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What is the SCPC?

The Sierra Copy Protection Compendium, or SCPC, is a collection of all the copy-protection material related to Sierra On-Line adventure games that I could find.

Drawing from both my own collection of Sierra manuals and some on-line sources (which are credited in the proper places), I have gathered up (almost) all of the information needed to pass every copy-protection check that exists in Sierra's various games. I have assembled this information in (hopefully) easy-to-understand formats, and created a series of HTML indexes to allow quick, easy browsing of the material.

Why?

Several reasons. First, although I treasure my collection of Sierra game manuals, the fact remains that, sooner or later, they're going to fall apart. After nearly losing one of my favorite computer games to a damaged CD, I realized that I had better backup everything of importance for the sake of the future. That includes copy-protection materials, since many of my favorite Sierra games are unplayable without them.

Second, having to fish out manuals and dig through them every time I play a game is annoying. I wanted to create a single centralized reference where I could store everything at once; that way, I'd have everything on-hand in the future.

Third...I figured that, since I wanted a handy reference for my Sierra games, my on-line friends would appreciate having one too. This one's for you, fellas!

Fourth...it's been a long, long time since Sierra walked away from adventure gaming. They don't even sell most of these games anymore. Because of this, and because of the dwindling supply of existing game disks, it's only a matter of time before these games vanish completely...unless people use the Internet to distribute them.

I am a long-time fan of the old Sierra, and it pains me to think that games like Space Quest, King's Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry may one day cease to exist due to lack of exposure. My hope is that, by providing the information in this guide, more people will be able to obtain these games on-line and play through them successfully.

It is my dearest wish that, through efforts like this, we can preserve the pioneering adventure games of yesteryear. I, for one, intend to keep their memory alive for as long as I live and breathe.

Of course, considering that I'll probably die of a heart attack at the age of 30, that's not going to be too long...

Who are you?

My avatar (animated) My real name is Steve, but most folks online know me as "Cap'n Ascii". I've been an active member of the Space Quest online fan community for years now, and have built up quite a reputation (not necessarily a *good* one, mind you). I literally grew up with Sierra's adventure games, having been first introduced to them as a child over 15 years ago. The first ones I ever played were Space Quests 2 & 3, and the first Leisure Suit Larry game (the latter of which probably explains my warped personality and utter lack of taste). As an impresionable youngster, they had a positive influence on me that persists to this day.

My love of Sierra's adventure works in general, and the Space Quest series in particular, is what drove me to compile the SCPC. By making copy-protection information easier to obtain, I hope to help spread the propagation of the games I love spread farther across the Internet.

...let's move on, before I start getting all teary-eyed.

How the SCPC works

It's quite simple, really. First, choose a game series from the main index, then select the particular game you need help with. Each game's page is divided into subheadings, each of which details a particular copy-protection occurance in that game and provides the information needed to pass it. The links at the bottom of each index page will return you to the series and/or main indexes.

Copy Protection 101

Back in the "good ol' days", before CDs and DVDs (and CD and DVD burners), games were distributed on floppy disks. Unlike CDs and DVDs which were originally meant to be read-only, floppies were designed to be writeable multiple times, just like hard drives. Unfortunately for program designers, this meant that almost any program out there could easily be copied onto this portable media and distributed to others *for free*, without having to buy the program from the creators instead. This was especially bad for game designers, as computer games generally require much more intensive (and expensive) development that many other types of software.

Since home computer gaming was still a fledgling business, the game designers of the time had to find some way to protect their profits. Thus, copy protection was born.

Since there was no effective way to prevent end users from copying their games, the designers came up with another way of limiting distribution...the manual check. This common CP mechanism took many forms over the years, but always followed the same basic principle: requiring the gamer to reference his (or her, or its) manual while playing the game. The idea was that, while copying a disk might be easy, copying a manual was much more annoying, which would discourage potential software pirates.

Earlier Sierra manual checks were quite blatant, requiring the player to look up certain words, pictures, etc. and enter them into the program to proceed (or even to begin). As time went on, the game designers began to disguise these checks, integrating them into game puzzles. Eventually, manual checks started becoming puzzles in their own right, requiring players to combine manual information with good old fashioned reasoning skills.

Though Sierra manuals were originally rather run-of-the-mill, the drive for both quality and better copy protection led them to begin creating "fun" manuals. These next-generation box inserts began taking on the flavor of the games they were made for, and often tied into the game's events in some way. For example, the manual for Leisure Suit Larry 3 takes the form of a tourism guide for the fictional Nontoonyt Island (the game's locale), and contains numerous hints (and disguised copy-protection information) relating to the places and people of that game. Manuals for the Police Quest games were written like real police handbooks, containing detailed explanations of the real-life law enforcement procedures the player needs to know to play the games effectively.

Many of these box inserts were entertainment in and of themselves. Space Quest 5's "Galactic Inquirer" is a prime example...the authors created an entire faux tabloid paper, complete with absurd stories, interviews, and advertisements (all with a sci-fi twist, of course). This is evident in the fact that, of the few original manuals that remain intact today, many are quite sought after.

But...time marches on. Although Sierra continued to produce these excellent extras right up to the end of their adventure game days, the fact remains that those days did, in fact, end. From approximately 1997-98 onward, Sierra more or less ceased to make adventure games altogether. Although several sequels to Sierra's more popular games were planned (and even partially developed), they were ultimately canned. The few "adventure" games that did make it through the company's backslide tended to take the form of non-adventure spinoffs (Mask of Eternity, Leisure Suit Larry Casino, etc.), intended to take advantage of other demographics to suppliment the fading adventure gaming market. Eventually, the Sierra of old ceased to exist altogether.

Because the technologies of today render manual checks more-or-less obsolete (*cough scanners cough*), modern-day copy protection tends to take the form of anti-burn coding, designed to prevent game discs from being copied to begin with.

The Internet has provided a unique opportunity to ressurect these abandoned games of yesteryear; games of such relatively small size can easily be transmitted across the world in the blink of an eye. The only obstacle is finding ways to distribute the non-ditigal content of the manuals as well. Unfortunately, due to both the rarity of certain manuals and the moral objections many gamers (used to) have about distributing them, some copy-protection information can be very difficult to come by. I had to bend over backwards to find some of this stuff.

It's up to you...

That's why I need your help. There are at least a couple of games whose information I still don't have, as well as some other games I may have completely overlooked. If you see any 'null' entries in the SCPC, or know of a Sierra game I missed, please get in contact with me. If you're willing to provide the missing information, I'm willing to include it (and credit you accordingly).

Please...if you can help, please do. Future generations of adventurer gamers depend on it! :)


Contact information

If you can help fill the gaps in the SCPC, please drop me a line at my e-mail address:
captain_ascii@hotmail.com
or contact me at either The Virtual Broomcloset or SpaceQuest.Net. I frequent the message boards of both these sites regularly.

You can also drop by my homepage, The Captain's Corner, to learn a little more about me, though I fear there isn't much more to tell.

Please note: I will NOT generally respond to hint requests or other non-CP game questions...I don't have that kind of time. Hints for the games themselves can easily be found all over the Internet. In particular, I recommend UHS Hints for Sierra-esque hints, and GameFAQs for walkthroughs.

I will also not respond to anyone who deliberately writes like a retarded 5th-grader. I don't mind occasional grammar errors, constant mispellings, or people who don't write English as their first language...but anyone who writes to me with sentences like "OMG ur copi thing rox so hrd ROFLOL!" is begging for an ass-kicking.


Cap'n Ascii has gone AWOL

Schloss Ritter says...
I've been unable to contact him, so some of this page is pretty much outdated information. I had nothing to do with the original SCPC project, and I'm only updating SCPC to include the copy protection for Laura Bow that was conspicuously missing. It was sent to me by Sahil Javeri, another member of a torrent site that I reposted the SCPC on after I couldn't find it online anymore. - May 3, 2007

Back to the main SCPC index