General / Off-Topic lenslock, just as popular now as then.

[kenwshmt]

http://www.cracked.com/article_20783_5-anti-piracy-strategies-that-screwed-over-regular-gamers.html/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage


'

A pioneer in the "only making things worse" approach to video game copy protection was the Lenslok: a little plastic contraption powered by tiny prisms that apparently sought to negate Atari-era piracy by making the simple act of playing a game so ****ing tedious that you'd end up throwing your primitive console out the window.
'
.. more on the link

 

[Cosmos]

lol.. I still have one.

There was definitely a learning curve to getting it right. Wrong three times and you have to wait another 5 minutes whilst you reloaded the game from cassette tape.

That wasn't wasted time with Elite.. The Space Traders Flight Manual is probably one of the most re-read books in my collection. Its just a shame the subject wasn't on my final exams.

 

[Frank]

Did you ever time it? It felt longer that 5 minutes. I had a massive blurry telly that was impossible to calibrate the LENSLOK to. If memory serves me correctly, I had to wave the thing in front of my screen and take guesses as to what code came up.

The thing wasn't an ANTI-piracy device. It was a PRO-piracy device.

 

[insanephoton]

Lenslok was a complete pain and it failed miserably to stop piracy. The pirated copies had the huge advantage of avoiding the hassle and just starting up as soon as it had finished loading.

 

[deMangler]

Lenslok was a complete pain and it failed miserably to stop piracy. The pirated copies had the huge advantage of avoiding the hassle and just starting up as soon as it had finished loading.

Yeah - I know people who get pirate versions of games that they would otherwise buy, just to avoid DRM.
I suppose it must make *some* commercial sense but it makes my brain ache thinking how that might be.
Anyway - remember lens-lok. Also, I have still not got over the way the term "dongle" has changed in meaning. It used to mean a bit of circuitry you plugged into a serial port, or whatever, without which some expensive software would not run. Now it seems to mean anything that plugs into a serial port...