![]() ![]() Above right: The Lenslok that came with Elite. There were also instances where incorrect Lensloks were bundled with games, which probably wasn’t a very popular move.Ībove left: The Lenslok in action. One big problem with the Lenslok was that it couldn’t be calibrated for all screen sizes, so some people with very large or very small screens couldn’t descramble the code. A scrambled code would be shown on the screen, and only by viewing it through the Lenslok could you decipher it and start the game. It was a small plastic device that contained a row of vertical prisms. In the early 80’s several games (most famously Elite) on platforms like Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum shipped with something called the Lenslok. MONKEY ISLAND 2 CODE WHEEL SOFTWAREThough these days most copy protection is mostly software based, there was a period back in the 80’s and early 90’s when software developers pursued other methods, and game creators tended to be extra inventive. There has been a huge number of more or less creative methods to prevent people from making illegal copies of games and other software, but the ones we think are the most interesting (and amusing to look back at) are the ones involving actual physical extras. All the way back in 1976, a certain Bill Gates wrote an open letter to a computer hobbyist club complaining that “most of you steal your software.” Back in those days, however, even he considered copy protection to just be in the way and wasn’t an advocate for it. Software piracy has been around basically since the inception of software, and copy protection methods almost as long, so today’s discussions around DRM really isn’t anything new. ![]()
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