Beach Head II: The Dictator Strikes Back (Commodore 64)

Beach Head II: The Dictator Strikes Back
Developer: Access Software Publisher: Access Software Platform: Commodore 64 Released in US: 1985 Released in EU: 1985 This game has anti-piracy features.

To do: Get a screenshot of the anti-piracy in action for additional context.

Anti-Piracy

The floppy disk version of the game is protected with PirateBusters v1.0FL. The protection works by checking for a series of bytes on a track (or tracks) that have no sync marks or standard sectors of any kind, which is impossible to copy via serial nibblers. If this check fails, the game will display the following scrolling text on-screen before it freezes:

Once upon a time in a far away place some smart people got together and created
a device called a computer. The main reasons that they created computers were
for military purposes.

But then computers were made smaller and cheaper, and became more commonplace 
in business environments running accounting and database software. Computers 
soon became so inexpensive that they were named "Home computers". Now computers 
were used for playing games and teaching. Once computers were in the home, many 
individuals saw that computers needed good software. They decided to write 
programs (including games) to run on the computers. 

They wrote up manuals for the programs and designed some neat packaging and 
invested a lot of time and effort into the package. But then the hard part came. 
They had to present their ideas to a company, and hopefully the company would
agree to sell their product. If there was no such company around then they had 
to start one of their own up. This required capital, time and business acquaintances
that would represent the product to stores etc.

After all this is done the program must be good enough so that the public will
recognize its potential and buy it. The public usually recognized the potential 
of a good product, but the number of people that buy the product is usually a lot
lower than the number of people that have a working copy of the program. you may ask,
how do they get a working copy of the program without buying it? Well they find
somebody (a friend?) who bought a copy of the program and they try to copy it.

The main ways for software companies to protect their software is to write out
information on the diskette in a non-standard format. Then when a copy program
looks on the disk for the information stored in the normal format it doesn't
find it all and misses some vital information that the program requires to
function. 

Most programs when run usually check for information on the diskette
and if it is not there they assume that the diskette is a copy and come up with
a message like: ** Copy Detected, Loading Aborted ** Others load up the program
but they don't let the program function properly. Well finally others programs
like this one just tell you the facts about piracy, and hope that your
conscience does the rest. Welcome to the wide world of piracy.

Yours truly,
Kevin P. Pickell and Brian R. Niessen, Piratebusters Inc.

Nine out of ten pirates go blind trying to copy our software.
The other one gets committed!!!