Code Wheels

Is it just me? Am I the only one who has a soft spot for code wheels?

For those not REALLY REALLY OLD, code wheels were a form of offline
copy-protection where the game would ask you to input a code, which
you would acquire by fiddling with two cardboard disks, twisting and
aligning them until they gave you the correct data.*

 They were used by dozens (hundreds? I don't know if there's a
complete list anywhere) of games in the mid 80s to early 90s,
eventually superseded by documentation checks and later by CD-ROMs. At
the time of their release, photocopiers weren't too common (computer
scanners were almost non-existent) and the unusual format made it
difficult for anyone to hand-copy the answers.

A lot of people disliked them because the wheels were fiddly to use,
easy to lose, and because some companies demanded you use them too
often. But I always sort of liked them; there was a hands-on
interactivity to them that made them more interesting than simply
answering "what's the third word in the second line of the ninth
paragraph of page 16" documentation checks. It was like _I_ was
actually helping in the quest by decoding some secret information.
When the code wheels fell out of favor, I missed them.

Code wheels weren't really any more effective than other forms of copy
protection, of course. They were as easily defeated as most copy
protection questions; most crackers just looked for the code that
queried the player and JMP'd over it like it never existed. They
weren't all that cheap to make either, and their bulk demanded larger
boxes. A lot of budget re-releases of games just stripped them out of
the game entirely. So their lifespan was limited.

But I liked them. I'm not demanding they make a comeback of course...
but of all the forms of copy-protection, code-wheels were one of the
more playful and less annoying.


Anyone else have fond memories of this stupid thing, or is this a hill
on which I'm going to die alone? ;-)







* there are a selection of 'interactive code wheels' here if you've no
idea what I'm talking about:
https://www.oldgames.sk/codewheel/