Fun fact, at least for the PC version of this, there was like a quiz after the game launched you had to answer correctly in order to play it. Answers were in the book, but I failed many times being a young kid. I guess that was some sort of child safety mechanism.
Copy right protection, like boonhet said. I played many computer games that I had to copy the instruction manual to play. Might and Magic 3 was like “what is the 4 word of the 11th line of page 8?” And if you don’t get that right then you can’t play. Civilization had similar prompts, but it let you play a little bit and just hurt your progress if you didn’t answer their questions about the civilization skill tree.
Fun fact, at least for the PC version of this, there was like a quiz after the game launched you had to answer correctly in order to play it. Answers were in the book, but I failed many times being a young kid. I guess that was some sort of child safety mechanism.
Or early copy protection
yeah that’s more likely
It’s a form of two factor authentication if you think about it
Yes, it was! In fact, this wasn’t uncommon! Several early PC titles would ask you questions and point you to the page in the manual.
Another one was Code Rings, cardboard discs you had to align words/symbols on to get the code to play the game.
If you lost your manual/ring, or bought a second hand copy without one, you were absolutely fucked on playing your game.
Copy right protection, like boonhet said. I played many computer games that I had to copy the instruction manual to play. Might and Magic 3 was like “what is the 4 word of the 11th line of page 8?” And if you don’t get that right then you can’t play. Civilization had similar prompts, but it let you play a little bit and just hurt your progress if you didn’t answer their questions about the civilization skill tree.