Pirates! by Microprose was one of my favorite C64 game. If you tried to make a backup of this disk you probably ran into some trouble. Like most Microprose games it contained copy protection.

Pirates! disk was protected by TWO type of protection. First was on disk protection called Rapidlok, more specific Rapidlok V6. There are parameters to crack the protection – see my Parameter Master list.

OK so now you have a working copy of this great game, then the second type of copy protection pops up. It’s the manual look up – argh I hate those. You need to know when the “Treasure Fleet” and the “Silver Train” will arrive. You had to find this info in the semi-thick manual.

IF you enter the wrong info the game will get harder and you can not win any fencing battles. Plus your health was diminished to fair, your crew stripped down to 8 or 10, your ship would have no guns and everyone was at war with you! You can’t have that so here is a “Cheat sheet” from the pages of the magazine:

Here is the PDF: Pirates Silver Treasure Fleet Sheet
Thanks & Credits to: Craig A. Ernster

This is in text format on the wiki at HERE:
The Treasure Fleet & The Silver Train

But that’s not as cool at the original scans like in the PDF file!

Here is my code wheel scans for the game PIPE DREAM. Again I sacrificed my original code wheel so you don’t have to. I was going to scan in each position and then do a ton of photoshop editing, BUT the holes just didn’t line up correctly. Example is if I got the Violet box lined up perfectly then the Green box would be off, etc. So I tried to make the box hole larger and didn’t like the out come. SO I separated the two parts and scanned them in!

Here is what the original code wheel looks like. In my scans I made the black stand out better on the red. Then I also converted the bottom red part to black and white which I think is easier to read and would use alot less ink when you print these out.

HERE are my scans:
Pipe Dreams-codewheel

The game Bard’s Tale III:Thief of Fate also used a code wheel form of copy protection. This game was released in 1988 Electronic Arts.

The first two Bard’s Tale games used copy protection on the disk called: Pirateslayer.

There is a chart you can use here:Bards Tale 3b

OR you can download and print out the code wheel here: Bards Tale 3

I couldn’t find a scan of the actual USA release of the Rocket Ranger Codewheel or as Cinemaware called it the Secret Decoder Wheel. SO I sacrificed my personal one to make one to share. There is a UK version, BUT the numbers are much different than the USA release.

There are also a print out that is a couple of pages long from Project 64: Rocket Ranger

Then there is also this Commodore 64 program that had the codes, BUT wouldn’t you need TWO commodore 64s running to us this one? One for the codes & one for the game:

BUT how about the original USA codewheel?  

It was actually pretty hard to copy back in the day, here look at the codes/numbers is this scan. You do NOT want the red numbers you needed the Cyan numbers UNDER the red number. The red film on the top part of the code wheel would make the red numbers vanish, which is easier to do in Photoshop. Below are my scan you can print out and use for the US release. The codes wheels, top and bottom both measure 6-1/2 inches in diameter.

Here are my scan in a ZIP file: RocketRanger-USA

DEMON STALKERS was released by Electronic Arts in 1987. It’s often compared to Gauntlet. Just look at the screen shots and most will agree.

As with most Electronics Arts disk there was copy protection in the disk called Pirateslayer.

The Code wheel is used to give health bonuses in the game.

Credit for this code wheel reproduction goes to Rekrul –

Click HERE for the code wheel –> DemonStalkers-codewheel <–

Here is the Curse of the Azure Bonds code wheel. This one is very similar to another code wheel by SSI for the game Pool of Radiance. Again, print out and use an Exact-o knife to cut the square windows in the top part (the smaller circle).