A discussion on Slashdot again reminded me of one of the most odd game copy protection things I've ever seen.

Ages ago, I got a game collection for Commodore 64 called 2 Hot 2 Handle, which had - I think - Shadow Warriors, Total Recall, Golden Axe and Ivan Ironman's Super Off Road. (Whoa, memory serves me well, if MobyGames is to be believed.)

Now, I think Shadow Warriors and IISOR worked fine, but Golden Axe and Total Recall had curious feature: the copy protection clankered the drive a lot, which could mean only one thing: A busted disk.

With a little help from my father, the thing was sent back, by mail, across the country, to the store it was bought from. Some time later, the thing came back with a note that said something like "The games are okay! If they don't work, turn the disk drive to its side." With a helpful diagram, too! (I think I'll scan it and put it here if I find it. =)

I think they just returned the exact same disks, because the game definitely did not work - but once I flipped the drive to horizontal position, yep, the thing worked just fine!

(As a side note, "Shadow Warriors" is not the same thing as Shadow Warriors, aka Ninja Gaiden. I bet a lot of people got disappointed. =)

Update, March 18, 2006: Yup, obviously, I could find the thing. Scan is above. Also of note that I was still confused about the whole Shadow Warriors thing: Both of the games were marketed as Shadow Warriors!...

Okay, here's yet another of those opinion pieces that sure should have been published like million years ago, when the topic was still even borderline relevant. Kingdom Hearts.

Even seeing KH makes me worried. Reading about KH makes me even more worried.

Why? Wrong Disney, that's what's the problem. Wrong Disney.

Every time I see the game, I keep thinking of Disney animated movies. Now, I'm yet another random ignorant European. Disney stuff is big here, really big. But one should make it abundantly clear that it's not the animated movies that are so cool. It's the comics.

Let's see: In FF7, Cid was smoking all the time. Wikipedia says he got a frigging straw instead. Oo! Disney being kid-friendly. Can't smoke in a kiddie game, right? Er... one of the funniest random inconsequential jokes in the Finnish Donald Duck mag was a random poster on the background in one of the comics: "Tar your lungs with style!" Want more proof? Almost every bad guy has a stump of cigars in mouth. Not to even mention the police, dammit.

It's just my observation that the games seem to draw too much of inspiration from the movies and not quite enough inspiration from the comics. Or that's how the whole deal seemed to me when I looked at the materials. There's a great deal more material in the comics. Heck, there's tons of great material for a RPG in the Carl Barks stories.

In closing, um... I don't really have a good point, aside of the fact that I hereby declare that I won't be buying KH games until they have the trash dragon as a summon. =)