Often times when a game is cracked something is removed from it other than the protection.

For exampel, vorpal usually gets stripped. crunching the game better and using a different fast loader can make up for that, but some games do something more interesting than showing a lucasfilm or activision logo, or a static picture.

Necromancer and Rainbow Walker, for example.

When they start loading the main program, they play strange sound effects during the process. as each block is read, the sid chip is modulated by it's contents. The cracks don't do this of course.

Perplexian Challenger is another example of a non standard load. It plays a repeating simple fanfare that slowly increases in pitch as many different text screens are shown during the loading process, building up to a crescendo. If you fastload it in an emulator, all of that is skipped, and it just does the final sound effect and jumps to "PRESENTED IN PANA-PERPLEX!"

ANd of course many tape games have loaders that do animation and play music.

In my opinion there isn't yet a proper crack for necromancer. I have it imaged onto a .d64, error protection intact, and it works fine under emulation already.

In my opinion the intro for a proper crack of necromancer would simply be white text in the center of the screen saying "decrunching necromancer" and going through the same series of sound effects the original loader did, while a snazzy scroller goes past lower down. pressing space would cause the intro to fast forward, and stop pausing during the sound effects. It would then go to the trainer/hiscore screen. The intro would also end after the last normal sound effect bleep.

WEll as far as I know, only two games used it. The two I mentioned, and it's definitely interesting. Rainbow walkers was the more interesting of the two.

I wasn't aware that most people considered it a flaw in the loader. Seems to me it was a way to attempt to entertain people during the loading process, and it worked when I was a kid.

I'm well aware that many people would find it annoying now, which is why i'd have an option to skip it. But it's very nostalgic for me, okay?

Strangely enough, my copy of rainbow walker had that loader, but zero disk protection on it!

Try perplexian challenger, with no fastloader of any kind. it's less annoying.

Oh by the way. disk versions of zaxxon and sentinel are not quite as easy to copy as they appear. Zaxxon glitches so that every time you die you instead beat the level after 3 seconds. ANd sentinel just crashes if it's not properly copied. Most crackers just went for the tape versions, which were identical in gameplay and easier to hack. Synapse DID use some extra protection.

I know of four synapse disk loaders i've seen in action.

1) Blank and border change. This one just blanks the screen and changes it's colors a lot. I saw this one on pharaoh's curse. Error protection.
2) Sound Effect loader. I've seen this one on necromaner and rainbow walker. Uses error protection, and invalid checksum on most of the data blocks (the bleep loader ignored the checksum of course).
3) Color text Loader v1. Sentinal and zaxxon, probably others. A couple lines of text show, and the color alternates between two similar ones, like dark and light blue, or dark and light green.
4) Color changing text loader v2. Encounter, and possibly others, used this one. No drive rattles, but hard to copy the disk. Before the text showed it gave a message saying DRIVE WILL PAUSE PLEASE WAIT. Protection check is performed there. I think it does some decryption in the drive. It then block loads the game one block at a time, just like color loader v1.
5) Relax. this one was unprotected, because it's useless without the hardware. No special loader trickery at all!

I would actually like to see images of originals for Sentinel, and new york city/air support. I've gotten all the others from gamebase.



PS: necromancer defeated isepic. Game crashes on player death!