http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-12-03-your-amiga-games-are-likely-dying

via https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/7iwbfe/your_amiga_games_are_likely_dying

Interesting read. I was getting up and ready to ridicule the overly dramatic title of the article, taking into account the fact that any Amiga game one could possibly think of is readily available online, but the guys the article is about certainly know their stuff and their idealism is nothing but commendable. For starters, it's true that most ADF files of Amiga games available online are copies of cracked versions that may have been altered in any number of ways (the pirated version of Turrican 3 that I grew up with was missing the entire final world!). It actually is pretty disturbing that at least the original versions of many Amiga games may soon or already be lost forever which is even more likely in case of games from less popular platforms, as the guy in the article says. One can only hope that everyone gets their shit together and all remotely meaningful games ever made will be archived and eventually made available to the public.

I've heard of this SPS project before, which I guess was about archiving only originals, not cracked versions. How normal was it for the pirated version to be lacking so much? Isn't there e.g. a full pirated version of Turrican 3 then, including the final world? The version you mention sounds like some kind of early pirated version either of some pre-release version of the game, or then that specific pirate group did poo poo. What I recall seeing some ADF archives, most games had several different release versions from different pirate groups.

EDIT: Ok while I was at it, I checked some old ADF archive, and it contained maybe 8 or so different versions of Turrican 3, by different pirate groups. One of the releases was clearly marked as "beta", so I wonder if that is the incomplete version you remember seeing? I presume at least most of the other releases contain all the gaming content, including the final world.

I do recall from my childhood e.g. playing the pirated version of Garrison (the great Gauntlet-clone on Amiga), and it apparently was some pre-release version as all the character (Wizard, Warrior, Thief etc.) looked exactly the same. I think in the release version then a wizard actually looked like a wizard etc. I know that later some other groups released also the full release version.

The article pointed out also cosmetic changes like the pirate group adding its name to the game credits or menu, or adding the pirate's names to the default high score list, but frankly I don't care about such changes. They don't change the actual gaming experience at all.

We should conserve the pirated copies, so that people the of tomorrow will know in which state and context the games where actually played. :p

it doesn't matter if it archives official discs or not because there is 0 chance the public can get their hands on it so the only amiga games in the public hands will be cracked ones. I'm not saying the project is in vain but if they can only back them up digitally and copyright law says they shouldn't even do that, then there's next to no chance anyone in the public will get their hands on a .adf file. I'd love to get a few games condensed into 1 .adf file so I don't have to swap images so much.

Rotational velocidensity confirmed!

It's not about public getting their hands on stuff, it's about preserving stuff.
If you preserve those games, then the copyright will eventually expire. If you don't preserve anything, then of course time is an irrelevant factor, but the goal of these projects is to protect these works against time. In that regard it doesn't matter whether they will become playable 1, 10, or 100 years from now, as long as they are preserved as examples of the culture that existed once upon a time.

As long as they are not being officially sold, it really doesn't matter that much whether you play an archived version or cracked version, no money is being transferred in either case.

Of course if you are actually doing real academic research or something, I'm sure it can be arranged to have access to those preserved files one way or the other, just like academic researchers have had access to banned movies and stuff.

IIRC the file format for the SPS files is "ipf" or something like that, not "adf"...

Anyways, as the article says, at least most of the SPS files are already out there (p2p networks/torrents etc.). Apparently some people associated with SPS leak the files as they feel everyone should have access to them already now. Yes, piracy, similar to PC abandonware sites.

However, I am unsure if normal users are really looking for the SPS files anyway. Most Amiga emulator enthusiasts are probably fine with cracked adf versions of Amiga games, if the only difference is that the adf version has some pirate group name in the game credits or something, but otherwise the games are identical.

Also i recall there was specifically some Amiga space combat simulator where the original authors were even promoting the cracked version, as it would be the only version that could be run on any emulators, as if the crackers fixed some compatibility problem in the game or something. I don't recall the game's name anymore, I have a faint recollection it would have been a precursor to the I-War/Independence War space combat game that we have in GOG as well.

EDIT: I think I recall the name now, Warhead. No idea though if it really has any connection to the Independence War games, I just recall reading that sometime...

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhead_(video_game]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhead_(video_game[/url])

The Wikipedia article mentions XF5700 Mantis on the PC is a spiritual successor to Warhead, no idea if there really is any relation to Independence War...

That is correct.

"PLEASE only dump original games. Not cracked copies. And please, DO NOT send us ADF files, these are useless for presevation purposes - we can do nothing with them." "But Bartsch notes that the society can't control what happens to the files once they give them back to the people who sent the original disks. Although it's technically illegal, many contributors simply upload the image files to the internet."

It's the people who provide them the games to preserve, if that statement is correct, not so much anyone inside the society.

On one hand it's a bit puzzling why someone would go through all that trouble to provide genuine copies and then upload them to illegal circulation, but on the other hand, it can be argued that since those files have been in illegal circulation for the last 30 years, at least sharing some copies which are not cracked means taking warez groups and their names out of the equation and putting the genuine games in their place.

Sure, it may have been a pre-release version and as you already noticed, there were other pirated versions that are presumably complete. In this case it's not particularly important anyway since Factor 5 even provide ADF files for many of their Amiga games on their website (the Turrican games officially only as backups for owners of the originals, though, but come on). Interestingly that Turrican 3 version comes on a single ADF file that has the standard size of 880 kb and is yet complete and includes all the content from disk 2, go figure.

Anyway, my point is that pirate versions of games can be in all sorts of conditions, I've seen a lot more weird stuff back in the day, a classic are corrupted sprites, I also had a version of SWIV that always crashed before the ending (may also have been based off a beta version or something). Maybe in some cases where I observed odd behaviour it may have been some copy protection scheme kicking in, who knows. Anyway, my point is that a game that is seemingly available on every website with Amiga games may very well be only available in some castrated form and it's good that somebody is trying to preserve the originals. Sure, but personally I do admire the pursuit of preserving the originals as they were released by the developers and frankly I do prefer playing games without crack intros and trainers and such. However, ironically the stuff the hackers did is in itself often also very impressive and worth preserving so I really hope that these guys try to make backups of as many versions as they can.