Hacker News Reader

I remember cracking A2FS1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWIuTP_A6IQ This was before floppy disks, the game came on a cassette, but it had the same style of boot0/boot1 encryption. Starting the game from a copied cassette, it just printed "STOLEN AIRCRAFT! STOLEN AIRCRAFT!" all over the display.

View on HN

Wow .. It looks like it would have been more fun to crack the encryption than actually play that game!

Very much so. I remember spending many months cracking game protection, not because I wanted the game, but because I wanted to pit my wits against the guy who wrote the protection. I learned more about disk controllers and hidden opcodes on the Z80 (TRS-80) doing that that any other way. I didn't always beat the guy, but always learned something.

Kudos to 4am, who has more patience than me. I'd probably have given up well before the third level of encryption.

For some titles, this was definitely the case. Nothing nefarious about it.

We weren't connected back then. People got bored, no new software, so... why not hack on the stuff we've got?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com