Your pirated games to legit games ratio back in the day.

[Ross PK]

Most of my games were pirated back in the day when I was a kid. I copied all of my nephews copied disks onto a load of blank 'Select' disks (don't know if any of you remember that name) that I had just bought from an Argos catologue.

 

The only legit games I had was probably about 20 cassettes, and two disks, which were Pooyan, and Clowns And Balloons.

[Artlover]

So how many times you going to post this?

[+Random Terrain]

So how many times you going to post this?

42. He's not done yet.

[mimo]

I had Asteroids and Space Invaders on cart, Preppie and Bruce Lee on cassette, and the other 200 games were by Edward Teach

[Artlover]

I actually bought a lot of games for my Commodore 64 back in the days. Probably got like a 100 or more. Then one Christmas I got a 1670 modem.

[PressureCooker2600]

I had quite a bit of pirated software for my C64......but most of the big-time titles I bought. I had pirates of mostly the harder to find stuff.

[dwhyte]

mine was about a 10:1 ratio... roughly...

[Goochman]

I prob had a somewhat even mix until the 8bit software houses stopped writing new titles for it - then all the software stores stopped carrying Atari titles (babbages, ETB, etc...)

 

I always bought the Ultima series though - double bought it for the 8bit and ST to show some support for the Atari platform - alas no good

[Rybags]

Pretty huge.

 

There was little original software here. Before Atari finally decided to give the local distributor the arse and setup themselves, we had a situation where they were totally happy selling computers but did next to nothing so far as making a decent library of software available.

 

In a way, I think Atari suffered worse than the C-64. With the 1541, you could just use nibblers to copy software. That meant the copy protection would be intact still, and not every user was tech-savvy enough to know how to copy games.

 

In Atariland, typically games would be ripped to EXEs, or be left as boot disks but have the protection cracked. Of all the games disks I have, only a couple are Happy copies, the vast majority (of around 350) are on menu disks.

[oesii]

Big margin here, I probably owned 20 or 30 carts, dozens of original disks but I had hundreds of games on multidisks.

[Ross PK]

So how many times you going to post this?

 

It just wouldn't seem to post, and I made the mistake of repeatedly clicking the send button again.

 

I then thought 'Lol, someone has made the the same topic loads of times for some reason'. Then I realised it was me.

Edited October 13, 2007 by Ross PK

[jdh]

I got my Atari in the late 80s when there were a fair few budget releases around for 2 or 3 quid and I only knew 2 other kids with Ataris so I would say about 60 - 70% were orginals.

 

I discovered most of the classic games much later on from emulation and SIO2PC

[peteym5]

Pirated games and software is still going with the PC plus other computer and game systems. Although most webpage servers will not let you put pirated software, music, or video on them. People find ways around them like using peer to peer networks or other means of transferring files. I actually got most of my emulator stuff by such means. I think I got most of my stuff pirated from the original source.

[WizWor]

For a long time, my games were 100% legit. I had mostly carts and tapes during that era. In 1984, I met a kid who belonged to PACE (Portsmouth Atari Computer Enthusiasts). He talked me into getting a 1050 and sold me three floppies ($5 each) which contained close to 50 games. At this point, I was about 50/50. Over the next 10 years, I acquired a lot of new and used Atari hardware. Today, 80/20 legit -- not counting my AtariMax carts and SIO2PC collection.

 

Then as now, I tended to buy what I wanted and take whatever people had for me. Most of the software I use day to day is legit. (OT: one major exception to this is a DOS game of Risk that I stumbled across so long ago I cannot ever remember not having it. I continue to play this almost daily <s>)

[PressureCooker2600]

I still have quite a few disks that are multidisks. The other day when I was helping my mom clean out parts of her house that had been stockpiled full of stuff for years....I ran across some of my old C64 stuff that she never sold. I was euphoric for the rest of the day. Tons of original stuff but still had about 20 or so multidisks full of games.

 

Ahhh....Commodore........

[emkay]

I actually bought a lot of games for my Commodore 64 back in the days. Probably got like a 100 or more.

 

You was that guy?

 

[Tezz]

... blank 'Select' disks (don't know if any of you remember that name) that I had just bought from an Argos catologue.

LOL, Yea I sure remember Select disks, we used to buy them too from Argos in the Arndale which was pretty much a stones throw from Atari World.. (All that area is now totally changed after the bomb blast in 1996 of course, both are long gone sadly).. I still have my select disks to this day which all still work... anyway, to answer your querstion, at least 80% of my collection were originals purchased. The copies we had were only really the harder to get non UK released US titles. As most of the titles bought were on tape here in the UK, we did have duplicates on cracked menu disks as most did of course so the tapes were really just stored, that to me is OK as I purchased the software. I wanted to support the already flagging Atari market, I bought at least 2-3 titles a week from 1985-1990. Without buyers, there is no market. Piracy is theft at the end of the day. I know that not everyone can afford to buy so many titles, I was certainly far from well off but even so I don't think it gives anyone the right to steal. I guess that everyone has a ratio of orginal/cracked but at least if it swings in the way of original then at least it's not total piracy. I think that with every Atari owner I knew here in the UK, the majority of their collection was pirated titles. In todays world, software of any kind on the PC can be very very expensive to buy so piracy will always be prolific but, it does still surprise me today that the general average PC user thinks that its no problem to used cracked software as it is easily availalbe, the attitude is like "why should I pay for it when I can easily get it for free" like it's their right. That's the same as saying I took your car because you left the keys in it so it was easy......... OK off my soap box.... back to fun where's my joystick Edited October 13, 2007 by Tezz

[thomasholzer]

A8 softs i always bought originals, even games like The Halley Project for DM 150.00 in Germany. Year later when I got my C-64 I had people approaching me in droves offering me bootlegs

[Ross PK]

Hey Tezz, could you show us a pic of your Select disks? It'd be really cool seeing them again.

 

I remember Atari World too, I once went in there with £17 all in pound coins and bought a load of games from there, I'm sure that was back in '88, I must have been about 12.

 

Also, I bought games from 1985 to about 1990 too. The other places where I bought games from was the flea market in Oldham, and the Home And Business Technology Center which was in Oldham too.

Edited October 13, 2007 by Ross PK

[Tezz]

Hey Tezz, could you show us a pic of your Select disks? It'd be really cool seeing them again.

No problem! this should bring back some memories for you...

[Ross PK]

Thanks!

 

I'm sure there's something that looks different about it in the picture than the ones I had.

[Tezz]

Thanks!

 

I'm sure there's something that looks different about it in the picture than the ones I had.

hmm, pretty sure they didn't change the artwork over the years.. all of mine look the same I think .. maybe I'm mistaken? I'll have to have a look through them

[carmel_andrews]

people like tezz and ross pk were lucky...we didn't have anyone of the ilk of ROB C in our neck of the woods, though i did have a sizeable collection of pirate disks (mostly rob c/howfen and JW or Multiboots)

 

I s'pose our euro friends were content with mike langer (homesoft) and gumi/krawco...not forgetting the infamous 'Mr Bacardi', who was German so i am told

[Tickled_Pink]

Plenty of Rob C and Multiboot disks. In fact, of my disk collection I had ... um ... let's see ... one ... err ... two ... um ... three ... errrr

 

Phantom

Trivial Pursuit

PL65

Transdisk IV

 

That was it.

 

Plenty of original tapes, though.

 

So it was disks: 95% pirate, 5% original ... tapes: 99% original, 1% pirate.

[Tezz]

...we didn't have anyone of the ilk of ROB C in our neck of the woods,

We always wondered who Rob-C actually was back then, he was like a highly regarded mythical character in them days. We used Rob-C menus with the musical menu makers with its ripped tunes, they were cool. All I know since them days is that he became was-not-was on the ST producing similar menu disks I think doing some of the well known Automation menus? Illegalities aside anyway, he was a pretty cool guy on the scene.