Found via: https://hackers.town/@CyberpunkLibrarian/112046696080448828

Okay, I found this on Reddit and I had to share it.

A guy shows up in r/bbs, a subreddit dedicated to classic and new computer bulletin board systems. I’m a big fan. Anyway, this guy shows up and says: Hey, does anyone remember the BBS game my dad wrote? It was called Buccaneer, and it was a pirate game you played on BBSes. Dad died six and a half years ago and I just wonder if anyone heard of his game?

Turns out… people have heard of Buccaneer.

One person has it running on their board. Another person was able to share the ZIP file for others to put it on their boards. Oh no! It was software you had to buy if you wanted the full version of it. But Dad is gone, and the kiddo has no idea how to open up the software to everyone.

No problem, someone posted a quick C programme that will generate keys for you. The kid might be crying because now even more people can play his dad’s game.

There’s some kinda lesson here in abandonware, but also in humanity. This kid may or may not own the copyrights to his dad’s stuff. Who knows? But one thing he certainly doesn’t have is the ability to make it work.

But because of a few folks on the Internet, running some old software, and someone who took a few minutes to write a keygen? Well, his dad is still out there somewhere, and he’s playing pirates.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bbs/comments/1b626zo/curious_if_anyone_remember_my_fathers_door_game/

  • @VieuxQuebEnglish
    17•3 months ago

    That’s refreshing from the normal News cycle.

    Thanks for sharing. BBS’s and epic pinball are the reasons for my interest in computer as a kid. I would watch my friend go on BBS’s and play text based game and download ASCII art all day to the point I learned a lot the got my first real computer (386 sx), I had a coco3 as a kid but that was just BASICS with no floppy or tape to load or save programs.

    The 386 was such a new world of possibilities especially with software downloaded from BBS’s, took ages but got lots of kool games and music files (.mod) etc… of course porn for a young teen was also nice lol.