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We look back at the good old days of copy protection

What was so great about The Secret of Monkey Island? Pretty much everything: Ghost pirates, voodoo ladies, cannibals, trolls, and an excellent soundtrack made Monkey Island one of the most memorable adventures ever.

It was an incredibly silly game, full of inside jokes and ridiculous gags. But Monkey Island’s tongue-in-cheek sense of humor wasn’t confined to the game. It also came packed with the most hilarious anti-piracy device known to man: the ‘Dial-A-Pirate’ code wheel.

Today, we purchase digital copies of our games from services like Steam and cash in redeemable codes packed in sterile limited edition copies for in-game items. Tangible treats like Monkey Island’s code wheel, which made us treasure our old boxed copies, are a dying breed.

Like most games released during the age of adventure titles, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards asked questions that required a copy of the game’s manual before you could start playing.

But what we remember most about Larry’s first naughty adventure wasn’t his pixilated snout or failed attempts at flirting. It was its unusual age verification system, which quizzed you with strange questions. Correctly answering the game’s series of silly queries supposedly proved that you were old enough to be playing a mature game.


Above: Age verification hasn’t advanced much since the first Leisure Suit Larry game released

We doubt that it was very effective at stopping underage adventurers from joining Larry in the search for the woman of his dreams. But we’ll always remember that a Macintosh is an apple, an Apple, AND an article of clothing.


Above: A snippet of the “adult” content featured in the old DOS game, Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards

Dec 30, 2008


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See the giant genitalia and naughty nymphs that made it past EA’s army of censors