Ultima (series) - Anti-piracy Measures

Anti-piracy Measures

In the Atari 8bit version of Ultima IV one of the floppy disks had an unformatted track. In its absence the player would lose on every fight, which would not be obvious as a copy protection effect right away as one could assume that this was just due to either lack of experience or proper equipment. The protection mechanism was subtle enough to be overlooked by the German distributor which originally delivered Atari 8bit packages with floppies that were formatted regularly, and thus these paid copies acted like pirated copies, causing players to lose every battle.

In Ultima V, there were one or two instances where ostensibly insignificant information found in the accompanying booklet were asked by person(s) encountered in the game. The game also used runic script in some places and a special language for spell names, for both of which the necessary translation tables / explanations were provided in the booklet. These can be seen as subtle copy-protection measures, well fitted for the context of history and fantasy so that a casual player didn't take them for copy protection.

Ultima VI introduced a more systematic use of copy protection in the form of in-game questions, preventing the player from progressing any further if the questions were answered incorrectly. In Ultima VII, this practice was continued, although in both games the player had an unlimited number of tries to answer the questions correctly. Answers could be obtained by consulting the manual or cloth map, although the manual released with the Ultima Collection contained all copy protection answers for every game.

In Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, the copy protection was changed slightly. Players were asked questions at two points in the game, and if they could not answer after two attempts, all NPCs said nothing but altered versions of famous quotes, such as "My kingdom for a hammer!", "Honor thy father and thy hoe, babycakes" and "Oh my, twig, I don't think we're in Britannia anymore". Everything would also be labeled "Oink!", preventing the game from being playable. From Ultima VIII onward, copy protection questions were discontinued.