• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      And then, every so often, when the moon was in the right phase and the stars aligned, it would come in perfectly clearly for a few glorious seconds.

  • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Games used to come with books to read, and their anti-piracy measure was to give you a page number and tell you to enter the first word on the page to activate the software.

    Of course, you’d copy that floppy and write the code word on the label for your friends.

    • Omgpwnies@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      IIRC, it was Greg Norman’s Shark Attack that had a thing where it would give you a small pixel art picture of the top-down view of a golf course, and you had to go through the game manual and enter in what page that golf course picture appeared on… so we just got a photocopy version of the manual

    • Malfeasant@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Lol I had one like that - I made a copy for a friend, but it wasn’t just one code word, it could be any one of about a hundred - but he was dedicated, he figured it out somehow over the course of a few weeks.

    • oatscoop@midwest.social
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      8 months ago

      You could copy the manual on a xerox machine. Of course some publishers were smart and printed the manual in such a way it any copies came out as an illegibly dark mess.

      So naturally you took a legitimate manual, manually transcribed it, and made copies of the copy.

  • DjMeas@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    To continue installing a game you had to type in the 7th word found on page 16, paragraph 3 on line 4.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Or, as my lazy ass would do sometimes, move the slider and grab a magnet so maybe my “homework” wouldn’t load and I’d get another day.

    • mPony@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Same thing for VHS tapes. That had to be something **super **important, like if they showed Raiders on TV

      • neidu2@feddit.nl
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        8 months ago

        Chewing up a piece of paper and shove the goo into the holes of a casette you didn’t like so you could record on it

        • kronisk @lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          We’d put tape over the holes, I remember recording Death Metal albums over my parents old exercise cassettes, for example.

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Driving long distances to places you had never been before usually involved books of maps, pre-planning, a navigator, and help from strangers.

      • mPony@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        when I was wee we only needed to use 5 digits for many years. The system would assume the first digit you dialed was the final digit of the initial group. When they switched us to the full 7 digits people acted SO annoyed: who’s got that kind of time when you’re using a rotary phone?