terrell@druhi.ATT.COM (TerrellE) (06/28/89)
In discussions about copy protection, the subject of "code wheels" has come up. What are they? Terrell
Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (07/03/89)
A 'code wheel' is an invention of Spectrum Holobyte included in every copy of FALCON. It is an anti-piracy device of dubious merit - one must try to dechiper some pretty vague symbols on a code wheel and enter the appropriate symbol when queried in order to play the game. I found the code wheel exteremely annoying and the symbols were so poorly drawn in comparison with the screen display that it was very easy to enter the wrong symbol. When I sit down to recreate I want to play a game, not spend half an hour trying to figure out some damn code wheel. One very observant user of the GEnie network commented that Spectrum Holobyte simply copied the same manual and code wheel from the earlier released MS-DOS version and so within weeks the code wheel diagram was up on pirate boards - simply copied from the MS-DOS world! Of course the ST user base was blamed for having 'better organized pirates'. Peter Szymonik