Manual Look-up, code 9731) https://github.com/Doomlazer/EQ1-CDR
- EcoQuest 2 (Doc/Manual Look-up) https://www.loonage.com/scpc/MISC/ECO2.html
- Gold Rush! (Doc/Manual Look-up)
- King’s Quest 3 (Spells)
- King’s Quest 4
- King’s Quest 5 (Diskette) (Doc/Manual Look-up)
- King’s Quest 6 (Doc/Manual Look-up)
- Laura Bow 1 (Fingerprints)
- Leisure Suit Larry 2 ver 1.002.000 (telephone numbers)
- Leisure Suit Larry 1 VGA (brochure check)
- Leisure Suit Larry 3 (Manual Look-up)
- Leisure Suit Larry 5 (Aerodork Codes)
- Police Quest 1 (map lookup) (Radio & Ticket Codes)
- Police Quest 2 (mug shot lookup)
- Police Quest 3 (map lookup)
- Quest for Glory 2 (map lookup)
- Quest for Glory 4 (kept the disk version protection)
- Space Quest 4 (Chart/Look-Up)
- Space Quest 6 (contentious ‘copy protection’)
- Freddy Pharkas (kept disk version protection)
- Quest for Glory 4 (Manual Look-up)
- Willy Beamish (Diskette)
- Fascination (Chart/Look-Up)
- Paladin (Chart/Look-Up)
- Indy 500 game from Papyrus (Indy 500 trivia)
- Zeliard ?
- The Wrath of Denethenor
Would you recall approximately how many copies were sold (Apple/Commodore)?
It never did all that well. I don’t have a solid number, but total sales over the year or two that Sierra offered it was probably on the order of a few thousand units for both the Apple and Commodore versions. Maybe as much as 5,000 but certainly not much more than that. I did get a bunch of cool letters from people early on and over the years who liked it enough to write to me about their experiences though.
Kevin and I decided to ask upfront that they charge half the usual price (like $25 instead of $50-60) and skip the copy protection because we felt as teenagers that most games were pirated because they were so expensive. Sierra went along with that and even issued a press release about it as being an experiment to get better sales by charging less and forgoing copy protection. I remember being thrilled to see it on a store shelf but a little annoyed that I never saw much marketing for it. Perhaps that wouldn’t have mattered anyway but I do wonder if there was something else going on at the time that explains why they didn’t seem to take much effort with it.
Kenny McCormick June 18, 2014 at 5:11 AM[2]
The only thing I hate about QFG 2 would be moving around in the goddamn alleys. It's like Sierra did it specifically to torment players.
Raifield June 18, 2014 at 9:00 AM
They did, the beginning of the game did say that you'd need something included with the retail copy of the game to beat the game. They likely meant the game manual, since it has the city map inside.
The confusing streets were meant to be copy-protection, but it's easily circumvented by going outside the town and fighting a Brigand. With the coins you'll win from the battle you can buy the map without having to go to the money-changer first.
Corey Cole June 18, 2014 at 7:31 PM
Ah, nice solution, Raifield! It never occurred to me that you could get the map without finding the money changer. Besides mazes being de rigeur in older adventure games, my thought was that you would have to map enough of the maze to find the money changer, after which you could buy and use the magic map.
We also wanted to make the alleys more interesting (including combat encounters), but they were so memory-intensive we couldn't add anything to them. At least the printed map that came with the game is gorgeous (IMO).
Corey Cole June 18, 2014 at 7:37 PM
By the way, fighting to earn money to buy a map is a good example of how role-playing games differ from adventure games. A good RPG has "emergent behavior" that lets players solve puzzles in ways not specifically designed/programmed.
A dungeon master friend once complained that he had created a locked room mystery that could be solve in any of four ways - He wanted to make sure it was fair. The players found a fifth solution instead. That is what makes tabletop RPG's fun, but is very hard to pull off in a CRPG... except sometimes by accident.
