Moderator: pavero
I'll try and make a TZX tomorrowR-Tape wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 9:10 am Thanks for your efforts on this Frankie.
I agree on both conflicting points - it is a lot of effort to go to for an illegal crack, and it is unusual that Vortex doesn't get a mention.
So that doesn't help!
@Alessandro has a good nose for things like this too, just in case.
Any chance you can make the TZX available for further scrutinty?
Thank you very much. My conclusion from this is that these Italian releases from before 1993 can go online, or is that a wrong way to look at it, Admins?Oloturia wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 5:52 pm As many (or perhaps all) of Nuova Newel's releases, it's a cracked game, but it wasn't illegal.
Back then, copying software was not unlawful, as copyrights on software weren't claimable. Some authors tried to print the source code and tried to put the rights on the text, as it was a book, but I think that the workaround did not have good results.
G.B.Max, the nickname that was behind most of the software cracking in Italy in the 1980's, said in an interview that they tried to get an agreement with the British software houses, mainly Mastertronic, but they turned down because they weren't interested in a smaller market as the Italian one, maybe because they feared that the localization costs would be higher than the revenues.
Nuova Newel, among others, decided to exploit the law loophole and the lack of official distributors to flood the Italian market with unofficial releases, breaking the copy protections and translating the instructions. In the same interview, G.B.Max said that sometimes the numbers of the copies sold by just the Nuova Newel's shop in Milan was higher than the copies sold in all the UK.
So yes, it was worth to make all that work, because those pirated copies sold A LOT.
Some years later, Mastertronic spawned Mastertronic Italia, that later teamed with other companies (and ex-pirates too!) and so some "official" distribution appeared also in Italy. Obviously John Holder, that was leader of Mastertronic Italia, have a different point of view from G.B.Max's one, as he battled vigorously the crackers.
After 1992, copying software was not legal anymore, but this did not curb piracy. It just moved from the front shop window to the backroom, where the same shop owners that had the regular games, sold also the pirated ones. Amiga games could cost something like 50/100K L., that's 50/100€ of today, while the pirated version costed something around 10K L. more or less. The crackers anyway weren't Italian. Prated games arrived from Germany where the crackers were more skilled and had a better access to the European market. Italian distributors were slow, and by the time the games were imported in Italy, the north European crackers did already the job. Lacking the skills and the games, Italian piracy scene just disappeared (with a few exceptions).
Just one thing I cannot explain. The shop that sold the Nuova Newel's game in the video shows and address in Reggio Emilia. I've never seen such tapes, despite living not very far from Reggio. I wonder if it was some agreement between the shop in Milan and another one in Reggio or if it was an unofficial copy of the unofficial copy.
Trivia: AFAIK Nuova Newel still exists (at least a few years ago, when someone I know tried to contact them) but it's in the cellphone repairing business.
It’s fine with me no matter what the result will be. I just bought it to see what it was, in case it was something unique 
Yes there are lots of precedent, mostly inherited from Martijn's WoS. For instance:
Agreed.
I’ll preserve it sometime next week. What is TOS?Einar Saukas wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 6:14 pm It doesn't make sense to preserve "bootleg" copies that someone recorded at home (although TOS could be interested in them too?). However I think we better preserve professionally made releases with widespread distribution, because of their historical relevance in certain countries, even in cases their legality could not be confirmed.
