Copying a master disk on C64
crymad
cheap, but I'd still like to make a copy for playing. I have a single
1541 drive. Can I do it?
--crymad
Burt /Terminator
> cheap, but I'd still like to make a copy for playing. I have a single
> 1541 drive. Can I do it?
It might be copy protected... But nothing that Maverick should not
handle... There's tons of software that allows you to make backup
copies... Almost any FTP site covers those...
--
C128D Burt Bochenek
C= CC Commodore Dungeon:
C64 www.museum.c64.org
C= CC C= enthusiast
Amiga
Christian Link
<c64du...@stopjunk.yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I picked up a sealed Gunship for C64 at Goodwill for 99 cents. Dirt
[...]
>It might be copy protected... But nothing that Maverick should not
>handle... There's tons of software that allows you to make backup
>copies... Almost any FTP site covers those...
Gunship is most probably protected with Rapidlok and certainly cannot
be copied via normal means (i.e. without a parallel cable or a
RAMBoard). Even then I would consider it almost impossible due to the
track synchronization.
Anyway, if the original poster really has only a 1541 and a main unit,
the answer to his question is "No". If he has better equipment, it is
"*probably* no." No matter what software he uses.
Using a Rapidlok-Copier may offer a small chance, but this wouldn't
really be copying, but rather converting. If that's his goal (i.e. if
he doesn't mind coming up with something that is everything but
"original"), he may as well fetch a crack from the web.
Greetings,
Chris.
crymad
Christian Link wrote:
> Gunship is most probably protected with Rapidlok and certainly cannot
> be copied via normal means (i.e. without a parallel cable or a
> RAMBoard). Even then I would consider it almost impossible due to the
> track synchronization.
Thank you for your reply. During the golden age of C64, did users
typically play games on master disks and not backup copies? If so, what
recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
--crymad
Etienne von Wettingfeld
> During the golden age of C64, did users typically play games on master
> disks and not backup copies?
I didn't have many original games. I did buy Ultima V which had no copy
protection so I played of copied disks (was even recommended in the manual I
think). Most games did have some protection however so I had to play of the
original disk.
> If so, what recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
It never happened to me! I suppose you'd get an illegal copy. It has
happened a few times to me that the disk was damaged when I bought it. The
shop would replace it, but they weren't very helpful or friendly doing it.
They always tried to blame you or suggest you did something wrong.
--
Etienne [The Netherlands]
+ Fax && Voice mail +31 (20) 8835157 Linux 2.4.2
+ ICQ 2559832 (Authorize) PGP ID 0x3C4C13FE
+ IRC Net <Chaos_One> #@AmigaNL http://www.doomdark.demon.nl/
Christian Link
>Thank you for your reply. During the golden age of C64, did users
>typically play games on master disks and not backup copies? If so, what
>recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
As Etienne has already answered the second question, I'll give you my
(different) opinion on the first: Unlike Etienne, I (and according to
my personal experiences, many other people) was dumb enough *not* to
play from backup copies. Partially because I was too stupid to handle
BurstNibbler (but rather activated *all* options including copying
halftracks, so it was no wonder I've never came up with working
copies. NEVER! But this wasn't BurstNibbler's fault...), partially
because I was too impatient to read the documentation before I started
the game for the first time. Back then, I always thought almost all
games had a copy-protection (which was absolutely wrong), so I didn't
even bother checking if a normal sector backup would already have done
the trick :-( .
This way, all my Ultimas and almost all of my AD&D games are "soiled"
:-( . But I've never really damaged them.
The only time when I downright killed an original was when I tried to
make a backup of Portal and confused source and destination disks :-(
...
Greetings,
Chris.
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>I didn't have many original games. I did buy Ultima V which had no copy
>protection so I played of copied disks (was even recommended in the manual I
>think). Most games did have some protection however so I had to play of the
>original disk.
Please don't mention reading the manual first again. It really hurts
;-) . See my last posting.
But regarding Ultima V: Do you still have "clean" copies of this?
Markus Brenner and me were desperately trying to reconstruct a clean
version, and meanwhile we think we have finished the job, coming up
with a virgin, but yet unverified version. The disk that's affected is
the Britannia disk (as usual), and it's only three blocks that we
couldn't verify so far. Maybe they are correct, but we have no "proof"
for that.
So, if you still have your untouched original, would you mind
converting at least this disk side (preferrably all, for making our
version "bombproof", of course) and send it over? Pretty please?
Regarding the copy protection, however, I must say that from today's
point of view, it actually weren't that many. Many games weren't
protected at all (which was what amazed me most when I re-started
collecting some years ago), some of them were protected in such a poor
way (simple error protection) that even Star Commander, who isn't
exactly aiming at reproducing copy-protection, manages to copy them.
So I guess the old TurboNibblers, or any Nibbler that could copy
erraneous sectors/tracks, should have been able to copy most of this
old stuff as well. We just didn't know :-( ...
Rapidlok, Vorpal and VMax, plus a couple others are different stories,
of course.
>> If so, what recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
>
>It never happened to me! I suppose you'd get an illegal copy. It has
GRRR! Yes, that's what the idiot who sold me his Bard's Tale I, did,
too. And he even had the nerve to copy it over the (probably damaged)
original instead of playing the crack from a separate disk :-( . If I
only had a second (PAL) original and the opportunity to nibble this
second original over the "damaged" one :-( ...
Greetings,
Chris.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>I didn't have many original games. I did buy Ultima V which had no copy
>>protection so I played of copied disks (was even recommended in the manual
>>I think). Most games did have some protection however so I had to play of
>>the original disk.
> Please don't mention reading the manual first again. It really hurts
> ;-) . See my last posting.
I'll mention it another time!
> But regarding Ultima V: Do you still have "clean" copies of this?
I have the original disks. Also of Ultima VI. Ultima ][ is not so orginal
though. ;)
> Markus Brenner and me were desperately trying to reconstruct a clean
> version, and meanwhile we think we have finished the job, coming up
> with a virgin, but yet unverified version. The disk that's affected is
> the Britannia disk (as usual), and it's only three blocks that we
> couldn't verify so far. Maybe they are correct, but we have no "proof"
> for that.
Oh!
> So, if you still have your untouched original, would you mind
> converting at least this disk side (preferrably all, for making our
> version "bombproof", of course) and send it over? Pretty please?
Well, it isn't 100% untouched. It is an original disk, but it has been used
for gameplay. I think when you create a new character certain data on that
disks gets set to certain values. In a way the Britannia disk is also the
save game disk.
But I have no cables or software to get data from my C64 system to anything
else. I used to have a cable for my Amiga which allowed my to access my 1541
drive from A64 (an Amiga C64 emulator).
> Regarding the copy protection, however, I must say that from today's
> point of view, it actually weren't that many. Many games weren't
> protected at all (which was what amazed me most when I re-started
> collecting some years ago), some of them were protected in such a poor
> way (simple error protection) that even Star Commander, who isn't
> exactly aiming at reproducing copy-protection, manages to copy them.
> So I guess the old TurboNibblers, or any Nibbler that could copy
> erraneous sectors/tracks, should have been able to copy most of this
> old stuff as well. We just didn't know :-( ...
:)
> Rapidlok, Vorpal and VMax, plus a couple others are different stories,
> of course.
>>> If so, what recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
>>
>>It never happened to me! I suppose you'd get an illegal copy. It has
> GRRR! Yes, that's what the idiot who sold me his Bard's Tale I, did,
> too. And he even had the nerve to copy it over the (probably damaged)
> original instead of playing the crack from a separate disk :-( . If I
> only had a second (PAL) original and the opportunity to nibble this
> second original over the "damaged" one :-( ...
Amazing, I had this problem with Bard's Tale II! First it was the second
disk and then it was the first disk. When I went back the second time the
game was sold out! :(
Etienne von Wettingfeld
> The only time when I downright killed an original was when I tried to
> make a backup of Portal and confused source and destination disks :-(
My brother confused drive 8 and 9, killing the best and fastest copy program
I ever saw!
Manuel Polik
> GRRR! Yes, that's what the idiot who sold me his Bard's Tale I, did,
> too. And he even had the nerve to copy it over the (probably damaged)
> original instead of playing the crack from a separate disk :-( . If I
> only had a second (PAL) original and the opportunity to nibble this
> second original over the "damaged" one :-( ...
Hm... I still own Bard's Tale I, II & III as PAL originals. I & III are
even the big LP sized packages.
But I'd never give them out of my hands.
There's two other ways to get "the opportunity to nibble this second
original over the "damaged" one" though:
- Send me the corrupt disk, the nibbler programm and instructions
of what I should do with these
- Visit me and do it yourself while I can see your hands clearly :-)
(That'd be in south bavaria near Kempten then...)
Greetings,
Manuel
keith Snyder
find one
Christian Link
But only with games that load completely into memory or ones that
don't rely on their own custom floppy code to reside in the disk
drive's RAM. This leaves only a little amount of games, especially if
you subtract the ones that aren't "worth" freezing, anyway, and the
ones that you could as well backup with any standard copy program
instead of producing yet another lousy freeze ;-) .
Greetings,
Chris.
Cameron Kaiser
>Thank you for your reply. During the golden age of C64, did users
>typically play games on master disks and not backup copies? If so, what
>recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
I had a fair number of originals but fortunately few of them used "modern"
copy protection techniques like V-Max! and Rapidlok, and relied on much
simpler copy protection schemes like intentional sector errors, that kind
of thing. Super Huey's copy protection was particularly entertaining -- it
formatted the disk. The original had no write notch, so it fell through,
but any kind of unprotected copy was immediately erased. This was my first
crack :-)
There were a fair number of copy programs that made their money on being
able to copy these "impossible" titles, but I only had an old version of
Fast Hack'em, so I usually ended up trying to break the scheme myself.
Later as I acquired used software titles with more elaborate schemes that
were beyond my cracking ability to make backups of, warez BBSes were in
full swing by then. Nowadays I still advocate buying the original title
(first and foremost to support those small Commodore support companies that
sell used software, and also so you can get the box, the instructions, and
so on), but cracked copies are quite easy to come by if you need to make
a backup.
--
Cameron Kaiser * cka...@stockholm.ptloma.edu * posting with a Commodore 128
personal page: http://www.armory.com/~spectre/
** Computer Workshops: games, productivity software and more for C64/128! **
** http://www.armory.com/~spectre/cwi/ **
Christian Link
On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 13:29:41 +0200, Manuel Polik <mpo...@neulandmm.de>
wrote:
>Hm... I still own Bard's Tale I, II & III as PAL originals. I & III are
>even the big LP sized packages.
These are exactly the ones I do have as well (actually, I do have a
jewel-cased BT1, too, but guess what? When I bought it, it came with
two dungeon disks and *no* boot disk at all. Speaking of being really
lucky with the Bard's Tale stuff, eh ;-) ?).
>But I'd never give them out of my hands.
Wise :-) .
>There's two other ways to get "the opportunity to nibble this second
>original over the "damaged" one" though:
>
>- Send me the corrupt disk, the nibbler programm and instructions
> of what I should do with these
>- Visit me and do it yourself while I can see your hands clearly :-)
> (That'd be in south bavaria near Kempten then...)
Thanks for your generous offer, man! Personally, I'd prefer the first
alternative, as driving from ceBIT city to Kempten would cost so much
money that I could buy a dozen *new* BT1's for that price ;-) .
The problem is that you most definitely need a parallel cable to do
the job. I'm pretty sure that a plain serial nibble program like
TurboNibbler wouldn't be able to reproduce the copy-protection. On the
other hand, I'm almost sure BurstNibbler (which is parallel, mind
you!) could do it, because I do know it was able to copy BT2, which
had the same (or at least very similar) protection.
So, do you happen to have a "parallelized" floppy? Not that I dare to
hope it, but just in case...?
Anyway, thanks for your will to help!
Greetings,
Chris.
Christian Link
On 6 Apr 2001 11:17:55 GMT, Etienne von Wettingfeld
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>> But regarding Ultima V: Do you still have "clean" copies of this?
>
>I have the original disks. Also of Ultima VI. Ultima ][ is not so orginal
>though. ;)
I think we can claim our U6 to be bombproof by now, so that's not the
problem. The same goes for the Origin version of U2, although I don't
know what the status quo of Markus work on the Sierra version is. The
only really problematic cases are Ultima IV and V, as they aren't as
wide-spread (I-III could be bought in the 1st trilogy re-release,
while hardly anybody - including myself - seemed to know of the 2nd),
and most people did indeed play with their original disks :-( .
We're still searching for a second "virgin" probe of the U4 Britannia
disk, by the way. Same case: We believe ours is virgin and flawless,
but only having a second virgin and error-free version that matches
100 percent with ours would qualify it as bomb-proof. Again, four
sectors unverified.
>Well, it isn't 100% untouched. It is an original disk, but it has been used
>for gameplay.
Snief :-( . So you made the backup rather for safety reasons, not
because you didn't want to "deflorate" your virgin original?
>I think when you create a new character certain data on that
>disks gets set to certain values. In a way the Britannia disk is also the
>save game disk.
Yes, exactly.
>> GRRR! Yes, that's what the idiot who sold me his Bard's Tale I, did,
>> too. And he even had the nerve to copy it over the (probably damaged)
>> original instead of playing the crack from a separate disk :-( . If I
>> only had a second (PAL) original and the opportunity to nibble this
>> second original over the "damaged" one :-( ...
>
>Amazing, I had this problem with Bard's Tale II! First it was the second
>disk and then it was the first disk. When I went back the second time the
>game was sold out! :(
I've left this chapter out in my other posting regarding my bad luck
with BT1: My version of BT2 had an unformatted fourth disk side, i.e.
Dungeon Disk B isn't existant at all. I *really* don't have luck when
buying Bard's Tales (except for the third part, which I have two times
in perfect condition). Luckily, the fourth side has no
copy-protection, but is just plain DOS format, so I could simply
format it and copy a proven good copy over it. The problem in this
case is that this backside has no write-protect hole, and I don't want
to punch through the disk. So I guess I'll have to modify one of my
floppies one day, so it may ignore the write-protection...
Sometimes I hate EA...
Greetings,
Chris.
Ruud Baltissen
> My brother confused drive 8 and 9, killing the best and fastest copy
program
I use a program called "FILE COPY", 42 blocks. No extra cables or whatever
needed. Cannot give figures right now, but IMHO it is quite fast.
The copying goes through the C64. I imagine that if you could program the
drives to talk directly with each other, the whole proces could be
accelerated by a factor 2.
Groetjes, Ruud
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Well, it isn't 100% untouched. It is an original disk, but it has been
>>used for gameplay.
> Snief :-( . So you made the backup rather for safety reasons, not because
> you didn't want to "deflorate" your virgin original?
Yes, but I started playing before I read the manual!
>>Amazing, I had this problem with Bard's Tale II! First it was the second
>>disk and then it was the first disk. When I went back the second time the
>>game was sold out! :(
> I've left this chapter out in my other posting regarding my bad luck
> with BT1: My version of BT2 had an unformatted fourth disk side, i.e.
> Dungeon Disk B isn't existant at all. I *really* don't have luck when
> buying Bard's Tales (except for the third part, which I have two times
> in perfect condition). Luckily, the fourth side has no
> copy-protection, but is just plain DOS format, so I could simply
> format it and copy a proven good copy over it. The problem in this
> case is that this backside has no write-protect hole, and I don't want
> to punch through the disk. So I guess I'll have to modify one of my
> floppies one day, so it may ignore the write-protection...
> Sometimes I hate EA...
But we all love the Bard's Tale series!
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>> Snief :-( . So you made the backup rather for safety reasons, not because
>> you didn't want to "deflorate" your virgin original?
>
>Yes, but I started playing before I read the manual!
tu quoque, Etienne? Maaannn :( ... You should have read the manual
first, I tell you ;-) !
>> Sometimes I hate EA...
>
>But we all love the Bard's Tale series!
I always liked the Ultimas better. Besides, most Ultimas run on
PC64/DOS, so I can even play them on my small notebook in bed :-) .
Chris
Manuel Polik
> But only with games that load completely into memory or ones that
> don't rely on their own custom floppy code to reside in the disk
> drive's RAM. This leaves only a little amount of games, especially if
> you subtract the ones that aren't "worth" freezing, anyway, and the
> ones that you could as well backup with any standard copy program
> instead of producing yet another lousy freeze ;-) .
Speaking again in Bard's Tale terms, it actually was possible to produce
some very easy crack, where you'd just freeze it once it loaded the
first options screen. Now you could distribute the frozen file along
with regular copies of the other disks.
Greetings,
Manuel
Christian Link
wrote:
>Speaking again in Bard's Tale terms, it actually was possible to produce
>some very easy crack, where you'd just freeze it once it loaded the
>first options screen. Now you could distribute the frozen file along
>with regular copies of the other disks.
You could already freeze in the title screen and put the freeze onto
your dungeon disk, hence coming up with a two-side-version of Bard's
Tale I (I really wonder why the crackers didn't do this - only in a
proper way instead of freezing, of course). What's more, the game
would work with the normal kernal loading routines from there on, so
you could even use this freeze with custom kernals like Jiffy etc. (or
load it with older emulators that didn't support full floppy
emulation). Still it remained a lousy freeze ;-) .
Greetings,
Chris.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Yes, but I started playing before I read the manual!
> tu quoque, Etienne? Maaannn :( ...
Geen rare praatjes houden ja!
> You should have read the manual first, I tell you ;-) !
Game manuals don't make sense if you've never played the game!
>>But we all love the Bard's Tale series!
> I always liked the Ultimas better. Besides, most Ultimas run on
> PC64/DOS, so I can even play them on my small notebook in bed :-) .
We don't want to know what kind of games you play in bed.
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>Geen rare praatjes houden ja!
Erm, which means...?
>> You should have read the manual first, I tell you ;-) !
>
>Game manuals don't make sense if you've never played the game!
But you've created a character, I suppose :-( ... That's exactly what
I did with my U6. Never played it, but still I was dumb enough to soil
the original just in order to have a quick glance at the program.
Should have invested these few minutes to make a backup first, shit.
>> I always liked the Ultimas better. Besides, most Ultimas run on
>> PC64/DOS, so I can even play them on my small notebook in bed :-) .
>
>We don't want to know what kind of games you play in bed.
Believe me: Neither do I :-) . But playing Ultima instead of reading a
good book is quite a nice variation of goodnight lecture. And you
wouldn't believe how easily you fall asleep while waiting for a
goddamn pirate ship to arrive at your location...
Chris
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Geen rare praatjes houden ja!
> Erm, which means...?
Well, if you translate it word by word:
No strange chatter keep yes!
>>Game manuals don't make sense if you've never played the game!
> But you've created a character, I suppose :-( ... That's exactly what
> I did with my U6. Never played it, but still I was dumb enough to soil
> the original just in order to have a quick glance at the program.
> Should have invested these few minutes to make a backup first, shit.
What's wrong with that? So you lose the *very* original state of the disk,
but it still is the original game. Sort of.
>>We don't want to know what kind of games you play in bed.
> Believe me: Neither do I :-) . But playing Ultima instead of reading a
> good book is quite a nice variation of goodnight lecture. And you
> wouldn't believe how easily you fall asleep while waiting for a
> goddamn pirate ship to arrive at your location...
Ultima ][? Getting a pirate ship was great on that island 6.000.000 BC (or
something like that). You could get a lot of kills.
NiVEK
<cka...@stockholm.ptloma.edu> wrote:
>crymad <cry...@xprt.net> writes:
>
>>Thank you for your reply. During the golden age of C64, did users
>>typically play games on master disks and not backup copies? If so, what
>>recourse was available if the disks became damaged?
>
>I had a fair number of originals but fortunately few of them used "modern"
>copy protection techniques like V-Max! and Rapidlok, and relied on much
>simpler copy protection schemes like intentional sector errors, that kind
>of thing. Super Huey's copy protection was particularly entertaining -- it
>formatted the disk. The original had no write notch, so it fell through,
>but any kind of unprotected copy was immediately erased. This was my first
>crack :-)
Reminds me of Sublogic's JET (which I bought and was totally
disappointed with - guess a 1 MHz computer can't really simulate a $20
million jet) protection scheme... it looked for a standard dos error
on a particular Track/Sector and if not found formatted the disk! But
thankfully the original was write protected ;-)
Kevin.
Abbreviate email address (figure it out) to reply.
NiVEK
<C.LinkS...@GMX.NET> wrote:
>On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 08:56:48 GMT, Burt /Terminator
><c64du...@stopjunk.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>> I picked up a sealed Gunship for C64 at Goodwill for 99 cents. Dirt
>[...]
>
>>It might be copy protected... But nothing that Maverick should not
>>handle... There's tons of software that allows you to make backup
>>copies... Almost any FTP site covers those...
>
>Gunship is most probably protected with Rapidlok and certainly cannot
>be copied via normal means (i.e. without a parallel cable or a
>RAMBoard). Even then I would consider it almost impossible due to the
>track synchronization.
If remember correctly Gunship is Rapidlock protected and there were 3
different rapidlock versions of this title.... I have backed up
Gunship using the Super Shotgun II nibbler (from Super Snapshot v5's
disk). I would imagine Bull's-eye (being a Rapidlock nibbler) would
duplicate it as well. Note that these two copiers do *not* require any
addon hardware - a standard 1541 in good condition will work for
making copies. Maverick's params disks has copiers for Gunship, but I
can't recall at the moment if they require 8k drive ram....
>Anyway, if the original poster really has only a 1541 and a main unit,
>the answer to his question is "No". If he has better equipment, it is
>"*probably* no." No matter what software he uses.
To make a working backup copy? I'd have to disagree here... see above.
>Using a Rapidlok-Copier may offer a small chance, but this wouldn't
>really be copying, but rather converting. If that's his goal (i.e. if
>he doesn't mind coming up with something that is everything but
>"original"), he may as well fetch a crack from the web.
All the rapidlock nibblers I've seen are copiers.... they don't
"convert" anything as far as I know...
Kevin
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>>>Geen rare praatjes houden ja!
>
>> Erm, which means...?
>
>Well, if you translate it word by word:
>No strange chatter keep yes!
Ah, I see. But you don't want to tell me you didn't read Asterix, do
you?
>> But you've created a character, I suppose :-( ... That's exactly what
>> I did with my U6. Never played it, but still I was dumb enough to soil
>> the original just in order to have a quick glance at the program.
>> Should have invested these few minutes to make a backup first, shit.
>
>What's wrong with that? So you lose the *very* original state of the disk,
>but it still is the original game. Sort of.
Sure it is. But many people (including me) rather want an original in
the way it was when it just came out of the freshly-bought box. Of
course it doesn't necessarily affect gameplay (But beware: in Ultima
III, for example, it does!). In most cases I don't bother, either,
because I know that nobody is to blame for the lack of virgin copies,
simply because they _had_ to be played from the original disks. But
it's really annoying to see that it was solely by one's own stupidity
that a certain game isn't as clean as it could be.
Oh, well, I know that's pedantic. Don't tell me ;-) .
>> Believe me: Neither do I :-) . But playing Ultima instead of reading a
>> good book is quite a nice variation of goodnight lecture. And you
>> wouldn't believe how easily you fall asleep while waiting for a
>> goddamn pirate ship to arrive at your location...
>
>Ultima ][? Getting a pirate ship was great on that island 6.000.000 BC (or
>something like that). You could get a lot of kills.
No, in this case I was talking about Ultima III. I've had two ships,
and the whirlpool destroyed both of them while I left them unattended
one time. It was way too early to use them for going to "Ambrosia"
(for which you definitely need a ship), anyway. But now that my
characters are prepared for the trip, I'm waiting and waiting and
waiting - still, no ship. But I *need* a ship in order to continue :-(
...
Chris
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Well, if you translate it word by word:
>>No strange chatter keep yes!
> Ah, I see. But you don't want to tell me you didn't read Asterix, do
> you?
I have, but I can't remember those strange words you spoke earlier.
>>What's wrong with that? So you lose the *very* original state of the disk,
>>but it still is the original game. Sort of.
> Sure it is. But many people (including me) rather want an original in
> the way it was when it just came out of the freshly-bought box.
But if I told you I had virgin disks you couldn't tell, could you! Tree
rubber!
>>Ultima ][? Getting a pirate ship was great on that island 6.000.000 BC (or
>>something like that). You could get a lot of kills.
> No, in this case I was talking about Ultima III. I've had two ships,
> and the whirlpool destroyed both of them while I left them unattended
> one time. It was way too early to use them for going to "Ambrosia"
> (for which you definitely need a ship), anyway. But now that my
> characters are prepared for the trip, I'm waiting and waiting and
> waiting - still, no ship. But I *need* a ship in order to continue :-(
Seems some people haven't forgiven you Germans! :p
Christian Link
(NiVEK) wrote:
>If remember correctly Gunship is Rapidlock protected and there were 3
>different rapidlock versions of this title.... I have backed up
>Gunship using the Super Shotgun II nibbler (from Super Snapshot v5's
>disk). I would imagine Bull's-eye (being a Rapidlock nibbler) would
>duplicate it as well. Note that these two copiers do *not* require any
>addon hardware - a standard 1541 in good condition will work for
>making copies. Maverick's params disks has copiers for Gunship, but I
>can't recall at the moment if they require 8k drive ram....
I think even (some) versions of Fast Hack'em had parameters for
Gunship, but still I for one wasn't able to copy any of my
rapidlok-protected originals (3*Pirates, 1*Project Stealth Fighter,
1*Red Storm Rising) with _any_ of the programs that claimed to be
Rapidlok copiers. Neither could I do it with BurstNibbler.
Seems there was something very good about the SuperSnapshot I didn't
know. Unfortunately, I don't own this cartridge, and I guess this copy
program you're referring to requires it, right?
>>Anyway, if the original poster really has only a 1541 and a main unit,
>>the answer to his question is "No". If he has better equipment, it is
>>"*probably* no." No matter what software he uses.
>
>To make a working backup copy? I'd have to disagree here... see above.
It's hard to believe that a mere serial nibbler, no matter how advance
it is, can reliably cope with e.g. the track synchronization of
Rapidlok. I don't say I doubt your words, but I have the feeling it
may have been a pure accident that you've hit the correct track
geometry?! Or maybe we're really talking about different Rapidlok
versions, and you were lucky enough to get a copy that used an older
(or otherwise easier to duplicate) version? If not, I really can't
understand why our mileage differed so much.
Greetings,
Chris.
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>I have, but I can't remember those strange words you spoke earlier.
"You too?" ("...Brutus", in the original context)
>> Sure it is. But many people (including me) rather want an original in
>> the way it was when it just came out of the freshly-bought box.
>
>But if I told you I had virgin disks you couldn't tell, could you! Tree
>rubber!
Don't need no rubber for my tree, thanks. And, no, you're not right
about this one: I could, provided you didn't just _tell_ me, but
showed me their contents. See, unless you know how to manipulate the
character data in a away that fools the game into thinking there was
no active character saved on that disk, I just had to select "Journey
onward", and there I was. A virgin copy, however, would have told me
"No active character" or something like this.
Of course we could simply patch the data in the aforementioned way.
There's just one problem: Some games, and naturally, especially RPGs,
don't just store your character information, but also what's
temporarily on the map. Think of the monster positions in Ultima, for
example. Or the places where you've left some chests, parked your
ships, etc. It is not guaranteed that this data is also being reset if
you start a new game. And in Ultima III, for example, it isn't. That's
why using a "used" copy in some cases is a bad thing. Sure, it's nice
to inherit my predecessor's ship (GRMPF!) that's still there, or the
treasure chests he has just forgotten to open. But this really isn't
how the game developers wanted it to be, is it?
>> waiting - still, no ship. But I *need* a ship in order to continue :-(
>
>Seems some people haven't forgiven you Germans! :p
Shit, you're right. I guess I shouldn't have called the ship the
Bismarck, and it probably wasn't a good idea to call my Fighter
"Oberstrottenbandleiter.yu", either.
Chris
NiVEK
<C.LinkS...@GMX.NET> wrote:
>On Fri, 06 Apr 2001 15:46:39 GMT, uh1_...@my-deja.commodore64.rulez
>(NiVEK) wrote:
>
>>If remember correctly Gunship is Rapidlock protected and there were 3
>>different rapidlock versions of this title.... I have backed up
>>Gunship using the Super Shotgun II nibbler (from Super Snapshot v5's
>>disk). I would imagine Bull's-eye (being a Rapidlock nibbler) would
>>duplicate it as well. Note that these two copiers do *not* require any
>>addon hardware - a standard 1541 in good condition will work for
>>making copies. Maverick's params disks has copiers for Gunship, but I
>>can't recall at the moment if they require 8k drive ram....
>
>I think even (some) versions of Fast Hack'em had parameters for
>Gunship, but still I for one wasn't able to copy any of my
>rapidlok-protected originals (3*Pirates, 1*Project Stealth Fighter,
>1*Red Storm Rising) with _any_ of the programs that claimed to be
>Rapidlok copiers. Neither could I do it with BurstNibbler.
I never made a successful Rapidlock backup using Burst Nibbler
myself... tho that might have something to do with my (inadvertently)
using a PAL version on an NTSC C64... ;-) For rapidlocked disks I
always used to use the Super Shotgun2 nibbler...
>Seems there was something very good about the SuperSnapshot I didn't
>know. Unfortunately, I don't own this cartridge, and I guess this copy
>program you're referring to requires it, right?
Actually, no. Super Shotgun II was made by Kracker Jax/SSI and was
sold separately before being bundled with the Super Snapshot v5
cartridge in order to backup disks that couldn't be memory captured by
the Super Snapshot cart. I bought SS2 before it was bundled with the
SS5 cart, then received it for free when I bought SS5. If only I had
known... ;-) Super Shotgun 2 is a plain old serial nibbler, which had
the ability to copy rapidlock titles... As a side note Kracker Jax
also sold Bulls-eye (standalone rapidlock copier) & Elite (standalone
V-MAX copier, only for earlier (easier to copy versions that didn't
require the 8k drive ram expansion) V-MAX versions).
>>>Anyway, if the original poster really has only a 1541 and a main unit,
>>>the answer to his question is "No". If he has better equipment, it is
>>>"*probably* no." No matter what software he uses.
>>
>>To make a working backup copy? I'd have to disagree here... see above.
>
>It's hard to believe that a mere serial nibbler, no matter how advance
>it is, can reliably cope with e.g. the track synchronization of
>Rapidlok. I don't say I doubt your words, but I have the feeling it
>may have been a pure accident that you've hit the correct track
>geometry?! Or maybe we're really talking about different Rapidlok
>versions, and you were lucky enough to get a copy that used an older
>(or otherwise easier to duplicate) version? If not, I really can't
>understand why our mileage differed so much.
Well, different rapidlock versions might have played a part... But
drive speed/track alignment differences were probably responsible... I
remember having trouble loading my original Spy vs Spy 1&2 (rapidlock
v6 protection) on one of my slightly misaligned 1541s. In particular,
minimising fluctuations in drive speed were critical for creating
working backups (this is one reason why 1571 drives are better for
making copies on, because they are direct motor driven as opposed to
belt driven in the 1541). Side note here: Harald Seeley of V-max fame
mentioned a year mentioned he created V-Max originals using a 1571 at
298 RPM). Also, did you disconnect other peripherals (printers/unused
drives/cartridges/kernal replacements) when attempting to make copies?
I remember the Super Shotgun2 manual (actually a one sheet page!)
stating that when copying rapidlocked disks ALL additional/unused
hardware should be disconnected.
As for 'drive geometry' bit there were no user adjustments one could
make when using Super Shotgun2 for rapidlocked disks? When a
rapidlocked disk was inserted and the copy process started the nibbler
would detect that the disk was rapidlocked and prompt for the Super
Shotgun2 disk in order to load the proper rapidlock copier/params from
disk.
Kevin.
Markus Brenner
>As a side note Kracker Jax
>also sold Bulls-eye (standalone rapidlock copier)
Could you elaborate on this?
Can Bulls-eye copy Rapidlok titles on a standard 1541 floppy or do you need a
1571?
Does it actually simply copy the whole disk with the copy protection still in
place, or does it in fact patch the games during copying, thus removing some
of the copy protection checks?
cheers,
-markus
Todd Elliott
> No, in this case I was talking about Ultima III. I've had two ships,
> and the whirlpool destroyed both of them while I left them unattended
> one time. It was way too early to use them for going to "Ambrosia"
> (for which you definitely need a ship), anyway. But now that my
> characters are prepared for the trip, I'm waiting and waiting and
> waiting - still, no ship. But I *need* a ship in order to continue :-(
>
get past the tricker parts of Might & Magic I. (BTW, a cool game.)
Enjoy.
--
Todd Elliott
Christian Link
> > waiting - still, no ship. But I *need* a ship in order to continue :-(
> >
>Use a freezer cart to 'make' the ship come in. I used a freezer cart to
>get past the tricker parts of Might & Magic I. (BTW, a cool game.)
You mean by "poke-ing" a ship into the map data? But this would be
cheating :-( . See, I'm already exploiting some of the weaknesses of
this game (Ultima II had even more...), e.g. by building unsurpassable
barriers around my "homebase", with the chests the monsters have left
behind - which is probably the reason why the chances for a ship to be
randomly put into the game decrease... - but that's at least
semi-legal. But I really don't want to start _cheating_ my way through
this game.
...Although I'm sure my reluctance will decrease if this keeps going
on for more days ;-) ...
Greetings,
Chris.
Overdoc
Christian Link schrieb in Nachricht
<6frrctkjmkhqth1jf...@4ax.com>...
>I think even (some) versions of Fast Hack'em had parameters for
>Gunship, but still I for one wasn't able to copy any of my
>rapidlok-protected originals (3*Pirates, 1*Project Stealth Fighter,
>1*Red Storm Rising) with _any_ of the programs that claimed to be
>Rapidlok copiers. Neither could I do it with BurstNibbler.
>
I copied an original Project Stealth Fighter using Burstnibbler a long time
ago. Don't know if the game checks for protection later in the game, but at
least I could start the game from the copy.
Anyway, I cannot remember what version of Burstnibbler I used. ( could have
been V1.0, V1.3, V1.8 or even V2.0 )
If Burstnibbler fails you can also give 'Dela Nibbler' a try, which did
succeed for me once on an original where Burstnibbler failed....
Overdoc
Forrest
Bullseye can copy Rapidlok titles on a standard 1541 floppy drive,
Maverick contains the exact same routines as well, since they were made by
the same company. It copies the disks with most of the protection intact
(the custom formatting) but I believe it patches some of the protection
checks. To elaborate, Bullseye contains 5 or 6 different Rapidlok
copiers, one for each version of Rapidlok. But after you've copied your
original, there is a generic Rapidlok copier that will make a copy of the
copied original.
Forrest
Nospam9212
>I picked up a sealed Gunship for C64 at Goodwill for 99 cents. Dirt
>cheap, but I'd still like to make a copy for playing.
Seems like a good plan... that's the same thing I did... :)
>I have a single
>1541 drive. Can I do it?
Yep... the game is copy-protected using RapidLok. Go to my website and grab the
RapidLok Utilities and/or Bull's Eye. One thing you need to be sure of.... that
your disk drive spins at exactly 300 rpm. Chances are if the original loads ok
everytime, the RLU copier will be successful. If the original loads a bit on
the flakey side, sometimes yes other times no, the chances of making a working
copy are reduced.
Note... the copy will not be "cracked" but rather, "cloned". You should be able
to make a usable copy and that's all you want, at this point. Good Luck !!!
http://members.aol.com/fyarra001
later...
-= Francis Yarra =-
fyarraATjunoDOTcom
http://members.aol.com/fyarra - My C64 website
http://members.aol.com/prsnl99 - My personal website
Christian Link
>I copied an original Project Stealth Fighter using Burstnibbler a long time
>ago. Don't know if the game checks for protection later in the game, but at
>least I could start the game from the copy.
Shit. I couldn't, so it doesn't even matter if it checks the
protection later - I didn't even get this far :-( .
>Anyway, I cannot remember what version of Burstnibbler I used. ( could have
>been V1.0, V1.3, V1.8 or even V2.0 )
You have a V2.0? Are you sure? I have bought my original very late, so
I always thought it was the latest version ever released, and it was
V1.9. Never heard about a 2.0, anyway. Could you please check again
and, if it really was a 2.0, email this one to me?
Greetings,
Chris.
NiVEK
>Christian Link schrieb in Nachricht
><6frrctkjmkhqth1jf...@4ax.com>...
>>I think even (some) versions of Fast Hack'em had parameters for
>>Gunship, but still I for one wasn't able to copy any of my
>>rapidlok-protected originals (3*Pirates, 1*Project Stealth Fighter,
>>1*Red Storm Rising) with _any_ of the programs that claimed to be
>>Rapidlok copiers. Neither could I do it with BurstNibbler.
>
>I copied an original Project Stealth Fighter using Burstnibbler a long time
>ago. Don't know if the game checks for protection later in the game, but at
>least I could start the game from the copy.
Interesting note: According to the Burst Nibbler manual (explaining
nibbler settings):
"Adjust target: This function optimises the used disk space. It is a
little involved to explain this parameter so it's best to try a copy
with this setting on YES or NO. As an indicator you should set this to
NO for MICROPROSE (Gunship etc) or indeed any software that gives
critical attention to the actual physical location of data on a disk.
As we have said trial and error is the best way.
Reduce Syncs: Again very difficult to explain but try this with both
YES and NO. MICROPROSE should generally be NO."
Considering that Gunship is rapidlocked, the above info could be
interpreted to be the settings required to copy Rapidlock protected
titles successfully using BurstNibbler. Unfortunately, the above
recommended settings never produced a working Gunship backup for me
;-(
I do remember however trying to copy Microprose's Keith Von Eron's
Pro-Soccer with Burst Nibbler v1.8 and failing until I turned Reduce
Syncs ON though...
(As soon as I get some time I'll scan/OCR the manuals for Burst
Nibbler/Supercard+ RAM expansion) and add them to
http://surf.to/nivek)
>Anyway, I cannot remember what version of Burstnibbler I used. ( could have
>been V1.0, V1.3, V1.8 or even V2.0 )
>If Burstnibbler fails you can also give 'Dela Nibbler' a try, which did
>succeed for me once on an original where Burstnibbler failed....
Never heard of 'Dela Nibbler' - is this European in origin? Does it
use the parallel cable? Will it work on an NTSC system?
Kevin.
Martin Fensome
copy.
Martin
"Christian Link" <C.LinkS...@GMX.NET> wrote in message
news:5d1tct453cul52um2...@4ax.com...
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>I have, but I can't remember those strange words you spoke earlier.
> "You too?" ("...Brutus", in the original context)
I've forgotten our context!
>>But if I told you I had virgin disks you couldn't tell, could you! Tree
>>rubber!
> Don't need no rubber for my tree, thanks. And, no, you're not right
> about this one: I could, provided you didn't just _tell_ me, but
> showed me their contents. See, unless you know how to manipulate the
> character data in a away that fools the game into thinking there was
> no active character saved on that disk, I just had to select "Journey
> onward", and there I was. A virgin copy, however, would have told me
> "No active character" or something like this.
Maybe it had a default character, Sir Default or something.
> Of course we could simply patch the data in the aforementioned way.
> There's just one problem: Some games, and naturally, especially RPGs,
> don't just store your character information, but also what's
> temporarily on the map. Think of the monster positions in Ultima, for
> example. Or the places where you've left some chests, parked your
> ships, etc. It is not guaranteed that this data is also being reset if
> you start a new game. And in Ultima III, for example, it isn't. That's
> why using a "used" copy in some cases is a bad thing. Sure, it's nice
> to inherit my predecessor's ship (GRMPF!) that's still there, or the
> treasure chests he has just forgotten to open. But this really isn't
> how the game developers wanted it to be, is it?
Nice words coming from someone who has been complaining about the lack of
a ship!
>>Seems some people haven't forgiven you Germans! :p
> Shit, you're right. I guess I shouldn't have called the ship the
> Bismarck, and it probably wasn't a good idea to call my Fighter
> "Oberstrottenbandleiter.yu", either.
How about "Bradwurst"?
Christian Link
On 7 Apr 2001 10:10:06 GMT, Etienne von Wettingfeld
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>> "You too?" ("...Brutus", in the original context)
>
>I've forgotten our context!
(I was referring to the "I've read the manual too late and hence
soiled my original disk")
>> onward", and there I was. A virgin copy, however, would have told me
>> "No active character" or something like this.
>
>Maybe it had a default character, Sir Default or something.
Sure, this is possible as well. Depends on the game. Bard's Tale, as
you will certainly remember, had this "A-Team" default party on it,
for example. But with the Ultimas, no, they didn't :-( .
>> why using a "used" copy in some cases is a bad thing. Sure, it's nice
>> to inherit my predecessor's ship (GRMPF!) that's still there, or the
>> treasure chests he has just forgotten to open. But this really isn't
>> how the game developers wanted it to be, is it?
>
>Nice words coming from someone who has been complaining about the lack of
>a ship!
Hey, I still do! But inheriting it from the last person who played the
game would be like using a savegame from another person just being two
moves away from winning the game, then completing it and claiming you
had solved it. Cheating in a short-term-experience game like a shooter
etc. is something I do often (because I'm not very good at action
games, anyway), but in an RPG? Oh, nooo...
>> Shit, you're right. I guess I shouldn't have called the ship the
>> Bismarck, and it probably wasn't a good idea to call my Fighter
>> "Oberstrottenbandleiter.yu", either.
>
>How about "Bradwurst"?
Brad Wurst ;-) ?
Greetings,
Chris.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>I've forgotten our context!
> (I was referring to the "I've read the manual too late and hence
> soiled my original disk")
Soiling disks is never a good idea!
>>Maybe it had a default character, Sir Default or something.
> Sure, this is possible as well. Depends on the game. Bard's Tale, as
> you will certainly remember, had this "A-Team" default party on it,
> for example. But with the Ultimas, no, they didn't :-( .
:(((
>>Nice words coming from someone who has been complaining about the lack of
>>a ship!
> Hey, I still do! But inheriting it from the last person who played the
> game would be like using a savegame from another person just being two
> moves away from winning the game, then completing it and claiming you had
> solved it. Cheating in a short-term-experience game like a shooter etc. is
> something I do often (because I'm not very good at action games, anyway),
> but in an RPG? Oh, nooo...
Not even with Bard's Tale?
>>How about "Bradwurst"?
> Brad Wurst ;-) ?
I would like one right now. Am starving!
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>> solved it. Cheating in a short-term-experience game like a shooter etc. is
>> something I do often (because I'm not very good at action games, anyway),
>> but in an RPG? Oh, nooo...
>
>Not even with Bard's Tale?
GRRR! You've got me here. I did cheat in Bard's Tale I, but never
aimed to play it for very long anyway. But I guess that should I ever
decide to play it again, I'd try it without cheating.
Some games, although I don't claim the BT series necessarily belonging
to them, simply take ages of "dumb slave labour" to get your
characters going without anything story-wise developing further. I'd
even claim that some of the old Ultima games partially fall in this
category. That's where "tuning" your characters becomes tempting, just
to skip through the boring parts.
The Japanese were more clever in most cases (= probably only the
mainstream RPGs that most people know; I bet _they_ had their bad
games as well!). They burden you with the "slave labour" only for a
short period of time, mainly to get you accustomed to the game, but
still make the story develop during this episode. And if it's only by
subtle hints at what is going to follow. In other words: They keep you
interested, makeing you want to see how things will go on.
And, despite my admiration for the Ultima series, I slowly get the
feeling Garriott failed to do the same in some of his early works.
Especially II and III are "pure work, no story" at some stages, and
very long stages at that :-( .
>> Brad Wurst ;-) ?
>
>I would like one right now. Am starving!
With our without Sauerkraut :-) ?
Greetings,
Chris.
Paul Foerster
> I would like one right now. Am starving!
... you don't seem to get the joke. Sounds familiar and makes me think of
brathering. :-)))
--
cul8er,
Paul
oo
pa...@gmx.net ~( "> paul_f...@s.maus.de
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Not even with Bard's Tale?
> GRRR! You've got me here. I did cheat in Bard's Tale I, but never
> aimed to play it for very long anyway. But I guess that should I ever
> decide to play it again, I'd try it without cheating.
The Bard's Tale is very hard to get started with. It's hard not to get
killed and hard to earn enough money to keep everyone healthy. When your
party gets a bit stronger the game is fairly easy though.
> Some games, although I don't claim the BT series necessarily belonging
> to them, simply take ages of "dumb slave labour" to get your
> characters going without anything story-wise developing further. I'd
> even claim that some of the old Ultima games partially fall in this
> category. That's where "tuning" your characters becomes tempting, just
> to skip through the boring parts.
Boring parts should always be skipped!
> The Japanese were more clever in most cases (= probably only the
> mainstream RPGs that most people know; I bet _they_ had their bad
> games as well!). They burden you with the "slave labour" only for a
> short period of time, mainly to get you accustomed to the game, but
> still make the story develop during this episode. And if it's only by
> subtle hints at what is going to follow. In other words: They keep you
> interested, makeing you want to see how things will go on.
I don't think I can name any Japanese RPGs...
> And, despite my admiration for the Ultima series, I slowly get the
> feeling Garriott failed to do the same in some of his early works.
> Especially II and III are "pure work, no story" at some stages, and
> very long stages at that :-( .
I like Ultima ][, but since I started Ultima with Warriors of Destiny it
seemed very primitive and I just played it to kill kill kill.
>>> Brad Wurst ;-) ?
>>
>>I would like one right now. Am starving!
> With our without Sauerkraut :-) ?
Without! Currently I'm eating 'Cheetos' and in the bag are two Pokemon
flippo's.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>> I would like one right now. Am starving!
> ... you don't seem to get the joke.
Chris means someone called Brad I guess, but when you're hungry you want
food and not German jokes!
> Sounds familiar and makes me think of brathering. :-)))
Oh!
Christian Link
On 8 Apr 2001 16:23:24 GMT, Etienne von Wettingfeld
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>The Bard's Tale is very hard to get started with. It's hard not to get
>killed and hard to earn enough money to keep everyone healthy. When your
>party gets a bit stronger the game is fairly easy though.
I guess nobody will ever forget this damn "statue of a samurai
warrior" on the way to the tavern ;-) . Most people agree that it has
been put there for the sole purpose of being a sparring partner for
your party until it was strong enough to proceed. Still, this is
exactly what I considered "stupid slave labour" in my last posting.
>I don't think I can name any Japanese RPGs...
Just in case I didn't make myself understood properly: Of course I
meant the English versions of Japanese RPGs ;-) . If you really
haven't tried them, you should definitely do some day. Personally,
I've never liked them as I considered them "console kiddie crap". Erm,
yes, until I took the time to seriously try one. That was Final
Fantasy III. I liked it so much that I stopped playing after two or
three hours and started with Final Fantasy II instead, so as to run
through all of them (sadly, FF1 isn't available for the SNES, probably
for _no_ other system than the old NES. And this, really, was *too*
ugly for me ;-) ...).
Most of these games run beautifully on today's console emulators.
Meanwhile I'm almost through with FF2, and haven't noticed any glitch
at all. GREAT fun! Really, if you have some time to waste and no
particular game on your schedule, give it a shot!
>I like Ultima ][, but since I started Ultima with Warriors of Destiny it
>seemed very primitive and I just played it to kill kill kill.
Same here. I've started with U4, then gave up because I only had a
pirate copy and lacked the spells. Then I've bought U3, which was a
lot more primitive, but still sophisticated enough for back then. I've
almost completed it when I lent this disk to a friend who del... Well,
let's not continue with this story; it depresses me :-( . Then, during
the 90's, I've decided to start anew, but it has taken me more than
five years to overcome my reluctance towards the first two parts. I
rather considered them "work", for which I'm now rewarded by playing
U3 (and waiting for eternities for a goddamn SHIP!) :-) .
But I can't wait to seriously play U4+5.
>Without! Currently I'm eating 'Cheetos' and in the bag are two Pokemon
>flippo's.
I bet no Pokemon has ever made it to real Avatarhood ;-) .
Greetings,
Chris.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>The Bard's Tale is very hard to get started with. It's hard not to get
>>killed and hard to earn enough money to keep everyone healthy. When your
>>party gets a bit stronger the game is fairly easy though.
> I guess nobody will ever forget this damn "statue of a samurai
> warrior" on the way to the tavern ;-) . Most people agree that it has
> been put there for the sole purpose of being a sparring partner for
> your party until it was strong enough to proceed. Still, this is
> exactly what I considered "stupid slave labour" in my last posting.
That Samuari has to be the most killed monster of all RPGs. It was real
nasty when you start a game and he kills one of your party. You'd have load
the game all over again, unless you wanted to pay for a resurection.
>>I don't think I can name any Japanese RPGs...
> Just in case I didn't make myself understood properly: Of course I
> meant the English versions of Japanese RPGs ;-) . If you really
> haven't tried them, you should definitely do some day. Personally,
> I've never liked them as I considered them "console kiddie crap". Erm,
> yes, until I took the time to seriously try one. That was Final
> Fantasy III. I liked it so much that I stopped playing after two or
> three hours and started with Final Fantasy II instead, so as to run
> through all of them (sadly, FF1 isn't available for the SNES, probably
> for _no_ other system than the old NES. And this, really, was *too*
> ugly for me ;-) ...).
Well, are there any of these English Japanese RPGs for the C64?
> Most of these games run beautifully on today's console emulators.
> Meanwhile I'm almost through with FF2, and haven't noticed any glitch
> at all. GREAT fun! Really, if you have some time to waste and no
> particular game on your schedule, give it a shot!
I'm giving shots at `Toca 2' now. I bought it for only 15 guilders! It's
great when you have a steering wheel.
>>I like Ultima ][, but since I started Ultima with Warriors of Destiny it
>>seemed very primitive and I just played it to kill kill kill.
> Same here. I've started with U4, then gave up because I only had a pirate
> copy and lacked the spells. Then I've bought U3, which was a lot more
> primitive, but still sophisticated enough for back then. I've almost
> completed it when I lent this disk to a friend who del... Well, let's not
> continue with this story; it depresses me :-( . Then, during the 90's,
> I've decided to start anew, but it has taken me more than five years to
> overcome my reluctance towards the first two parts. I rather considered
> them "work", for which I'm now rewarded by playing U3 (and waiting for
> eternities for a goddamn SHIP!) :-) .
You almost have me on the edge to start playing Ultima III...
> But I can't wait to seriously play U4+5.
Ultima V for the C64 is IMHO the best (Ultima) RPG ever. I have Ultima IV
somewhere for the PC put it wasn't easy to get in to, also again the spell
lacking problem.
>>Without! Currently I'm eating 'Cheetos' and in the bag are two Pokemon
>>flippo's.
> I bet no Pokemon has ever made it to real Avatarhood ;-) .
I've hear rumors that `Pokemon' stands for `Pocket Monsters'.
I've only seen a Pokemon cartoon once, but that was in Spain so everybody
spoke Spanish which isn't my best language. Even worse, the lower classes in
Spain don't speak any languages except Spanish. Luckily I had two hands to
make movements to make the cleaner clear we had left our keys in our
apartment.
MagerValp
EvW> Ultima V for the C64 is IMHO the best (Ultima) RPG ever. I have
EvW> Ultima IV somewhere for the PC put it wasn't easy to get in to,
EvW> also again the spell lacking problem.
But the story in Ultima IV is really good. For its time, it was quite
revolutionary. There was no bad guy to beat, there was no big endgame
monster. A true classic that shouldn't be missed by any RPG fan.
--
___ . . . . . + . . o
_|___|_ + . + . + . . Per Olofsson, konstnär
o-o . . . o + Mage...@cling.gu.se
- + + . http://www.cling.gu.se/~cl3polof/
Etienne von Wettingfeld
> EvW> Ultima V for the C64 is IMHO the best (Ultima) RPG ever. I have
> EvW> Ultima IV somewhere for the PC put it wasn't easy to get in to,
> EvW> also again the spell lacking problem.
> But the story in Ultima IV is really good. For its time, it was quite
> revolutionary. There was no bad guy to beat, there was no big endgame
> monster. A true classic that shouldn't be missed by any RPG fan.
You can say the same thing about Chess. ;)
I think I'd play Ultima IV if I could find an original C64 version.
Paul Foerster
> Chris means someone called Brad I guess, but when you're hungry you want
> food and not German jokes!
... you know what a Bratwurst is?
> > Sounds familiar and makes me think of brathering. :-)))
> Oh!
... and you know what a Brathering is? :-))))))))))))))
Christian Link
On 8 Apr 2001 18:18:55 GMT, Etienne von Wettingfeld
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>Well, are there any of these English Japanese RPGs for the C64?
Sadly no. And I don't understand this, as the C64's graphic abilities
would have been sufficient to at least "emulate" NES games like Final
Fantasy I and Zelda. And some demos have already shown how great manga
graphics can look on a C64, too. Sure, the manga-hype (i.e. as far as
it affected "outsiders" as well) hit Europe way later than the C64's
prime time, but still I don't get why no ambitious team of hobbyists
(some of which have really done great things by porting/enhancing
other games; just think of Elite 128!) ever took on the challenge to
show the C64 was capable to do the same as the NES did (and better!).
After all, Final Fantasy wasn't much more demanding than any Ultima...
>I'm giving shots at `Toca 2' now. I bought it for only 15 guilders! It's
>great when you have a steering wheel.
I've bought myself a steering wheel one year ago for playing NFS5, but
was pretty disappointed. Driving sure got more realistic, but you
simply couldn't react as fast as with a digital gamepad (but due to
the analog controller, replays looked _much_ more realistic with a
wheel!). Which wheel do you have? I have the Guillemot Ferrari Force
Feedback, and while the wheel is just fine, the pedals *suck* :-( .
>You almost have me on the edge to start playing Ultima III...
Well, as long as you aren't as stupid as me and build barriers with
chests which may be the reason for the ships not to arrive ;-) ?
>> But I can't wait to seriously play U4+5.
>
>Ultima V for the C64 is IMHO the best (Ultima) RPG ever. I have Ultima IV
>somewhere for the PC put it wasn't easy to get in to, also again the spell
>lacking problem.
I have "personal reasons" (fond memories) for declaring U4 my
favourite, but I'm definitely looking forward to playing U5
afterwards. Let's forget about the C64 port of U6 ;-) . But as of the
best Ultima RPG ever regarding _all_ systems (and not only the C64,
where U5 was probably the absolute top!), I think U7 might be even
better. And, while most die-hard Ultima freaks will probably disagree
with me, *I* for one liked Ultima VIII very much, too.
>>>Without! Currently I'm eating 'Cheetos' and in the bag are two Pokemon
>>>flippo's.
>
>> I bet no Pokemon has ever made it to real Avatarhood ;-) .
>
>I've hear rumors that `Pokemon' stands for `Pocket Monsters'.
Yeah, and that's why. Although I don't understand the emphasis on "é",
then. Real CBM-freaks would pronounced it "POKE-mon", anyway. Hey,
wouldn't this be a cool name for a new ML monitor ;-) ?
Greetings,
Chris.
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>I think I'd play Ultima IV if I could find an original C64 version.
You mean you'd only like to play it if you actually owned an original,
or would you settle with an "as-perfect-as-can-be" copy from such an
original?
Chris
MagerValp
EvW> I think I'd play Ultima IV if I could find an original C64
EvW> version.
As in a couple of .d64s without the cracktro or an honest to god
original C64 U4? The latter is pretty damn hard to come by.
crymad
That would be actually closer to the real Japanese pronunciation than
the "Pokey-man" heard here in the US. Gaijin have real trouble with the
Japanese "e".
--crymad
Manuel Polik
> >But I'd never give them out of my hands.
>
> Wise :-) .
I did before and it ruined both my original 'Speedball' and 'To Be On
Top' disks.
Might be a good sell on eBay nowadays if I'd still have 'em :´-(
> Thanks for your generous offer, man! Personally, I'd prefer the first
> alternative, as driving from ceBIT city to Kempten would cost so much
> money that I could buy a dozen *new* BT1's for that price ;-) .
Oh... I was near your hometown once a year from '96 'till last year,
visiting the Zillo Festival. But this year it moved to somewhere near
Trier.
> So, do you happen to have a "parallelized" floppy? Not that I dare to
> hope it, but just in case...?
Unfortunately not, just a plain 1541 II.
You'd have to send it along with the disks then :-)
Greetings,
Manuel
Etienne von Wettingfeld
> EvW> I think I'd play Ultima IV if I could find an original C64
> EvW> version.
> As in a couple of .d64s without the cracktro or an honest to god
> original C64 U4? The latter is pretty damn hard to come by.
I like the box and the manual!
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>I think I'd play Ultima IV if I could find an original C64 version.
> You mean you'd only like to play it if you actually owned an original,
> or would you settle with an "as-perfect-as-can-be" copy from such an
> original?
Well, I like to have all the documentation and I'd prefer to play it on a
real C64 instead of an emulator.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>> Chris means someone called Brad I guess, but when you're hungry you want
>> food and not German jokes!
> ... you know what a Bratwurst is?
I'm not brave enough to ask...
>> > Sounds familiar and makes me think of brathering. :-)))
>> Oh!
> ... and you know what a Brathering is? :-))))))))))))))
I surrender!
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>Well, are there any of these English Japanese RPGs for the C64?
> Sadly no. And I don't understand this, as the C64's graphic abilities
> would have been sufficient to at least "emulate" NES games like Final
> Fantasy I and Zelda. And some demos have already shown how great manga
> graphics can look on a C64, too. Sure, the manga-hype (i.e. as far as it
> affected "outsiders" as well) hit Europe way later than the C64's prime
> time, but still I don't get why no ambitious team of hobbyists (some of
> which have really done great things by porting/enhancing other games; just
> think of Elite 128!) ever took on the challenge to show the C64 was
> capable to do the same as the NES did (and better!). After all, Final
> Fantasy wasn't much more demanding than any Ultima...
I think it's sad that a game like Zelda is called an RPG.
>>I'm giving shots at `Toca 2' now. I bought it for only 15 guilders! It's
>>great when you have a steering wheel.
> I've bought myself a steering wheel one year ago for playing NFS5, but
> was pretty disappointed. Driving sure got more realistic, but you
> simply couldn't react as fast as with a digital gamepad (but due to
> the analog controller, replays looked _much_ more realistic with a
> wheel!). Which wheel do you have? I have the Guillemot Ferrari Force
> Feedback, and while the wheel is just fine, the pedals *suck* :-( .
I've got a Logitech thing. I forgot what it was called though. I used to
race with my analogue joystick which is terrible.
>>You almost have me on the edge to start playing Ultima III...
> Well, as long as you aren't as stupid as me and build barriers with
> chests which may be the reason for the ships not to arrive ;-) ?
I haven't gotten that far yet. I downloaded U3 yesterday and loaded it up on
my Linux machine running VICE. The party already had 2 characters which I
terminated!
>>Ultima V for the C64 is IMHO the best (Ultima) RPG ever. I have Ultima IV
>>somewhere for the PC put it wasn't easy to get in to, also again the spell
>>lacking problem.
> I have "personal reasons" (fond memories) for declaring U4 my favourite,
> but I'm definitely looking forward to playing U5 afterwards. Let's forget
> about the C64 port of U6 ;-) . But as of the best Ultima RPG ever
> regarding _all_ systems (and not only the C64, where U5 was probably the
> absolute top!), I think U7 might be even better. And, while most die-hard
> Ultima freaks will probably disagree with me, *I* for one liked Ultima
> VIII very much, too.
I thought VIII was crap?
>>I've hear rumors that `Pokemon' stands for `Pocket Monsters'.
> Yeah, and that's why. Although I don't understand the emphasis on "e",
> then. Real CBM-freaks would pronounced it "POKE-mon", anyway. Hey,
> wouldn't this be a cool name for a new ML monitor ;-) ?
I think they'd sue!
Christian Link
On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 09:41:52 +0200, Manuel Polik <mpo...@neulandmm.de>
wrote:
>I did before and it ruined both my original 'Speedball' and 'To Be On
>Top' disks.
>Might be a good sell on eBay nowadays if I'd still have 'em :´-(
Probably not. The Rainbow Arts stuff for the C64 usually doesn't sell
well (very often, even Turrican and X-Out don't), and Speedball isn't
that rare, anyway (I have two copies of it myself).
But I would gladly swap the Speedball disk for an original first disk
of BT1 ;-))) ...
>> So, do you happen to have a "parallelized" floppy? Not that I dare to
>> hope it, but just in case...?
>
>Unfortunately not, just a plain 1541 II.
>You'd have to send it along with the disks then :-)
LOL! Sending a 1541 back and forth would also cost as much as a used
copy of Bard's Tale. Come to think of it, next time I'll have somebody
else bid on my behalf. If I do it myself, I always come up with flakey
disks ;-( .
Greetings,
Chris.
Christian Link
<eti...@xs4none.nl> wrote:
>I think it's sad that a game like Zelda is called an RPG.
You mean because it actually was a mere action adventure? That's true.
But on the other hand, after looking at games like the Final Fantasy
series, Tales of Phantasia, and a couple others, I sometimes wonder
how we could call Ultimas < IV RPGs ;-) .
>I've got a Logitech thing. I forgot what it was called though. I used to
>race with my analogue joystick which is terrible.
Hmmm... I liked using my old Gravis Analog Pro stick for NFS. I was
just too lazy to dig it out every time I wanted to play. The gamepad
was always connected.
>I haven't gotten that far yet. I downloaded U3 yesterday and loaded it up on
>my Linux machine running VICE. The party already had 2 characters which I
>terminated!
Hey, did they have ships :-) ?
>> absolute top!), I think U7 might be even better. And, while most die-hard
>> Ultima freaks will probably disagree with me, *I* for one liked Ultima
>> VIII very much, too.
>
>I thought VIII was crap?
I wouldn't consider it crap, just not an Ultima in the sense all its
predecessors were. It was too much of an action game, too, but on the
other hand, it contained everything an Ultima required. And IMHO it
had the best Ultima soundtrack I know (Keep in mind I didn't have a
look at U9 yet, though).
Greetings,
Chris.
Manuel Polik
> >I did before and it ruined both my original 'Speedball' and 'To Be On
> >Top' disks.
> >Might be a good sell on eBay nowadays if I'd still have 'em :´-(
> Probably not. The Rainbow Arts stuff for the C64 usually doesn't sell
> well (very often, even Turrican and X-Out don't)
Oh... What's with stuff like the C64 version of 'Startrash'? shouldn't
that be a rare one?
> , and Speedball isn't
> that rare, anyway (I have two copies of it myself).
Phew. Lucky me then. Hm... what is a money raising C64 game then?
I've an original Paradroid tape, TV Sports Football or Carrier Command
complete with the audio tape for example.
> But I would gladly swap the Speedball disk for an original first disk
> of BT1 ;-))) ...
Hehe :-)
> LOL! Sending a 1541 back and forth would also cost as much as a used
> copy of Bard's Tale. Come to think of it, next time I'll have somebody
> else bid on my behalf. If I do it myself, I always come up with flakey
> disks ;-( .
Most of the time I wouldn't even notice a corrupt disk, as I'd collect
the stuff though, but play it on emulators most of the time.
Working on the real thing is such a pain... :-)
Greetings,
Manuel
Christian Link
On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 14:36:45 +0200, Manuel Polik <mpo...@neulandmm.de>
wrote:
>Oh... What's with stuff like the C64 version of 'Startrash'? shouldn't
>that be a rare one?
No, probably this one, neither. Except for the fact that it was so bad
it didn't sell well, anyway (but the same goes for TBOT) ;-) .
>Phew. Lucky me then. Hm... what is a money raising C64 game then?
Shrink-wrapped Ultimas :-) . Or Portal/Alter Ego. Generally, many
Activision and EA disk games (although Collectors seem to prefer the
paper folder versions only, regarding the latter, I mean). We've seen
*big* bucks being paid for the two first mentioned (> DM 150!).
>I've an original Paradroid tape, TV Sports Football or Carrier Command
>complete with the audio tape for example.
If Paradroid really isn't just a cheap re-release, it is probably
worth quite a lot (although tapes don't sell for that much money,
which *I* don't understand). And if TVSF is the game by Cinemaware,
the same goes for that one too (especially, if you sell it on
ebay.com, I think).
I don't think Carrier Command is very sought-after, though. I have a
complete version of this one myself (so much for speaking of rarety
;-) ...), and back then I thought it was very cool, because the AMIGA
version was a classic, and I was happy about any good port.
Unfortunately, many of the guys that are around on ebay don't even
know this game's history, so it doesn't mean much to them.
>Most of the time I wouldn't even notice a corrupt disk, as I'd collect
>the stuff though, but play it on emulators most of the time.
>Working on the real thing is such a pain... :-)
But you should at least try to copy the disks over to D64 files, which
is in many cases sufficient. It's a good feeling knowing most of one's
originals are securely backed-up on CD-ROMs, really!
Greetings,
Chris.
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>>I think it's sad that a game like Zelda is called an RPG.
> You mean because it actually was a mere action adventure? That's true.
> But on the other hand, after looking at games like the Final Fantasy
> series, Tales of Phantasia, and a couple others, I sometimes wonder
> how we could call Ultimas < IV RPGs ;-) .
Shoot 'em up RPGs!
>>I've got a Logitech thing. I forgot what it was called though. I used to
>>race with my analogue joystick which is terrible.
> Hmmm... I liked using my old Gravis Analog Pro stick for NFS. I was
> just too lazy to dig it out every time I wanted to play. The gamepad
> was always connected.
I have gotten a free gamepad, but the wire isn't very long.
>>I haven't gotten that far yet. I downloaded U3 yesterday and loaded it up
>>on my Linux machine running VICE. The party already had 2 characters which
>>I terminated!
> Hey, did they have ships :-) ?
What have I done!
>>I thought VIII was crap?
> I wouldn't consider it crap, just not an Ultima in the sense all its
> predecessors were. It was too much of an action game, too, but on the
> other hand, it contained everything an Ultima required. And IMHO it
> had the best Ultima soundtrack I know (Keep in mind I didn't have a
> look at U9 yet, though).
I heard U9 is even worse!!!
Manuel Polik
> >Oh... What's with stuff like the C64 version of 'Startrash'? shouldn't
> >that be a rare one?
> No, probably this one, neither. Except for the fact that it was so bad
> it didn't sell well,
That's why I thought it being ultra-rare :-)
> anyway (but the same goes for TBOT) ;-) .
I recall playing it for several hours. Approximately until I got the
impression, that it is totally depending on random descissions on how
good your song is.
> >Phew. Lucky me then. Hm... what is a money raising C64 game then?
> Shrink-wrapped Ultimas :-).
Too bad, I already opened my Ultima 6. Oh boy, that was a pain playing
it. DJing the disks sucked even worse than the 11 disk version of Monkey
Island 2 on the Amiga :-)
> Or Portal/Alter Ego. Generally, many
> Activision and EA disk games (although Collectors seem to prefer the
> paper folder versions only, regarding the latter, I mean). We've seen
> *big* bucks being paid for the two first mentioned (> DM 150!).
Oh... I've none of these, except the Bard's Tales as mentioned.
> >I've an original Paradroid tape, TV Sports Football or Carrier Command
> >complete with the audio tape for example.
> If Paradroid really isn't just a cheap re-release, it is probably
> worth quite a lot (although tapes don't sell for that much money,
> which *I* don't understand).
It is the first, original '84 Hewson tape version. I once had the Heavy
Metal version too, but unfortunately lost it somewhere in time & place
:-)
> And if TVSF is the game by Cinemaware,
Yup!
> the same goes for that one too (especially, if you sell it on
> ebay.com, I think).
They wouldn't buy a PAL game, would they?
> I don't think Carrier Command is very sought-after, though. I have a
> complete version of this one myself (so much for speaking of rarety
> ;-) ...), and back then I thought it was very cool, because the AMIGA
> version was a classic, and I was happy about any good port.
Oh... I wouldn't call a 2D translation of a 3D game a good port. I was
especially disappointed of it, as I was playing the Amiga version on a
friends machine for hours...
I think only the C64 'Kick Off 1' port was a more worse than that :-)
(By giving it a second thought: As crap as the 16 bit versions already
were, the C64 port actually was quite accurate }:-))
> >Most of the time I wouldn't even notice a corrupt disk, as I'd collect
> >the stuff though, but play it on emulators most of the time.
> >Working on the real thing is such a pain... :-)
> But you should at least try to copy the disks over to D64 files, which
> is in many cases sufficient. It's a good feeling knowing most of one's
> originals are securely backed-up on CD-ROMs, really!
Since I never play them, I just pretend everything's okay with 'em.
Besides, without checking my collection, I'd bet that by now there's a
lot more Amiga disks dead than C64 ones :-)
Greetings,
Manuel
Christian Link
On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 15:19:47 +0200, Manuel Polik <mpo...@neulandmm.de>
wrote:
>> anyway (but the same goes for TBOT) ;-) .
>
>I recall playing it for several hours. Approximately until I got the
>impression, that it is totally depending on random descissions on how
>good your song is.
...which was probably very realistic from Hülsbeck's point of view,
though :-) !
>> If Paradroid really isn't just a cheap re-release, it is probably
>> worth quite a lot (although tapes don't sell for that much money,
>> which *I* don't understand).
>
>It is the first, original '84 Hewson tape version. I once had the Heavy
>Metal version too, but unfortunately lost it somewhere in time & place
>:-)
Uh, this should really be worth some money. After all, an innocent,
"wanna-be-retragaming-insider" working at the PC Player magazine was
even proud to announce he bought "Paradroid" (a cheap re-release, to
be more precise...) for approximately DM 70. A real bargain, eh ;-) ?
Oh well, but then again this "insider" even had the nerve to speak of
"so-called ROMs" in his article. Well, thanks Jochen, for giving us an
opportunity to learn correct terminology from such a pro - LOL!
>> And if TVSF is the game by Cinemaware,
>
>Yup!
>
>> the same goes for that one too (especially, if you sell it on
>> ebay.com, I think).
>
>They wouldn't buy a PAL game, would they?
I may be wrong with this one, but as far as I remember, Cinemaware has
never published dedicated PAL versions. It was rather the other way
round: We were playing the NTSC versions and didn't know. As far as
the loader was concerned, this obviously was no problem, but just
compare the intro of Rocket Ranger (the scene where "the curtain
opens", so to speak; just with technical instruments instead of a
curtain ;-) ...) on a PAL and an NTSC machine. Sure, the (accidental)
transparency effect on PAL machines looks nice, albeit "a little
wrong", but just look at the NTSC version and get a whole new
impression as of how this thing ought to look!
>> I don't think Carrier Command is very sought-after, though. I have a
>> complete version of this one myself (so much for speaking of rarety
>> ;-) ...), and back then I thought it was very cool, because the AMIGA
>> version was a classic, and I was happy about any good port.
>
>Oh... I wouldn't call a 2D translation of a 3D game a good port. I was
Well, back then, with all the panic of the C64 dying because of the
newer 16 bit machines, I was grateful for *any* port, no matter how
bad it was.
>I think only the C64 'Kick Off 1' port was a more worse than that :-)
>(By giving it a second thought: As crap as the 16 bit versions already
>were, the C64 port actually was quite accurate }:-))
Oh, oh... Dangerous topic with all the die-hard Kick-Off fanatics out
there ;-) ...
>Since I never play them, I just pretend everything's okay with 'em.
Oh, exactly like the Gamebase people, LOL!
>Besides, without checking my collection, I'd bet that by now there's a
>lot more Amiga disks dead than C64 ones :-)
You'll certainly win this one, that's for sure! For some reason, most
old 5.25" disks still work, while many 3.5" ones have become flakey.
Back then I thought it was just the AMIGA stuff, but meanwhile I'm
even starting to notice the same phenomenon with my PC disks :-( ...
Greetings,
Chris.
Paul Foerster
> > ... you know what a Bratwurst is?
> I'm not brave enough to ask...
... it's a fried or grilled (brat~) sausage (~wurst), obviously something you
can eat. :-)
> > ... and you know what a Brathering is? :-))))))))))))))
> I surrender!
... brat~ in this case means fried or grilled just as in bratwurst. And a
hering is a herring. So, a brathering is a fried or grilled (brat~) fish
(~hering).
I wish you a very pleasant meal. :-)
Etienne von Wettingfeld
>> > ... you know what a Bratwurst is?
>> I'm not brave enough to ask...
> ... it's a fried or grilled (brat~) sausage (~wurst), obviously something you
> can eat. :-)
Oooooh! I thought it was 'brad'. Mein Deutsch war nie sehr gut.
>> > ... and you know what a Brathering is? :-))))))))))))))
>> I surrender!
> ... brat~ in this case means fried or grilled just as in bratwurst. And a
> hering is a herring. So, a brathering is a fried or grilled (brat~) fish
> (~hering).
Wow! Let's change the subject to:
Copying a master chef like Paul!
> I wish you a very pleasant meal. :-)
Thank you, I could use one.
Manuel Polik
> >It is the first, original '84 Hewson tape version. I once had the Heavy
> >Metal version too, but unfortunately lost it somewhere in time & place
> >:-)
> Uh, this should really be worth some money. After all, an innocent,
> "wanna-be-retragaming-insider" working at the PC Player magazine was
> even proud to announce he bought "Paradroid" (a cheap re-release, to
> be more precise...) for approximately DM 70. A real bargain, eh ;-) ?
Phew... I paid less than half of that... some 15 years ago :-)
> >They wouldn't buy a PAL game, would they?
> I may be wrong with this one, but as far as I remember, Cinemaware has
> never published dedicated PAL versions. It was rather the other way
> round: We were playing the NTSC versions and didn't know.
Oh, I never noticed that. At the time I wasn't even aware of stuff like
PAL/NTSC :-)
> As far as
> the loader was concerned, this obviously was no problem, but just
> compare the intro of Rocket Ranger (the scene where "the curtain
> opens", so to speak; just with technical instruments instead of a
> curtain ;-) ...) on a PAL and an NTSC machine. Sure, the (accidental)
> transparency effect on PAL machines looks nice, albeit "a little
> wrong", but just look at the NTSC version and get a whole new
> impression as of how this thing ought to look!
I've to check that out. ATM I don't think I played the C64 version at
all. DotC and Sindbad I remember though. Sindbad crashed every 15
minutes, but still was fun to play :-)
> >> I don't think Carrier Command is very sought-after, though. I have a
> >Oh... I wouldn't call a 2D translation of a 3D game a good port. I was
> Well, back then, with all the panic of the C64 dying because of the
> newer 16 bit machines, I was grateful for *any* port, no matter how
> bad it was.
Yes, I bought lot's of these translations, too. But except for 'Rainbow
Islands' and few others most of them were crap.
Once I was attempting to port F/A-18 Interceptor myself BTW. I already
had the title graphics done and some splitscreen in order to do a
textmode cockpit and a Multicolor Flightscreen. Never worked out to
anything good, but it was a lot of fun and teaching me 6502 assembly.
> >I think only the C64 'Kick Off 1' port was a more worse than that :-)
> >(By giving it a second thought: As crap as the 16 bit versions already
> >were, the C64 port actually was quite accurate }:-))
> Oh, oh... Dangerous topic with all the die-hard Kick-Off fanatics out
> there ;-) ...
On 16 bits maybe, but no C64 guy would ever rate Kick Off or Kick Off 2
better than Microprose Soccer, or? :-)
> >Since I never play them, I just pretend everything's okay with 'em.
> Oh, exactly like the Gamebase people, LOL!
:-)
> You'll certainly win this one, that's for sure! For some reason, most
> old 5.25" disks still work, while many 3.5" ones have become flakey.
> Back then I thought it was just the AMIGA stuff, but meanwhile I'm
> even starting to notice the same phenomenon with my PC disks :-( ...
I noticed that already in my *active* phase. Never ever would a C64 disk
die, but on the Amiga I'd to throw lots of disk away. After some time
they'd always get bad higher sectors.
Greetings,
Manuel
Christian Link
On Tue, 10 Apr 2001 10:34:06 +0200, Manuel Polik <mpo...@neulandmm.de>
wrote:
>> Uh, this should really be worth some money. After all, an innocent,
>> "wanna-be-retragaming-insider" working at the PC Player magazine was
>> even proud to announce he bought "Paradroid" (a cheap re-release, to
>> be more precise...) for approximately DM 70. A real bargain, eh ;-) ?
>
>Phew... I paid less than half of that... some 15 years ago :-)
Yes, but this was before we got a communist government an the DM
finally lost its value ;-) ...
>Yes, I bought lot's of these translations, too. But except for 'Rainbow
>Islands' and few others most of them were crap.
I know that probably most people around share this opinion, but I for
one even considered Marble Madness a crappy port. It was one of the
first games on the C64 that could be considered a port, and despite my
excitement back then, when reading that even "those big, fancy AMIGA
games" still got ported to our beloved "small" commie, I was very
disappointed when I finally had a look at it :-( .
Later, i.e. after the "active days", on emulators, I encountered
Terrorpods, Galdregon's Domain (which surprised me big time) and a
couple others. I was totally amazed at the number of these ports, and
of the quality many of them had. So in general, I wouldn't really
claim they were crap. They probably weren't because the few people who
still had the courage to convert such games to a comparably weak
machine were really devoted guys. And in many cases, this showed.
>Once I was attempting to port F/A-18 Interceptor myself BTW. I already
Me too :-) !
Erm, to be honest, all I did was to rip some of the ongame graphics on
the AMIGA and converted them over in order to test our IFF converter
;-) . But it still looked pretty well. So, despite the speed problem,
the _graphics_ would have been reproducable, hehe.
One should have put these efforts into doing a Larry/Kings Quest
conversion, though... Or, later, Monkey Island (I). I still believe it
would have been possible to come up with a very decent port of these.
Absolutely!
>On 16 bits maybe, but no C64 guy would ever rate Kick Off or Kick Off 2
>better than Microprose Soccer, or? :-)
Never! Although I must admit that from a recent look at MISL soccer, I
liked it even more than Microprose Soccer. Never bothered to look at
these really great animations, because the rest of the game looked so
ugly. But they're really big fun to watch!
Greetings,
Chris.
Manuel Polik
> >Yes, I bought lot's of these translations, too. But except for 'Rainbow
> >Islands' and few others most of them were crap.
> I know that probably most people around share this opinion, but I for
> one even considered Marble Madness a crappy port. It was one of the
Hm... yes, ok, there were always good/bad ports, but that's depending on
who did them. There should be two different 'Afterburner' versions
around for the perfect proove of that thesis.
> first games on the C64 that could be considered a port, and despite my
> excitement back then, when reading that even "those big, fancy AMIGA
> games" still got ported to our beloved "small" commie, I was very
> disappointed when I finally had a look at it :-( .
I never liked Marble Madness in all versions. I played Spindizzy a while
but didn't like it too much either. Those nasty marble controls would
drive me nuts, I'd need high precission controls not such a
wibbly-wobbly Sega Master Gamepad emulation thingy :-) Best of these
Marble Games should still be Rock'n'Roll I think. That one was really
cool. Maybe because it skipped that crappy 3D / gravity attempt from the
beginning.
> Later, i.e. after the "active days", on emulators, I encountered
> Terrorpods, Galdregon's Domain (which surprised me big time) and a
> couple others. I was totally amazed at the number of these ports, and
> of the quality many of them had. So in general, I wouldn't really
> claim they were crap. They probably weren't because the few people who
> still had the courage to convert such games to a comparably weak
> machine were really devoted guys. And in many cases, this showed.
And in all other cases it showed that most good C64 people moved to the
Amiga, leaving some not-so-experienced people behind on the C64. All
those guys like Graftgold, Sensible Software & co moved to the Amiga in
Europe and to the PC in the U.S. The remaining C64 programmers just
weren't as good. Generally speaking. Of course some Die Hard C64 freaks
at Thalamus, or System 3 would continue with excellent stuff for the
C64, but generally it must've been sort of a brain-drain on the C64
scene without doubt.
> >Once I was attempting to port F/A-18 Interceptor myself BTW. I already
> Me too :-) !
> Erm, to be honest, all I did was to rip some of the ongame graphics on
> the AMIGA and converted them over in order to test our IFF converter
> ;-) .
Hm... IFF converter? Cool. Would've come in handy back then. I tried it
in that direction too. I even bought some FLI Software from Digital
Marketing(?) to have a 1:1 conversion of Amiga graphics. But
unfortunately I never had the hard/software to transfer files from the
Amiga to the C64. I'm more the software guy, any hardware things are
beyond me. even for changing some PCI card on my PC I ring for help :-)
> But it still looked pretty well. So, despite the speed problem,
> the _graphics_ would have been reproducable, hehe.
I always though that _every_ game is producable on the C64 until '93
something. Since you'd have to convert the Sound+Graphic data
automatically down to the C64s abilities everything would become
controllable again for the little machine. Sort of. Maybe Ultima
Underworld would've been the first game not portable to the C64, but
until then I'd say everything was doable.
> One should have put these efforts into doing a Larry/Kings Quest
> conversion, though... Or, later, Monkey Island (I). I still believe it
> would have been possible to come up with a very decent port of these.
> Absolutely!
I never longed for those Sierra type of games. Indiana Jones III, that
would've been cool though. It was often enough announced for the C64,
but never done, or? Though I remember 64'er mag having screenshots of it
way back then.
But they had screenshots of Populous, too :-)
> >On 16 bits maybe, but no C64 guy would ever rate Kick Off or Kick Off 2
> >better than Microprose Soccer, or? :-)
> Never! Although I must admit that from a recent look at MISL soccer, I
MISL Soccer? What's that?
Greetings,
Manuel
Christian Link
wrote:
>controllable again for the little machine. Sort of. Maybe Ultima
>Underworld would've been the first game not portable to the C64, but
>until then I'd say everything was doable.
Okay, maybe I should have added "decently" :-) . Sword Of Sodan (C64)?
Hybris (C64)? Naaah...
>I never longed for those Sierra type of games. Indiana Jones III, that
>would've been cool though. It was often enough announced for the C64,
>but never done, or? Though I remember 64'er mag having screenshots of it
Indiana Jones relied on the old Lucasfilms adventure engine, and if I
recall correctly, even MI1 wasn't a very big step ahead. I'm sure you
could have done both games with the engine they used for MM and Zak on
the C64.
>> Never! Although I must admit that from a recent look at MISL soccer, I
>
>MISL Soccer? What's that?
"Major Indoor Soccer League" or something like that. Has been
re-released under lots of different names, though (although *in* the
game, it always was MISL). Had some nice strategic features in it as
well, for those who wanted them (I didn't).
Greetings,
Chris.
MagerValp
MV> As in a couple of .d64s without the cracktro or an honest to god
MV> original C64 U4? The latter is pretty damn hard to come by.
EvW> I like the box and the manual!
Half the reason to play the game :) It's easier to find an U4 box for
<random system> than just the C64 though.
MagerValp
>>> I thought VIII was crap?
CL> I wouldn't consider it crap, just not an Ultima in the sense all
CL> its predecessors were. It was too much of an action game, too, but
CL> on the other hand, it contained everything an Ultima required. And
CL> IMHO it had the best Ultima soundtrack I know (Keep in mind I
CL> didn't have a look at U9 yet, though).
EvW> I heard U9 is even worse!!!
Utter bollocks. The game is buggy as hell, and the voice acting is
cheesy, but there's really an Ultima in there. The game's absolutely
gorgeous too, and the story's decent. Exploring Britannia in 3D is
pretty damn spiffy.
MagerValp
MV> As in a couple of .d64s without the cracktro or an honest to god
MV> original C64 U4? The latter is pretty damn hard to come by.
EvW> I like the box and the manual!
MV> Half the reason to play the game :) It's easier to find an U4 box
MV> for <random system> than just the C64 though.
And you do know that the manuals, map, and game can be legally down-
loaded from UDICs webpage, don't you? True, it's not the same as
having the fake leather manuals and a cloth map, and you don't get the
Ankh in the nice box, but it's something to play with until you find
an original.
Paul Foerster
> The ever popular Paul Foerster wrote:
... thanks for the flowers. ;-)
> Oooooh! I thought it was 'brad'. Mein Deutsch war nie sehr gut.
... obviously, your German is not very good. Well, there's no such thing as
"brad" in German. Even the name "Brad" is plain English and unknown in German.
:-)
> Wow! Let's change the subject to:
> Copying a master chef like Paul!
... but you must admit that it's a wonderful example of a word that sounds
perfectly English but definitely ain't. :-)
> Thank you, I could use one.
... I had mine for today just a couple hours ago. :-)
Happy Easter egg eating.
Christian Link
wrote:
>... obviously, your German is not very good. Well, there's no such thing as
>"brad" in German. Even the name "Brad" is plain English and unknown in German.
>:-)
WOT? Tell that to German "BRAVO" readers ;-) ...
Matthew Montchalin
Yeah, but the rest of us can't recognize the name 'Brad' when Germans
are the ones that are trying to say it. :D Haha (And don't blame
me for suddenly coming into the middle of the thread without having
read all those earlier messages...)
Paul Foerster
> WOT? Tell that to German "BRAVO" readers ;-) ...
... I'm not Dr. Sommer. ;-)
Christian Link
wrote:
>> WOT? Tell that to German "BRAVO" readers ;-) ...
>
>... I'm not Dr. Sommer. ;-)
<imitating a very puzzled look> Who is Dr. Sommer?
(Ha, now I got you :-) !)
Christian Link
<mmon...@OregonVOS.net> wrote:
>Yeah, but the rest of us can't recognize the name 'Brad' when Germans
>are the ones that are trying to say it. :D Haha (And don't blame
Hm? Isn't it pronounced just like "bread"? And if, how did the Germans
you referred to pronounced it? "Brud"?
Hmmm, silly Germans :-) ...
Chris
Paul Foerster
> <imitating a very puzzled look> Who is Dr. Sommer?
... I don't know, I just read that name somewhere. :)
> (Ha, now I got you :-) !)
... dito. :)))
Dave Bertschy
Man, ain't that the truth. I am just now starting to play "Knights Of
The Desert" by SSI and I remembered just how impossible it was to even
figure out how to start the game by reading through those complicated
manuals first. It also didn't help that the early SSI manuals were all
written for the Apple II and Atari systems either...