Code wheel
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A code wheel is a type of copy protection used on older computer games, often those published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The wheels were sold with physical games, and upon starting the game or
A code wheel from the 1989 game Tunnels of Armageddon
Star Control
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Star Control: Famous Battles of the Ur-Quan Conflict, Volume IV is an action-strategy video game developed by Toys for Bob and published by Accolade. It was originally released for MS-DOS and Amiga in
Code wheel
…to fly, it was impossible for crackers to remove it from the game without destroying the entire gameplay. A 3-ply code wheel, used in games such as Star Control and The Fool's Errand, retained the back wheel with printed responses and the front wheel with holes, and added further "middle" wheels between the…
Sega Genesis cover art by Boris Vallejo
The mock-up image that Paul Reiche used to secure a publisher for the game. According to Reiche, "the idea was 3D space combat with the sort of asymmetrical match-ups we'd done with Archon."
Paul Reiche III, Fred Ford, and Rob Dubbin give a postmortem of the game's development at GDC 2015.