Now, you can find websites with walkthroughs, trainers, etc. But pre-Internet, players had to find other ways. Feel free to share what you used to do. In my case, some computer stores that sold the games would have a bulletin board with notes from various customers asking about one level or obstacle to bypass in an adventure game, and so forth. Sometimes, I'd call friends over the phone and ask for advise. Very few used BBSes, and those become more prominent locally only by the late '80s.
The computer mags used to have sections devoted to cheats and hex edits. There were quite a few mags around in the late 80s in the UK, more than one devoted to each format. I guess that would have been the biggest source for most before the net! The first and only game I successfully "hacked" into (use of that phrase could be quite easily liked to walking into a china shop with a halberd! ) was Football Manager in 1983. The game was written in basic easily accessible ingame and easy to follow. Don't remember what I tried to do to player stats but it never worked and I could never figure out why! Realised then that mucking about inside 'puter progs was not going to be my forte! :biglol:
yeah i always got my cheats from the old puter mag's the only one i remember buying religously was Computer + Video games
Same here, C&VG was the magazine to get back in the day. I remember there were a couple of pages at the back devoted to answering peoples questions about various adventure games.
Mags for me to, I used to get C&VG and Crash (ZX Spectrum magazine) to get the pokes for my spectrum games. To tell the truth though, I have never really bothered with cheats unless it's a game I was otherwise bored of.
Yeah for my c64 days mainly I had an AR combined with magazine cheat listings.. CVG, ZZap Commodore Format. Even in the early pc days though I had to rely on magazines for tips and cheats. Fortunately a lot of my c64 games were cracked and had trainers loaded lol.
Later I donated my C-64 to my younger brothers and even though I had punctuated the fact that power must be off, the youngest brother of mine plugged the Action Reply Cartridge with powers on, burning the C-64 motherboard and the Action Replay Card in the process. Their loss at the time but later I wished they hadn't done that (although I really doubt I would get such pangs of nostalgia as to actually fire those old machines up again.)
ahhh C&VG excellent mag, shame the now website is very poor some joypad codes and many solutions are forever etched on the brain.....shame my school work wasnt so easily remembered.
when I was 14 I had a job in after school care. I was paid $15 dollars an hour 3 times a week to play games with 7-8 yr olds on a bunch of old BBC micros. I remember having to go in 45mins early to put cassettes in all the comps so they would load be the time the kids got off school. Hacking them was easy as most of the games where in BASIC
I spent many days "poking" my Spectrum, I think manic miner was the first one I ever did to get 99 lives, happy days
I used to have an Ice Pick for my 2nd C64. It would allow me to copy and also crack the program I was loading or copying. I best memories of those days was getting into the machine code for Galaxy Alliance and completely re-writing the game with 9 new options and control keys plus adding some new graphics. The fun part was writing it in basic (goto line whatever-- gosub whocares) but then converting it into machine code was long, tiresome and sometimes frustrating just to make it run better. Hell learning machine code was the hardest thing I ever had to do...the rest was shear fun just because I could.
Hmm. I think I just used to turn Turbo off, and play the game at a slower pace...that usually got me through But otherwise I guess my mates bought the mags, because all my computer games and cheats came from asking friends at school!
I clocked arcade machine Galaga when I was about 12 because I had to eat my hamburger... and then set the highest score on every machine I ever found hehe And here is how its done. On the second lvl kill everything except the very left aliens on the bottom 2 rows. Park your ship on the right and wait. Pay attention though because every now and then they will lob some bombs at ya through the left side of the screen that appear just above you on the right. Then they just stop shooting... for good. Get your double ship on the third lvl.. and pawn away \o/
I only ever managed to hack one game and it was a pinball game. Just remember searching for the text of where it asked for the password and then removing the hex codes for a bit after it. You were then able to just hit enter at the password and it continued. Made me so happy
