I was a video game software pirate

This is the story of how I inadvertently became a software pirate in the 80's starting with the Commodore 64 and then to the Commodore Amiga where one program would change everything, X-Copy Pro. Please Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The video is not meant to promote software piracy in anyway, rather discuss my history and what most computer users in the 80's experienced.
► Support the Channel - / modernvintagegamer
Music Credits
► • To the beach by Interp...
► • The Century Intro by R...
Video Credits:
► • Commercial Breaks - Th...
► • The Party 1991 (Amiga ...
► By Original photo by Kaiiv (de.wikipedia), Editing by Pixel8 - de.wikipedia.or..., CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikime...
Social Media Links :
► X : x.com/ModernVi...
► Threads : threads.net/Mo...
► Facebook : / modernvintagegamer
► IG : / modernvintagegamer
► BandCamp : modernvintageg...
#C64 #Amiga #XCopy

[@megacide84]

It's ok MVG. Yesterday's pirates are today's preservers.

[@CriticalQuack]

I appreciate this comment a lot. I used to look at it as damaging an industry but now they do a better job at preserving what people have already bought than the companies who make the software!

[@megacide84]

@@CriticalQuack Yes, I too remember the anti-piracy propaganda back in my childhood and teenage years. Yet... From a preservation standpoint. It was and still is a necessary evil.

[@CountlessPWNZ]

bbbbbbased

[@staticfanatic]

100%. try finding obscure amiga/atari games now that don't have a cracktro or some stamp of their origin on them. it's only because of this rampant piracy then that there's any amiga scene at all now.

[@autumn_rain]

I almost read that preservatives.

[@charpkun]

Its so refreshing to have a legit dev be open about the days where their interest was cultivated by a (technically) illegal scheme. In fact, without video game piracy, i doubt we would have as many gamers --and frankly, developers-- as we do today.

[@michaelt5459]

I don’t think developers needs to be crossed out, it’s all true. TBH I bet you could make an argument that societally, it is actually an INVESTMENT to let children pirate, since it spurs and interest in technology.

[@pawepiat6170]

Don't cross developers out. Witcher guys started by selling pirated cds lmao

[@beardalaxy]

@@michaelt5459 minecraft is a PRIME example of this

[@alakani]

Yep, it's also worth mentioning that a surprising number of kids who pirate stuff end up actually buying it later on when they can afford it, if it was any good

[@FigureFarter]

@@beardalaxyIn fact, it encouraged you to pirate it first so you can buy it later

[@ohfuku]

Who ever made X-copy .... Thank you for giving a childhood that I never would have had without it !!

[@johnnyshinnichi1785]

+1

[@cypenationTV]

X-Copy III,- And V2.2(M-Pendec, “Black Hawk“ “Michael Pendec”) a Danish Programmer knew him, would write with him occasionally, but he recently passed away just a few months ago, he was an avid retro games collecter aswell, bought some of his older games too

[@williambrennan5701]

word

[@BASSstarlet]

@@cypenationTV Really?

[@cypenationTV]

Yes ;/@@BASSstarlet

[@bram2457]

In my youth, there was a Pirate radio station, that would broadcast games every wednesday at 8pm, so you could record it on your tape deck and then play the game on the C64. I would sit infront of the tape deck with my cousin waiting to press record. Good old times.

[@zedaadega7420]

Now you have the Internet and can download every C64 game ever made in one second, to play on an emulator. Sci-Fi future stuff that would have scared both you and your cousin, back then in the 80's. :)

[@jamescarter3196]

@@zedaadega7420 "every C64 game ever made" is a really amorphous concept, which is either 'almost nothing' or 'way more than you can download in one second' and it's weird to see the subject framed like this. People already know the internet is fast. You're describing this stuff like it's 'the magical future' but it's already happened and everybody knows about it.

[@white_mage]

@@jamescarter3196 this is why you don't have any friends

[@BASSstarlet]

That was a blast!!

[@zedaadega7420]

@@white_mage Thank you for defending me, I don't know what the guy's problem is. You can download a 128 kb tape image in one second, and then you can instantly load it on an emulator RAM, instead of waiting 3-5 minutes. Any boy in the 1980's that had a ZX Spectrum or C64 would be in awe to imagine such a future... Now then, imagining Great Theft Auto 3 in the 1980's would truly go beyond our wildest childhood dreams... Even for the Spectrum owners that had the Turbo Esprit city driving simulator.

[@CoolJosh3k]

“With our software you can pirate anything, but don’t you dare pirate our work.” Saw that one coming.

[@SamuelMK_]

*cough* Gateway3DS *cough* SX OS

[@alexander1989x]

LoL, is like asking people to not download BitTorrent Pro

[@FelixGraye]

​@@SamuelMK_Or LimeWire Pro

[@Monsuco]

That's like downloading Limewire Pro off of Limewire.

[@aliabdallah102]

@@MonsucoI did that

[@grindhousefan80]

When I got my C64 back in the day I think I owned about 5 original games. But one day my dad comes home with a binder full of disk sleeves and inside them were tons of games. A co-worker of his has made this collection for me and I was in gaming heaven.

[@Psycrovv]

haha same story here :D

[@psterud]

Did it make you enjoy games less? I remember spending my hard-earned cash on a game for PC back in the '80s and I would play it to death. I think if I had too many games it would strip them of their value as experiences. This same thing happened with music piracy in the '90s. Before then I'd spend what seemed like a lot of money on an album and listen to it like crazy, even finding, upon repeated plays, unexpected loves on there that I wouldn't have if I were just skimming it for hits. In my opinion there was certainly a "too much of a good thing" aspect to having free and available stuff as a kid.

[@Psycrovv]

@@psterud I understand you point but yes and no..i liked all the games beside the shitty ones. We dident knew what the game was about since we had no internet or anything to look at. So we dident knew if crak out was agood or bad game or if superfrog was good or bad.

[@dieSpinnt]

@@psterud Either you can buy product X or you can get access to it via sharing. The immersion, your experience happens AFTER that. You can not compare those, you can not rewind time. This idea is highly subjective and therefore flawed. There is simply no possibility of an objective, qualitatively independent comparison. Of course there is the effect of oversaturation which you describe, as with all consumer products. Also the responsibility, i.e. the handling (media competence), lies 100% in your hands, which you can't criticize with a child. There are other factors, like social aspects of gaming and purchasing, emotional attachment to the game/characters that may be multiplied by a purchase, self expression, psychological rewards and even research or impulse-buying. Many aspects that big companies (yeah, not so big back in the days ... but "bigger" than the usual kids mental horizon or budget, hehehe) tried to "support" and did amplify with their influence on the market through press releases and advertisement. Hey, or didn't you know that smoking is the best thing for pregnant women and even the newborn kids? Yours sincerely, Doctor Marlboro. Hehehehehe:) If you are interested in such research and psychological rabbit-holes you may start reading with something like: Why Do Gamers Buy "Virtual Assets"? An Insight in to the Psychology behind Purchase Behaviour, by Cleghorn, Jack; Griffiths, Mark D. Google Scholar is your friend. Have a good one, @psterud and please enjoy your gaming!:)

[@NikolaNovakovic]

I grew up in Serbia. You couldn't even buy original games in our country, so piracy was legit. People selling pirated games were advertised in newspapers and some had brick-and-mortar stores.

[@zaidabraham7310]

South Africa was not quite as blatant, but it was legit enough that pretty much every South African gamer had modchipped PS1's and PS2's that could run pirated discs

[@eliadefilho]

Same here in Brazil. Things would eventually start to change in middle to late 1990's.

[@dmacpher]

@@eliadefilhothe taxes you guys pay on consoles is nutty

[@tweakpc]

That was normal in Eastern Europe, I remember Poland and the Czech Republic. Copies were even sold in shops there. There were even counterfeit computers and consoles, I think NES was one

[@pawepiat6170]

​@@tweakpcyep, and it was all legal since no one had the time to pass copyright law since communism fell lol That's also why witcher devs are called CD projekt - they started by selling pirated cd games, then started localising them.

[@terminalmode]

I went to school with the author of Quick Nibble. I'd sit next to him in the computer lab after school and watch him write programs for the PET. There were only a few of us in the scene at the time so watching him work was pretty incredible. Benji later on went on to develop the software for ReplayTV that allowed people to skip annoying commercials on recordings. I wonder what he'd be doing now if things had gone differently for him.

[@ClarkPotter]

What happened to him?

[@terminalmode]

@@ClarkPotter Benji's body was found by friends at his home. Benji's dad thought there was foul play because Benji was working on some valuable patents with ReplayTV and the work was undermining the television industry by allowing people to skip commercials. While it was true that there were likely large sums of money at play here, his dad seemed like a a pretty conspiratorial person. He had a crazy website up about Benji's death for a very long time, but I can't find it anymore. If I remember right, according to the police report, there were sex workers and drugs involved around the time of his death, but no signs of foul play. Benji's family, in particular, his dad did not like that. Understandably so. Nobody wants family to be remembered like that. The final word on Benji should've been on Quick Nibble and Roger Rabbit, not a coroner's report.

[@Darknesssleeps]

@@terminalmodehow is skipping commercials on recordings “undermining the television industry”

[@terminalmode]

@@Darknesssleepsperhaps "television industry" is bad phrasing, but at the the time of Benji's death, revenue from commercials was the driving force for television productions. soap operas, talk shows etc...all designed to be filled with ads targeting specific demographics. If a device were made that would allow the majority of an audience to skip the commercials, the revenue the shows generated would also be skipped. ReplayTV was essentially an ad-blocker for a commercial television system that existed profitably for decades. Both Quick Nibble and his work on CommercialSkip put Benji among the elite of, not necessarily white hat, but at least good-for-the-community hackers. It's a far cry form what you hear many hackers do with their talents today.

[@spaaske]

@@terminalmode how would it actually skip the commercials on (what I asumme is) a VHS?

[@ArtizanMetal]

Well, we can all agree on one thing: we were extremely fortunate to have lived in the 80's and 90's. A time of blossoming wonderment.

[@alphaforce6998]

Little did you know that expectation of great things to come was just an illusion, and the 80s to early 90s was the peak. We're in full clown-world now.

[@JohnnyPope]

Literally the BEST time to have grown up in..!!! Yes, games and computers are amazing now, but the scene isn't the same. To have been there literally at the start when arcades were the place to experience the latest and greatest, to experience each generation of new computer and console as they were evolving, and to have been part of that whole demo and pirate scene. Really cool. And that's not even mentioning movies and music :-) !!

[@exidy-yt]

Amen. A-goddam-men. Sadly, Alphaforce is dead on right too. It's all gone bad since the turn of the millenium.

[@poppers7317]

@@alphaforce6998 today there are games being made that back in the days never could've been made like Factorio or Bannerlord. There are so many different games nowadays. Of course many are pretty samey and not very interesting and that whole dlc and gatcha crap is annoying. But if you search hard enough there will still be plenty of interesting games for everyone's taste. And the entry to game making never was that low than now (which has its pros and cons).

[@alphaforce6998]

@@poppers7317 I don't think more equates to better, nor do I find that better visuals and sound are alone the things that make a game better. Not saying there's nothing good in the gaming world today but it's far from what it used to be. I don't get tired of playing old console emulators.

[@Broeils]

This is like a documentary of my early-teen years. Here in the Netherlands there were actual radio stations that broadcasted software for systems like the MSX2 and the C64 that you could simply record with a tapedeck.

[@ThePolandball]

That is so dope!!

[@craigh5236]

That is so brilliant. Broadcasting the audio signal from tape drives....

[@beardalaxy]

Dude that is awesome!

[@Ozzianman]

Wow! That is so fucking cool!

[@Agostoic]

🤯

[@athirstyguy]

Putting that pirates song intro to the software is WILD

[@yellohammer8571]

Imagine if Hans Zimmer got to listen to this--he'd eat his heart out. In fact, I'm strongly reminded of an episode of the CN series Teen Titans Go!, where the main cast deal with computer pirates, who surprisingly turn out to be actual (or at least, stereotypical) pirates of the seven seas. That's where piracy, both historical and digital, meet.

[@ramrodbldm9876]

@@yellohammer8571 little clown

[@nismo2070]

The memories!!! Thank you for this excellent video!! I had a c-64 and every single game I had was a copy. I used to play a lot of Ultima/D&D style games. One of my things was editing the save game files. I used an assembly program I typed in from a magazine to compare differences in the save game files to see where the player stats were. Then I modified them. My little brother HATED me for doing that. I'm 53 now and I still put aside a few hours every weekend to game. Things are so much different now. Cloud saves, denovo copy protection, and 80 dollar games are the norm.

[@stephenrobertson6025]

Video game preservation is really important and it is deeply ironic that many games from the 8 and 16 bit eras have been preserved almost solely because they were pirated and widely distributed. I was a C64 artist back then and I lost most of my original art disks over the years. However I got back almost all of my work because the games and demos it was in were distributed widely via the various pirate and demo scene networks, and later it turned up in various collections of pirate and demo scene disks that enthusiasts were looking through and archiving.

[@stevesether]

There's a whole group of former software developers trying to preserve the games in their original, copy-protected form on the Amiga and C64. They have a whole website, some specialized hardware to create these disks only available via mastering, etc. The kicker? They STILL refuse to release the digital copies of the things. They just store them away somewhere, unavailable to anyone. A sure way to ensure they're all lost once again.

[@KurtWoloch]

This happened to my pieces of music on the C-64 as well, though I never really lost them, I still have them on their original disks, but some of them which I had shared with friends made their way onto the Internet and are now available as SID's even though I never officially released them.

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

Another "artist", lol!

[@BixenteFabregas]

@@DonnyHooterHoot Stephen Robertson was a respected artist in the c64 community at compunet. Handle: SIR. (Source: CSDB)... And, according to the very same source, Kurt Woloch was a SID artist. So, yeah, they created on the c64!

[@trackah123]

Maybe we can carefully say, piracy on short-term might not be always great, but on long-term its really good for preservation.

[@craigh5236]

My Amiga group would meet up every other month on a Sunday to copy disks. I would show up with a 50 pack of disks and usually leave with most of them filled. We would watch Star Trek:TNG, eat nachos, show demos and I would show off my latest creation in Lightwave while our machines chugged along copying disks. It was great.

[@williamwright9079]

Sounds Heavenly!

[@unpunnyfuns]

I was part of the BBS warez scene. I always re-assured myself with it a a "Try Before You Buy" concept. If you liked a game, you bought it, got the concept art and stuff with the box. But after a while, it turned out people just wanted free games, and that our stuff poured onto a much more nefarious end product. The cracktros were by people who cared about the platform, the industry of selling them was not.

[@FinSemi]

Because of "Try before you buy", guess how many (old) games I have bought from Steam, only because I pirated that game MANY years a go... A LOT! I had one rule, don't pay for pirated software, if someone should have payment it should be original creator. Also, because I was pirate ... eh, preserving history ... I do that same on Steam nowdays.. I have over 3500 games on Steam, and then some on other launches. Without pirating, I would not have that kind of archive today.

[@ChristmasEve777]

I tried to pitch the "Try Before You Buy" concept to the Unity (game engine) community but I got nowhere with it. I think trying Unity assets is even more important than trying a game. I'm developing an MMPROG game and I don't want to spend hundreds of dollars for a pack that has some clothing my characters can wear, or for a few monsters to add to my game when I don't even know if my game will come CLOSE to making it to market. I think they should receive their money when you decide to market your game. As a game asset artist, it wouldn't be hard to find your assets in a game from a publisher who didn't pay for them, and they could sue them. But if the game never sees the light of day, why do you care? Doesn't do me any good. arrghhh 😅

[@Narendra--Modi]

Thanks for Warez

[@VladTepes44]

My father was, and still is, quite a compulsive software pirate. He used to spend whole afternoons with a friend swapping disks. I grew up with 68k Macintoshes, we had dozens and dozens of games on blank diskettes. I think the only original software he had was 4D, the tool he used to make his own database application

[@soooslaaal8204]

You forgot to attach the gigachad image

[@wing0zero]

I buy my software now but I admit I still stiff the movie industry

[@harveywallbanger3123]

My grandfather was an early computer owner and his Texas Instruments TI-99 was my first intro to computers. The ROM slot had extra memory in it permanently, all the games were on tape - problem was the tapes were all copies-of-copies he'd gotten at work, and there were so many code errors it usually took 3-4 tries (at 3-4 minutes per try) to get it to load successfully. Many hours I spent blowing on the tapes as if they were dirty. "JUST LET ME PLAY PARSEC!"

[@EggEnjoyer]

@@wing0zeroidk man some of this software asking to be pirated. Like you’re switching from a purchase model to a subscription model so that I have to pay you indefinitely? I will be stealing this software my good sir 🧐

[@MattBeaver]

That's a lot of Macintoshes

[@dixonrivera5093]

As a kid I grew up with the Commodore 64. My father’s friend had an immense stack of pirated games…. Never asked him how he got them, and he wouldn’t tell.

[@MrK1kk3r]

How can you know he wouldn't tell if you never asked.

[@HoganLegDropSoup]

​@@MrK1kk3rwas just about to say that. 😅

[@Mr_jz_12]

Mine came from the cop that lived up the road from me. Used to get a stack of games from raiding the pirates that sold the games. 🤣

[@MrJC1]

most probably bought at a market stall, like my father's friend did. hahaha.

[@IdiotRace]

My dad used to get pirate amiga games from someone at his work. So sometimes we'd be exited to see what games he'd bring us back next

[@RuggedSource]

This video actually made me break a few tears. My next door neighbor, who taught me everything I know about computers today. Was also a gaming software pirate for Commodore but he also sold his discs around the world. I think his 'company' name was called 8-bit or at least that was the logo he printed on the floppys. Sadly he past away several years ago at the age of 64, ironically. He never taught me how to use the Commodore64 because IBM PS/2's were already out but he started me with DoS, Irix and AS/400 systems. I also used Norton Commander as a file manager for years because of him.

[@DoRC]

My mom was a software pirate in the '80s too. She wasn't just doing it for herself either. Growing up it was weird to be around these massive collections of floppy disks and things that I didn't understand.

[@net_news]

coolest mom ever!

[@wasd____]

"My mom was a software pirate" This could be a movie title

[@halfpintpersonality5943]

my grandma did this with vhs tapes from blockbuster lol she would rent the movies she wanted and watch it while 2 other vcr's were recording the movie she watched and then gave all her friends copys lol

[@net_news]

@@halfpintpersonality5943 👏

[@AustinAwsome]

@@halfpintpersonality5943 My grandfather did that with DVDs, would rent from Red-Box, Blockbuster, and mail-ins from Netflix then copy over whatever for family. We used to joke that if anyone caught on the grandkids would be burning disks on the backyard to remove the evidence.

[@DookNookim]

John Romero on piracy: "When I was a kid, most of my games were pirated. If it wasn't for all those pirated games, I wouldn't have done what I did in my career. So, giving my shareware episodes away for free always felt like I was letting people have fun without guilt."

[@blackoutgstar9949]

romero is a joke now i bought a game that they made recently they sold dlcs in advance, never made the dlcs. abandoned the game literally ripped people off for a game that got 3 updates off it's unplayable release state, no dlc as sold, yes sold but not delivered

[@andresdigi25]

@@blackoutgstar9949 romero is a legend. Period.

[@klaasj7808]

@@blackoutgstar9949 thats romero, thats why carmack kicked him out and daikatana was a crap game. only thing he maybe does right is Sigil, maybe hehe.

[@DivergentDroid]

I still have zero guilt especially today where physical copies are not being sold anymore. In the US it's 100% legal to 1) record songs from the radio for personal use, 2) to view streaming movies and tv shows even if the host doesn't own the rights. Software should be no different. Digital copies that can be copied to infinity do not hurt the sales of software and do in fact many times encourage people to purchase that software. The ability to copy software is built into every PC as easy as hitting record on your tape deck. If companies don't want people to copy them, they should not release them on such systems.

[@gnbilios]

@@blackoutgstar9949 that was all the shareware episodes you got for free!

[@bldtv7038]

This is a blast from the past for me. I was in a “copy” club in Ireland. There was over 100 people in a hotel banquet hall using x-copy. At one stage I had 2000 floppy discs of games. I was 11 years old 😂😂

[@glennshoemake4200]

In the early 80s our entire school was pirating Apple II games and playing them in the school library. I remember "double notching" the 5 1/4" disks by using a hole puncher and making a notch on the left side so you could format and use the back side.

[@glennshoemake4200]

@@_marlene Growing up in Alaska we had Apple II computers in our Kindergarten class in the late 70s and by 3rd grade they built a computer lab, but the free to use computers were in the library

[@bengonshaw8228]

I just used to use scissors!

[@jarvindriftwood]

My first school computer was an Apple II in 1990. All we used with it was Oregon Trail and Number Munchers. By the end of elementary we had Macintosh LCs. Thankfully for me in high school we had PCs which I knew and internet. The site blocking was pretty bad, we downloaded NES emulators and ROMs. The only kid I knew that that got in trouble was downloading Playboys.

[@jeffscott3186]

My school decided the way to 'stop piracy' was to ban students from using disks with a round notch. Someone had told our Principal that it was the 'round notch' that made things copyable. Our lab monitor knew it was stupid, but enforced the policy. He also made square hole punches in the metal shop for us. He put an edge guide on it so you wouldn't have to line up two disks to get the notch in the right spot. I still have mine. Eventually they banned using Nibble-Bit (??) in the computer lab. A friend of mine rewrote the program and changed the opening screen and made it look like some kind of mining game while it was doing the actual copying. About the only thing I miss from High School.

[@cgtbrad]

We had a purpose built puncher for making perfect square punches!!! See my comment above about going to my friend James' house for software.

[@asteria9963]

I grew up in a family where copy parties were the norm. I have fond memories of them. Everyone would drink tea or coffee and have a chat, or watch TV while they'd wait for X-Copy to finish the current batch. Heck, I'd copy games for my friends at school all by myself when I was 9. Piracy on the Amiga was so bad, I didn't even know people actually had to buy games at the store.

[@kingjoe3rd]

"Piracy on the Amiga was so bad, I didn't even know people actually had to buy games at the store." I love this lol

[@themissinfowar6629]

Piracy harms consumers as well as legitimate developers. Did you not read those PS1 green text screens MVG! ( ͡ಠ ʖ̯ ͡ಠ)

[@FigureFarter]

So THAT'S why Amiga games have box art. For the people who didnt pirate stuff

[@rehmanarshad1848]

😂😂😂

[@_marlene]

such a beautiful dream of a memory. I envy you. Glad that things like this existed

[@thisiswaytoocomplicated]

Another aspect of piracy being big in the 80s and early 90s was, that you met a lot of interesting new people. For example when I was about 15 I was sharing Amiga games with one guy and it turned out he was an admin at a big company. So I got an exclusive guide and introduction to his company's mainframes one afternoon. For a nerd like me that was priceless.

[@zedaadega7420]

My late father worked in IBM Portugal, when I visited his office around 1985, he let me use a color terminal, in word processor mode, to draw boxes and write gibberish. I knew english as a 9 year old child, and was tempted to use the 24 PF keys (The PC has only 12 F keys) to print my boxes and drawings in an IBM office in France, Japan or the USA, I knew how to do it, because the IBM mainframe had easy help instructions in english and I was a technical nerd as a child, however I didn't want to get my dad in trouble, so I only printed my drawing to the 9th level printer room, of the portuguese IBM HQ building. What fascinated me, was that 5 years before the INTERNET came online in 1990, IBM had it's private satellite INTRANET, and my dad could send emails instantly to the american headquarters, from Portugal. This was Sci-Fi in 1985! But I saw it! :)

[@Mat-Ellis]

I used to write games for the C64 & Amiga in the 1980s for folks like US Gold, who were the publisher and used intermediaries like AdventureSoft and Silicon Genetics to source their coders. You did an excellent job of summarizing how it was in just a short video. I began my own gaming career copying tapes for the local video store owner. Copy protection became more common due to rampant piracy, and he obtained an Isepic cartridge from America, which would take a memory snapshot to disk. The coders then became more creative to combat systems like Isepic, including running with very short stacks, so the interrupt used to grab control of the computer would cause its own issues. It was great fun to get around the newest stuff, and it eventually led to me actually writing games for a few years. When you're on the other end of the 'lost' sales, it can feel shitty - we reckoned only about 1 played copy in 10 was a paid one - but folks just had less money for stuff in those days. For many people, it was pirate or don't play. The impact on me was long-lasting, and even today, I try to avoid piracy whenever I can, only downloading something when I simply cannot find a paid copy of it anywhere, even on DVD.

[@fixxxer928]

What are you doing these days?

[@markpotter8280]

Yea I hear what your saying back in the 80's I had no money being a school kid and all that 🥸. So yea I had hundred's of full C90's full of spectrum and C64 games and even as I got older I had lots of copied PC games. I think I changed when the original playstation came out. I could get copy games but I honestly never did as I enjoyed that system so much and have been a sony fan boy ever since. I do enjoy emulation and now have a vast libary of ps1 and ps2 games etc on my pc even tho I do subscribe to sony premium so they still get my money and I still buy any new games that I like the look of and won't dream of getting a pirate copy. But if ya young at school or in college then hell yea, you have enough money worries in life plus it's educational getting around the copy protection🤣. If school kids pirate for other school kids I personally think the industry just has to except that. Where I draw the line is adults selling hhd drives on ebay and alibaba etc full of not to old games that is wrong

[@user-cb3qr9dt2k]

I got my first C64 in 1985, at around 11. My 5th grade teacher had some of the first computers in the class room, but she had to purchase them herself. There was a variety of simple games and such. So I was already interested in learning more. My cousin at the time, was in high school and new much more than I about them. He taught me how to start coding, and introduced me the local hobby shop in town, where they had a bunch of C64 software/games in a box behind the counter. You could ask to look through it, and sign out disk like library books. And encouraged anyone that wanted to to donate for other people to use. That when I first come across many bootlegged games, but software to make my own, there was even phone dialing software, war dialers, Phone pranking. Hex editors. It was a great time to be a kid.

[@rh4009]

Pirating was more fun than using many of the programs. The C64's main audience was mainly children. The software industry did not have a solid business case, but all that piracy did serve to educate a whole generation, and usher in the information age. It's hard to say whether personal computers would have been more than a short-term fad if it weren't for the armies of kids hacking away at their tape recorders, and eventually driving the tech forward.

[@wasabinator]

I used to crack the copy protection from c64 games back in high school (then later on Amiga). Entirely self taught, no internet, nor BBS access etc to learn from. The grounding in low-level coding gave me a great career, and nowadays, i use this reverse engineering skill to preserve arcade games.

[@dabadoo7631]

just like mvg then 😂

[@nimblegoat]

The annoying thing was copy protection hammering your floppy drive - even putting it's head out as it wrote errors on the edges - not sure their were any unbroken games - I broke my first few - then had a friend do it - as he loved doing it - more than playing - we were in NZ - so imagine every country had people removing it - Well in Europe a broken one could spread fast I suppose

[@johnnykeener3727]

When I was in the US Army, the Commodore Amiga 500 was my first PC, I got it in Germany when stationed overseas. Loved it.

[@ahmetunal4283]

Man, good old days.. .I was a big fan of the demos at the start of cracked games, and started learning assembly just for that. Coding scrolling text, stars, programming sprites, it was so much fun. Things people could do with just 512kb of RAM on Amiga 500 was insane back then.

[@Realm93.]

I have an Xecuter2 mod-chipped XBOX that still runs to this day. Thanks for your contributions with creating the emulators and many features on it!

[@jothain]

Oh yes. Have one too. With XBMC it was so long my preferred "HTPC" machine 🙂

[@darthwiizius]

I have a chipped Xbox too with a case full of discs. My favourite function is being able to switch off 50Hz PAL mode and run everything at full speed. Mine needs a new DVD ROM, I might put in an SSD just to make it quiet and do the caps while I'm there.

[@os7272]

I totally forgot about Quick Nibble ... those were great times. I remember downloading games from mailboards for hours and my dad yelling at me for the huge phone bills.

[@bassc]

Great story. Piracy tended to be the done thing because of low budgets but most had a selection of big box games like you too, which they got for xmas & birthdays. I had an action replay which could snapshot and copy games (as long as the games didn't try to load any more!). It was very social trading games, meeting others in computer game shops, in and out of your friends/neighbours bedrooms trying to complete games, especially if you lived on a council estate. All that lovely box artwork too was inspiring and fed curiousity. It really brought so many of us together in person and was a common shared interest. I'll never forget those days. Things are quite different now for gamers.

[@paulbarnard5267]

Most memorable experience for me was turning up at a local computer club and seeing a kid playing on a game. I asked him what he thought of it and he said it’s great do you want a copy? I wrote it…. I have to say I was pretty flattered at the time.

[@christophclear1438]

What was the game?

[@paulbarnard5267]

@@christophclear1438 pimania

[@Thornado78]

@@christophclear1438 I guess Blobz? :)

[@christophclear1438]

@@Thornado78 solid detective work! 🙂

[@zedaadega7420]

I only knew simple programming when I contributed to the MAME/RAINE emulators, only to emulate the analog controls, but when the people found out, they started to ask me to add custom control options for light guns, custom cabinets, with only one pedal for a driving game ("Hey Mr. Warlock! Can you add a fake DIP switch option, so that my only pedal acts as an accelerator from half way pressed, and a brake with lower pressure!?" I said: Sure! It's done, here is the code for use with the emulator compilation tool"). I felt flattered...

[@KuraV12]

Growing up in Poland, there wasn't even a way to buy original games. You would go to the local "Giełda Komputerowa" and ask for a game. The guy just gave you a pirated one and your done. The same thing was hapenning to movies and music in the early 2000's

[@AdrianuX1985]

Doszło do tego, że CDP dogadał się z zachodnimi wydawcami - sprzedajcie licencje taniej a my zrobimy lokalizację i zachodni gracz nie kupi tańszego oryginału w języku polskim.

[@janmarucha9138]

"Gry programy gry programy windows macintosh linux"

[@miroslawkaras7710]

Ciekawie było w latach 80tych z muzyka zachodnimi filmami na kasetach. Praktycznie wszystko było nielegalne kopiowane. Albo się z radia z trójki nagrywało gdzie całe płyty nadawali, albo kupowało na bazarze, czy targu. W Gdańsku w Zbrojowni (zdaje się) był Pewex ze sprzętem zachodni tam można było zamówić od sprzedawcy nagranie z kompaktu z tego wystawianego sprzętu. Co to były za ciekawe czasy.

[@johnymnemonic4657]

@@miroslawkaras7710 PRL nie respektował praw autorskich Zachodu.Były wydawnictwa kaset .To wyglądało na oryginały a wszystko piraty u nas legalne.

[@dstmars1]

C64 was my first computer in 1986. I spent countless hours learning Basic programming and creating graphics. My experience creating graphics on the PC helped launch my career at a local NBC affiliate creating news graphics on the first computer designed for television. It was called the Quantel Paintbox.

[@EVMANVSGAS]

I really thought you were going to say the video toaster. I know that was the first Amiga based one that a lot of people used to use because it could do powerful graphics for a fraction of the cost.

[@dstmars1]

@@EVMANVSGAS My actual first computer was the TI99-4A. I got the Amiga next then the C64.

[@philippkemptner4604]

Ah, the suspense when sitting in front of xcopy and changing modes to capture that one or two sectors of the copy protection.. it was more intense than any thriller. And the happiness when one of the rings that had been red in the pass before turned green. Pure joy. It didn't matter whether the game was crap or not :D

[@opfax163]

xcopy was the real game 😅

[@Zontar82]

Many amiga boxes had a label that said "made your own backup of the floppy" as they knew that the floppy would degenerate with the passing of time, so X-copy and the likes weren't always used for "illegal" copies

[@cattysplat]

People forget that floppy disks were notoriously unreliable and could wipe themselves for no reason other than bad luck.

[@Chordonblue]

@@cattysplat This and does anyone else remember the SCA Virus on the Amiga? If you had a copy protected disk that relied on the boot sector, that would get modified by the virus, destroying your game. Ask me how I know... 🙄🙄

[@techgeeknzl]

Ironic when the disk was copy protected. And, herein lies the _legal_ argument for cracking: to make a usable backup copy of your legally purchased software.

[@ZonkedCompanion]

My original amiga floppies (and copies) are still fine 30 years later having been stored in my attic and subjected to unbearable heat all summer to minus temperatures through the winter for the last 20 or so years. Actually the amiga it's self still soldiers on too. Don't think I ever remember a floppy crapping out. I have had to clean a few though which always made me cringe... So in my experience floppies are fine and don't "degenerate" even in extreme temperatures

[@SkiBumMSP]

I'll have to go back and check, but I do recall some games that did indeed asked you to make a copy of the game disks before playing and to use the copies to play off, thus preserving the original. I think Ultima III was one such game.

[@darkcaste]

Same story for me, here in NZ. There C64 was my first computer, then the Amiga. We had organised computer clubs where we'd all get together in a classroom or someone's house and it would be full of people with their computers. It was something I always did with my dad. He passed away recently.

[@crumplezone1]

Sorry for your loss, dads are the best and always remember the great times you had together as it eases the pain

[@javierc2726]

Here in Argentina there was practically no original software available, very very little. I remember x-copy very well, I used to bring my c64 datassette to the computer shops so they would record pirated games on my own equipment and blank cassettes. And there it was also, the mighty Amiga with its fantastic graphics and sound, being used to copy games with x-copy to the fortunate owners of the system (I couldn't afford it). Good times.

[@anibalmax1981]

Not to mention it was nigh-impossible to find an original PS1 game owner around here, some years down the road

[@Str4ngerr]

@@anibalmax1981 once I was told the original PS1 cds were black! Can you imagine a black cd? Until I saw an original one years later and they were actually coated black!

[@kaede15]

Yep, in fact the only original softwares I can remember were boxes of Symantec anti-virus and internet connection dial-up AOL or Netizen, I still have the box from a DSL vendor called Synectis main office on "Lavalle" and "Florida". Was late on the party of cassettes, but I sure got a kick of it from floppies and CDs. One of my first pirated CDs was Total Annihilation, you can copy the game but you won't have music just like Quake 2.

[@substandard649]

Nostalgia overload! You just transported me back to 1990, me and the boys played Speedball Deluxe till the early hours. I had an Action Replay and a self taught working knowledge of 68000 assembler, I spent months RE copy protection and writing trainers GOOD TIMES

[@substandard649]

@@clarkkent4734 i was so sad when i had to sell my A500 to buy a (massively inferior) PC to get through uni. But on the bright side cracking PC software was a total breeze after all that assembler experience 😀 i now work in IT Security for enterprise companies, totally transferable skills.

[@elwhagen]

Oh, the memories! Owned C64, Amiga 2000 and Amiga 1200 before I went all PC. Thanks for the nostalgic trip! ♥

[@Biden_is_demented]

ZX Spectrum for me. I´ve been a filthy pirate for 40 years!

[@_marlene]

I am truly envious of the UK commodore / amiga scene back in these years. The notion of swapping amiga games around as a kid at school is so beautiful. This video was wonderful, love to see the priceless perspective of a member of this old scene

[@skipintroux4444]

I used to go to a computer tutor for my Amiga 500, I pretty much just spent every lesson just copying his game collection 😂

[@electroarcade]

A fellow Melbournian, great video. I'm sure this has taken many of us back to our childhood. This was an intro for most of us into gaming, coding, graphics and eventually Amiga... I recall buying coding mags for the c64 before moving up to the 1541, memory dumps, hash codes and so on, such fond memories and so much free time. My school bag was full of disks instead of books :-) Psygnosis was a stand-out! Thanks again for the walk down memory lane - Only Amiga makes it possible...

[@mr.pavone9719]

Your experience is remarkably similar to that of every computer kid in the 80s and 90s.

[@ZeDestructor00]

even the 2000s, really - just stacks and stacks of CDs and DVDs, until harddrives got cheap. now it's the age of the NAS

[@Harrierxyz]

It was same behind Iron Curtain, just delayed. I got used ZX Spectrum clone in late 80s with stack of tapes. Same with C64 after revolution. With exception i was not able to read english which means i could not play some games or use tools.

[@rogerwilco2]

Indeed.

[@dabbasw31]

@@ZeDestructor00 Yes. The 2000s were in fact even "wilder" because everybody went online and used EMule to share and download stuff. In the second half of the 2000s one-click-hosters like Rapidshare were the place to go.

[@hiepke1]

Same here...! Although I also remember the horror when your disk collection got infected through a bootsector corruption....! It was the first time we heard the term VIRUS....

[@TheCryptonaught]

Thanks for this episode. I lived every moment.. was truly a great time to be a computer nerd 🤓

[@chrissmith7669]

The Demo Scene that went along with the clubs racing to break the latest copy protection were amazing.

[@frankaalbers1099]

Yep. I was right there in that world . C64 , Amiga ... It got me int Computer Graphics and I finally ended up working almost 20 years at Pixar as Technical Director. I also made my own version of Turbo Tape on the C64. Then I got into the Demo scene a bit on the Amiga. Till I discovered Sculpt 4D, Turbo Silver, Imagine and Lightwave. I was hooked on CG from there on and made it my career.

[@ErazerPT]

Sounds a lot like my own story... Met a fellow amigan with a love of games and gfx and, through many a year and wonderful adventures we eventually ended with him as lead 3D artist in some studios and me as software developer in some software houses. But,if not for AMOS The Creator and Blitz Basic, dumping primitive 3D from Imagine2 straight to SVHS with the help of ClariSSA, getting a 2nd hand VLAB Motion, a shabby 2GB HD that was fast enough and a Lightwave copy of "dubious origin" and hundreds of hours scrapping the old "warez" site for "stuff that looks interesting" we probably wouldn't have stayed in the game long enough to finally make it.

[@frankaalbers1099]

@@ErazerPT The days when knowing how to render sphere would get you a gig ! 😂

[@ErazerPT]

@@frankaalbers1099 For real. Another friend went on to become a VJ. Started with an Amiga using Scala, a mix of hand-draw DPaint short anims, short clips captured from VHS with a trash digitizer and stop-motion with a shabby digital camera. IMHO, it's something people now don't have as much in their "toolbox", ie, thinking of ways to use something only slightly related that they have available to get some result. You get really "creative" when resources are limited 🤣 Some people still remember when i saved the day with WinMorph. The original DV footage had some frames corrupted at a critical spot, too trashed to even just "Photoshop it" a bit. So i got the clip, took it to frames and just morphed frame to frame over the corrupted ones. You could see it if you knew what to look for, but overall it was too smooth/fast to register for real, unlike the artifacts from corruption. Miss those days. There's an inherent charm to the insane vibe of "experimentation, because that's mostly what we have to work with".

[@JohnDoew-hz8qt]

@@ErazerPT the first USD million dollar is the toughest to stash !

[@websitelaunchcourse4061]

The Amiga and Lightwave was way ahead of its time. I miss my Amiga

[@billebest]

Thanks for the video! Brings back some fun memories. 😃 Funny that you used a Tristar & Red Sector intro in your video. I was one of the founding members of Red Sector. I had a friend that worked at the software distribution centre here in Toronto so I had early access to originals. I’d make nibble copies and then mail them off to Germany to be cracked. Back then it was a social thing. In all the years I never made a single dollar from trading software but I still have many life long friends from that time. Too bad I got busted for phreaking a few years later. 😄 Love your channel! Thanks so much for putting the time in to share your stories and talk about new & old hacks.

[@dengejaauveso8541]

haha now i know from where those discs came from. I saw Flynn from Tristar working on these on my Amiga 1000, but he never told me where they came from :D

[@JM_daDoc]

Wow, I had an Amiga 500 and later a 1200, and the RSI Cebit demo was a standard song I played on a daily basis!! Cool to see people from that scene after all these years... lol

[@trackah123]

I was too young back then to be in the scene, but i always found those "lamer" messages funny on disks, kinda like 1 scene group trolling another scene group. eventually when i got older and more into tracker music software. i met some sceners briefly on regular retro meetings. 1 from Paradox etc.

[@drcdrdoct9864]

I belonged to a C64 BBS and we all traded cracks/hacks/disks. It was a glorious time to be alive.

[@----.__]

BBS was king. I think the ease of getting online these days is what has diluted the web. Setting up a baud modem, and knowing what BBS to connect to, were a great litmus test for keeping the Karens off the web!

[@midnightcassettelibrary5171]

I was there for that…I remember waiting for my dad to go bed so I could use his 1200 baud modem instead of my 300 and set up my overnight downloads.

[@TomiTapio]

Downloading 80 kilo byte Soundtracker modules from BSSs... at 231 bytes per second (2400 modem)

[@paulguk]

Before modems and BBS's got popular I used to mailtrade games and demos with sceners all over the UK and Europe. I would be getting dozens of parcels a week filled with the latest releases, then I'd copy from one to the other and mail these people back. Great times :) To save on postage we'd learn how to do 'stamp faking' - which was basically putting the stamps on the parcel under a wipe clean sticky tape so they could be re-used for infinite free postage :D Later I joined a scene crew and we'd attend numerous copy parties and demoscene events in person. Often times this would involve either sleeping in the party hall or going out to try and find a farmers barn to sleep in. I loved those days of my youth, and I do think it was instrumental in making me the software developer I later became. Thankfully I now earn enough that I don't need to concern myself with piracy or sleeping in barns, but man - those were some great times. Thanks for the video, I expect you have plenty of similar stories to tell so looking forward to hearing more :)

[@raymond_luxury_yacht]

Me too. I wonder if we ever met?

[@_marlene]

Amazing story!

[@AndyWilliams8]

I was a teen in the 80s and our family got a C64 for Christmas '84. I was also lucky enough to know 3 nearby kids my age who also had C64s. Most of our dads had a connection at work for trading games, so when one of us acquired a new cracked game, we all acquired the new game for the price of a blank floppy. Those were the days!

[@cattysplat]

Will always appreciate the time that one guy who did all the copying put in to make sure everyone got their copy. You have to be an enthusiast to essentially run a copying service for free on your own time.

[@harag9]

That brought back loads of memories. I started out with the commodore 64 when it came out too. How I miss my childhood, learning to program, playing games, and erm... pirating. :) We all did it.

[@ItchHeSay]

It still blows my mind that people used to store computer data on cassette tapes. However, even though I was born in 1999, I grew up with a lot of old tech in the house, and I did play some games off of floppy disks when I was very young. I also remember being terrified by the noises of dial-up internet and thinking that Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit was the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life.

[@talkingcure]

Burnout on OG Xbox for me. Even tho I’m a Nintendo / Sony guy now

[@ZeroUm_]

Tape is still used to this day on enterprise backups.

[@thecunninlynguist]

damn you a youngsta

[@thecunninlynguist]

@@ZeroUm_ yup. when I was doing IT stuff fro one of my old jobs, we used tapes. it was pretty fun

[@mrpositronia]

It was perfectly normal back then. Fast loading games were the realm of expensive cartridge machines like the NES and Master System, which few people had in the 80s, in the UK. It was predominantly 8-bit micros with tape drives, or portable cassette decks for game loading.

[@darkhorsedre]

The Amiga changed gaming for me completely: it had enough capability to do interesting things (development, music, homebrew, games etc) and also had this massive piracy scene that I had no idea of, except when I saw those super cool cracktros - I thought the cracks, trainers and the whole effort was super impressive. These years later it is confirmed it really was amazing. The Xcopy screen and the glee/sadness of "0" or red numbers is a memory I'll never lose. I also reflect and realise I couldn't have afforded the original games even if I could buy them easily back then!

[@DarrenReidAu]

I grew up in Darwin Australia, and this is basically the story of me and my brothers as well. Started with a C64, got an Amiga 500 and there was the local guy (who later on ran one of the first dialup ISPs in Darwin too lol) we got all our illegitimate Amiga games from for very cheap. Still have some of the originals as well like Alien Breed and Monkey Island with boxes. Thanks for the trip down memory lane ❤

[@marcianzero_yt]

I am glad that you have survived your pirate days without an eyepatch or a hook as a hand.

[@CyanRooper]

Or scurvy, that was the worst part of being a pirate.

[@Toonrick12]

​@@CyanRooperWith all the Mountain Dew drinking, I can imagine.

[@Oweblow]

Yargh!

[@marklonergan3898]

Disclaimer - We're not a piracy tool, we're a backup tool (Opens software) "Yo ho yo ho a pirate's life for me"

[@user-lu6cy7hm2t]

😂 aarrrrrrrrrrrrr 🏴‍☠

[@zedaadega7420]

I wish I could afford an Amiga with a disk drive... I only had a Spectrum with a cassette player. Because the game data was on a sound tape, I could pirate all I wanted with a stereo, but still I would trade my 500 spectrum games for 20 amiga disk games. Later I had a 486 DX4 PC, but I was older and the magic was gone...

[@tritech]

There was a PC store in our local mall in the late 80's/early 90's and they rented out pc games and software. They knew what they were doing.

[@stiantjensvold6624]

That was one hell of a nostalgia overload. Thank you!

[@mrAcneface]

My setup was advanced back in the day which I was so proud of. For C64, I had an action replay cartridge that took a digital snapshot of the loaded game which would be saved onto a 5 1/4 floppy disk. Furthermore, the snapshot would only take approximately 10 seconds to load. Each disk could hold multiple games.

[@Joel-xf9tl]

This video brought back that warm feeling when I saw Xcopy once again in action. Thanks!

[@steve29836]

Thanks for bringing back some memories. One additional memory I have is the sound those C64 tapes used to make when copying.

[@momcody]

Vivid memory of having a bunch of copied PS1 games from my brothers dad. We had Spyro 3 and I remember I was too scared to play it without the brother in my room because the music was scary when you turned it on. I remember asking my brother why it was like that and he just said it was "bugged and virused". Good memories though, even if we couldn't complete the game. Thank you, Paradox.

[@zaidabraham7310]

Yeah sometimes when burning discs, the data loses some integrity. So you get weird colors and visual glitches and messed up audio

[@yellohammer8571]

Well, in the early Spyro games for the PS1, if you pirated the game, the character of Zoe will inform you that the game is cracked, and will not provide you with mission details, which lets you start the levels. There are also less gems to collect, and I believe that gliding becomes harder.

[@momcody]

@@zaidabraham7310 less to do with the quality of the CD-R and more to do with how buggy the crack was. my brother couldn't complete the game and just told me what Is said in the comment lol. we didn't know any better then.

[@zaidabraham7310]

@momcody PS1 games didn't have to be cracked. The DRM was hardware-based. So with a modchipped console you could just rip a licensed disc, then burn the image onto a blank disc and the console would run it no problem

[@baldysquattro]

Love it. This made me want to go and find the two boxes of Amiga discs that i haven't looked at in 30 years just to see if X-copy is in there.

[@M3n747]

Back in the late '80s/early '90s there was this guy here in Poland who made a small fortune making and selling tapes with thematic compilations of Commodore 64 games. If you had a C64, you had his tapes (and, perhaps, a couple of originals as well).

[@Dr904]

My first encounter with software piracy was when my older brother installed a SNES emulator with all the Mario games on our PC. But I had no idea what piracy, emulation or even Nintendo was at that time.

[@TheTheaterWiz]

I answered a newspaper add for Amiga games from a guy in Hollywood in the early 90s. I visited him for a few years and picked up dozens of games each time for a few bucks each. We would go to Kinko's and copy thousands of pages of manuals that I would take home also. He was a magician and would do tricks for me while X-Copy did its thing is his small apartment. This video brings back so many great Amiga memories. Thank you!

[@auto117666]

I know quite a few reverse engineers who started their careers off by cracking software when they were kids.

[@malicekerendu3574]

My first experience with piracy was the R4. Back in primary school I had a friend who's parents gave her an R4 card for her ds. I got my ds when I was 7 and her parents gave me an one for my birthday as well. There weren't that many games on it, but it was enough that we could play together.

[@Ozzianman]

I had the M3 and taught myself how to pirate and add more games to it. It was kinda shitty, but it also had a media player so I could play MP3s and heavily compressed video files on it. Nowadays you can softmod a DSi or 3DS, install Twilight Menu and run DS cards off the SD card. No R4 or other flash carts required.

[@FigureFarter]

I used my R4 to play homebrew games like Lemmings and make music with NitroTracker. It has less limitations than WarioWare DIY

[@davewatkinson4484]

That was a trip down memory lane. I hated the tape deck, the amount of failed loads was soul destroying.

[@ssangry99]

:)))

[@CorporalDanLives]

I grew up with an Apple IIGS, a machine so obscure where I lived that I never met another kid with one. So jealous of you Amiga dudes.

[@sweetasdude]

At school we had Apple2e's and everyone had a copy of dogfight, bolo, and joust. because if you got caught they would cut up your 5 1/4.

[@CorporalDanLives]

@@sweetasdude Omg that's savage, they don't even use magnets, they just whip out the scissors

[@sweetasdude]

@@CorporalDanLives It was brutal as 1st year's, the seniors would relish in the physical destruction of media, which really only fueled the fire, and as we got older and became those people, a blind eye was turned for sure.

[@johnsimon8457]

Apple hardware was + is not cheap.

[@lazarushernandez5827]

@@johnsimon8457 It was crazy back then because parents tended to buy a computer for their kids based on what the schools they attended used. Apple was among the first to push their machines into schools. In my junior high we had Atari 800s in our computer labs (they were less expensive than the Apple II), so that is what we got in our home, a lot of my school friends did as well. Some got C-64s instead. In high school the computer lab had Tandy TRS-80s in the first year and Apple IIs in the second.

[@Ludanc0]

Here in Perú (and almost all Latin America) piracy was very common, I remember buying PS1 disks that didn't even have labels but just the game's title writen with a marker, also you couldn't just buy consoles or games at retail stores but only from shady places that had contacts in the US .

[@soooslaaal8204]

In the late 90s and early 2010s, you could only realistically get original games if you had family in the US that traveled back and forth between the two countries, since only NTSC-U games were compatible here. Real ones also remember that internet cafes also had ps2s and gamecubes back in the day that you could rent.

[@jorgeleibur]

Here in Chile is technically illegal, but you can still buy pirated disc on the streets.

[@Ludanc0]

@@jorgeleibur "Always has been" (Astronaut meme)

[@DetoCerqueira]

Pirated games for both the PS1 and PS2 were the norm here in Latin America (I'm from Brazil), so much so that even rich families bought pirated games for their kids.

[@proCaylak]

@@DetoCerqueira "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue..." -Gabe Newell

[@Darkest_Soul_187]

The guy who put his name, address, and telephone number on a piracy software had balls of steel 😅

[@JustAnotherGamer1005]

That's usefull in prison, maybe even a necessity 😁.

[@bicello]

everybody did that back in the time, in every cracktro there was written a way to contact the cracker, from BBS to phone to regular mail. most of the anti-piracy laws we have today were non existant 30/40 years ago (then music and movie right holders pushed hard the politicians to do something about it, software piracy has been something written as a footnote years later, in most countries), even if you put your address in the cracktro nobody would persecute you legally, the community of gamers were small and kinda protective, seen as antisocial nerds, no cool and fashion tiktokers or twitch user with billion of revenue from game streamings would come looking for your, doxing you, etc.

[@cittidude2264]

They didn't have any computer laws really written back then. Many people skated because they legally couldn't charge them.

[@jabuci]

At that time it was normal.

[@k-c]

@@jabuci Yes this was normal state of affairs until the early 2000's

[@ge0ne0]

Man these commodore and amiga vids are such a trip back in time for me. I remember discovering my Dad’s Commodore 64 in the mid 80’s. It blew my mind. I always wondered why my dad had stacks of discs 😂

[@breaque]

X-Copy was what most kids got started with, but other options came along the way. When copying my mail swapping disks after school, I preferred running SuperDuper in the Workbench, so I could multitask and e.g. run a game while the copier was working. This was of course on a somewhat souped-up A500 with multiple external drives, a hard disk and a fair bit of extra RAM.

[@RokkitGrrl]

I used Fast Hack'em for the Commodore 64.

[@Jope9k]

SuperDuper crew checking in. SuperDuper also managed to write simultaneously to four drives at the same time, as long as they were reasonably close to each other in rotation speed. Verify reads had to happen one drive at a time of course.

[@flottenheimer]

I have such fond memories of both the C64 and Amiga scene - and have spent quite a few hours looking at x-copy reading and writing. Thank you for this ride, MVG.

[@thecunninlynguist]

i was too, sometimes. at first i was scared and thought I'd get caught, lol. My friend introduced me to piracy. the first thing I vividly remember was he gave me a floppy w/ Q-Crack. It was a program that cracked the Quake shareware/demo disc. ID software foolishly had full games on the disc, and Q-crack unlocked it all! Good memories.

[@frankhalgas3798]

Source Code 88

[@RetroHenni]

In germany we had pink cards from the post office with a number on it (called PLK back in the days). You were able to use this number as the receiver address for letters and parcels. You had to check in the post office if you received mailings with this number. So we used those cards for swapping disks; in every game magazine you found dozens of swapper ads. At some point back in the days the feds found out about it and some of us were greeted by them at the post office when asking for our mailings.

[@normanji]

Brought back some good memories with this video. The first pirate was the vic20, in a hi-fi system, and i used to listen to the whaling noise it made while coping tape to tape, we then went to the c64, then the amiga 500 then on to the 1200. Believe it or not, we still have them in the original boxes stored away, ha ha.

[@1teamski]

Oh yes! The Amiga was a dream come true. And X-Copy was a real godsend!

[@----.__]

X-Copy was cool, but the built in burst nibbler on the Action Replay was just too convenient. Hold the right mouse button and turn on the Amiga and it was at the copy screen ready to go!

[@gnbilios]

was a dream come true then pc gaming took over

[@----.__]

@@gnbilios I was kicking and screaming when I moved away from my A500. PC gaming was, is, and always will be substandard when compared to the Amiga. There isn't anywhere near the character or charm.

[@1teamski]

@@gnbilios No, actually it was console gaming that took over and the dream ended right there.....

[@gnbilios]

@@----.__ thats's debatable. i owned an amiga500.

[@megaflux7144]

man.. we used to spend every weekend entering and checking the code from basic magazine to make our games and then by sunday night we had to turn it off (so we were up for school in the morning) knowing that we did not have a tape drive.

[@onxydeux]

80s home computing that really fired me up. I remember also being stuck at the ZX SPECTRUM basic prompt, but that thing started a life long interest for me

[@JohnDoe-om8im]

Just wanted to say that I love the new series. Please continue with it :) The good old times...

[@retropuffer2986]

Piracy didn't cause Commodore to go under. Commodore caused Commodore to go under.

[@hanzobi1926]

Same can be said for Sega. Everyone says piracy killed, Sega caused it themselves

[@meetoo594]

@@hanzobi1926Sega was taking a loss on every console sold due to the business model of making a profit through selling games and licences, Commodore couldn't care less what you did with your Amiga after you bought it as they already made a profit on the sale of the machine. Commodore actually benefited from piracy as the easy availability of it made the machine an attractive purchase. Segas problems were caused by not putting a dvd drive in the dreamcast and including the windows ce mil cd software in the firmware without locking it down properly. Commodores downfall was pure mismanagement and asset stripping.

[@elfeintwentyfives1620]

commodor and atari were killed by same guy who bought them i cannot recall his name but almost directly he also almost killed the video arcade and home arcade market

[@elfeintwentyfives1620]

btw at same time nintendo pretty much saved the market with NES

[@meetoo594]

@@elfeintwentyfives1620 Jack Tramiel?, he founded commodore then left and bought Atari. I think most of Ataris problems came when his son took over and cratered their profitability. The NES market saving thing only happened in America, Here in the UK there was no video game crash and Nintendo did very poorly against Sega until the snes era. We were mainly using home micros rather than consoles due mainly to cost and availability of cheap or pirated software. If you had a console it was a master system and very much a secondary gaming device to whatever micro you had. I never used a nes until emulation was a thing and tbh im not surprised it bombed here, for the price of the drab looking games it really wasn't an attractive option. It probably didnt help that nintendo completely botched the launch and the games offered were sometimes years old.

[@tylersomerville7394]

This video was such an engrossing and informative watch. Thanks for making this!

[@popixel]

Piracy on PCs back in those days were beyond insane. No matter if you had a PC or an apple or Commodore whatever it was any time I went to a friends house they always had stacks of copies of games.

[@tuzruhu16]

Nearly same life here. The difference is, we couldn't find all programs or games on that times here in Türkiye. I remember how hard I was trying to find Amiga Assembler because of a book I possesed while I was like twelve, but with no lucks. I was literally running mc680x0 asm code in my head and writing them on my notebooks. Oh, and I was the big brother in my story :)

[@ozmacguyver]

I still remember paying AUD$574 at KMart for the C64 Pro Pack (that long upright box in your video), that was my first intro (it had the 1542II floppy drive)......aaaaah, awesome times!!!! Great Nostalgic video, Cheers

[@overlordalfredo]

I had pirated games before I had retail copies 😅 I genuinely was surprised to learn there is something like box art and manuals for Software 😂

[@darthwiizius]

I had Ghostbusters a year before the movie released, track 'n' field years before they decided to release it in the UK. I'm convinced the coders were just handing them out to their mates left right and centre, they were probably just so proud of what they had created.

[@terrylandess6072]

When certain games like flight sims/etc. used most of the keyboard - how was anyone supposed to 'learn/remember' that? So they had amazing manuals and 'keyboard overlays' as well as other reference material you placed at your fingertips. Pause the game and look it up right there instead of needing to open it on the same computer being used to game... The internet helped gaming companies get greedy through 'savings' on materials - thus began the downward spiral associated with all gaming corporations today.

[@mlann2333]

Same story in Ireland during the 80s. The budget titles did well and people didn't bother too much copying them as they were only 2.99, but the 8.99 and 9.99 titles were the main targets. Many kids in class had double deck systems and shared games around, some charged a pound to cover the blank tape and effort. Great days 😢.

[@reel_images]

That was a great video thank you for sharing and creating that. Took me back to my late 80s early 90s childhood.

[@wadz668]

I grew up on the Commodore 64. My brothers and I would save up and buy games with friends and make copies of them with Fast Hack'em. One time we bought The Three Stooges and for the first time found a game that couldn't be copied. From that point I was absolutely fascinated with copy protection and how it worked. I think I was more enamored by how they got the game on the disk in a way that only the games loader could read, than by the game itself!

[@carsonplays6834]

Remember Leader Board and that stupid pin you had to plug in to play with the original. lol

[@CleoCat75]

Fast Hack'em! that's what I used too. great stuff. Yeah, and i bought a manual thru some ad in the back of COMPUTE magazine, it taught you how to do sector editing and gave like 10 examples of editing the boot sector of various popular games to bypass the copy protection, that was really fascinating. And I remember having to re-align the disk drive all the time because games would bang the heads so hard repeatedly due to the copy protection, lol.

[@Matsilagi]

Here in Brazil, Piracy is still a "problem", with more and more "live-service" games, intrusive DRMs and non-localized prices (or games at all), this is still the gateway for most people for tech as a hobby. I think Piracy is positive to some extent as it opens people to tech as a hobby, and might motivate them to learn more.

[@lowguidoschopshop]

this video almost word for word mirrored my own experiences. one thing I recall was that my disks would be corrupted easily, so having multiple copies was a must.

[@chuck_stones]

I came here to say exactly this. I too had disks with Marauder 2 and X-copy on them. Major nostalgia hot from this video!

[@zedaadega7420]

There was a rumor that carrying floppy disks on the subway would ruin them, but it was used as an excuse for a Lisbon store that sold pirate Amiga games.

[@imbroglio1]

When I was a kid our group used Apple // and would have pirate parties about every month and everyone would show up with their game collections and boxes of blank 5 1/4" floppys ready to go. The most memorable moment was when a guy showed up with a new piece of hardware the size of a shoe box that he called a hard disk drive and we were in awe that it could hold an amazing 5 megabytes of storage.

[@Turbo-D]

yes the c64 was just (mis)used as a gaming system and i think i had not a single original game for it 😂.. but there was so much more you could do with it back then. programming was easy and fun and i had a plotter with printercard for it. the soundchip is still used in modern sound systems that are just build around this particular chip! epic machine.cheers🎉

[@svenbtb]

This was super interesting, I would love to get a "part 2" to see how the evolution of software piracy and copying of discs evolved next!

[@scragar]

My first consoles were the NES and SNES, so I didn't hear about piracy until the PSX era when I went to high school. It seemed like everyone knew someone who could hook you up with a modchip and cheap copies(I think I was paying £2/game or £5 for 3 at the time).

[@hisham_hm]

Half of my NES cartidges here in Brazil were pirate copies. They sold them in stores even, during the years when Nintendo had no official presence in Brazil. Heck, I think I was in the minority for having _some_ original cartidges, due to having family abroad!

[@McSlunt]

Man, I remember the old mod chip days, and the low end cheap modchip installs that made the video output on PS1 completely grayscale.

[@doowopdoo]

Mistakes WEREN’T made.

[@6581punk]

Mistakes were made. There was no way 16-bit games truly needed to cost the price they did. Double an 8-bit game price perhaps, but they were triple the cost. I still remember seeing Mortal Kombat for the consoles in shops in the early 1990s. £40 for a game when £40 was a lot of money, £82 now which is more than a PS5 game costs.

[@doowopdoo]

He became a video game software pirate: Mistakes weren’t made.