The Robocop III Dongle - What happened Gary?

[Jim]

I've always been under the impression that the reason you "left" Ocean was due to your misjudgement of the effectivness of the Robocop 3 Dongle, and public support of it.

Very brave decision to make at the time, and if it had worked who knows maybe the Amiga would still be mainstream now?

I seem to remember at the time the words you used were "This will stop the average man in the street from copying the game".

But as everyone knows (and surely you must of known?), in the Amiga world at the time the average man in the street was copying cracked games.

Robocop 3 was cracked very easily from what I hear, and hence the dongle method was never tried again by Ocean.

I understand that it's personal, but would put paid to a lot of rumours if you could give us your side of the story - did you really have that much faith in the dongle?

[Paulie]

I'll leave the guts of this to Gary - but as far as I am aware Gary left a long time after RoboCop III, so I wouldn't think it would have had anything to do with it.

I used to do the tape protection at Ocean many moons ago - we weren't daft nothing is unbreakable - not even today - most protection schemes get broken relatively easily.

However what a lot of people miss is this - you have to be seen to protect your copyright in order for your copyright to be protected - look at today's "game copy world" there's cracks for everything on there - so why do publisher's still spend millions licensing these protection schemes? Simple if you don't try and protect then you try and prosecute the "big pirates" many government's courts won't entertain your action.

As you said - at the time everyone was dealing in cracked Amiga software - that's why Ocean tried to stave the piracy with the dongle. It didn't work. Que sera sera. What can you do other than try?


- Paulie.

[Gary]

Thanks, Paul. You are absolutely correct in every respect.

Firstly, the only addendum to Paul's statement is a commercial one; the largest sales of any title (back then) occurred within the first week of release.
Not everyone who had an Amiga had programming skills and we were attempting to deter casual copying at this level. Our hope was to delay the proliferation of copied disks for a short amount of time in order to maximise sales. The measure certainly prevented the casual - non-programmer - copier from just duplicating disc-to-disc, but I agree it didn't take long for the 'professional' pirates to copy and distribute the game.

The extent to which it worked is debatable, but at least we tried. In the history of my career at Ocean, Robocop3 and the dongle were a pretty minor event/issue and it puzzles me why people seem to attach so much significance to it. It really wasn't that important.

Secondly, I have no problem with you wanting to discuss the whys and effectiveness of the Robocop 3 dongle, but do you not think it just a little rude to be asking someone on an open forum the circumstances under which they left their job? This is not only a very personal question, but a highly intrusive one. As Paul stated, I left Ocean 2 or 3 years after Robocop 3. Your insinuation above

'the reason you "left" Ocean'

that I was fired from Ocean (at any time) is also insulting and inappropriate.

[Edit] I notice that you have written a number of 'baiting' comments already in this forum and I would suggest they may be treated more credibly were they not posted behind the spinelessness of anonymity.

[Swainy]

The only thing that annoyed me about the dongle, is that it wouldn't work on an A600 (which I had at the time) and so Robocop 3 wouldn't load. Instead I had to buy a cracked copy to play the game.

I guess it was my own fault for buying one of those poxy A600's!

[Jim]

Gary said:

Secondly, I have no problem with you wanting to discuss the whys and effectiveness of the Robocop 3 dongle, but do you not think it just a little rude to be asking someone on an open forum the circumstances under which they left their job? This is not only a very personal question, but a highly intrusive one. As Paul stated, I left Ocean 2 or 3 years after Robocop 3. Your insinuation above
that I was fired from Ocean (at any time) is also insulting and inappropriate.

With all due respect Gary, this is a public forum.

You were once somebody I remember reading articles about in magazines and wether you enjoyed it or just took it as part of the job you allowed yourself (and your company) praise/criticisim by appearing in those magazines.

Now the reason I found this site is because it is public, and not some private reunion club - although it feels like it some times

You had the option to ignore this site and continue with your everyday life, join the site and communicate with your ex-workforce privately or become a fully fledged active member of the site, complete with stars & cartoon avatar.

Since you took the latter option I don't think my actions were insulting or inappropiate.

Gary said:

I notice that you have written a number of 'baiting' comments already in this forum and I would suggest they may be treated more credibly were they not posted behind the spinelessness of anonymity.

Baiting comments? This was more of a post for you to set the record straight - try Googling your name with the word dongle and you'll find lots of rumours, which as you have stated above are untrue.

As for me hiding behind a spineless anonyminity? Even if I told you who I was you wouldn't know me - like probably many visitors to this site I was just a young geeky kid who sometimes took a liking to Ocean games, read all the magazine reviews/articles and in later life found myself a retro-geek

[roberthazelby]

.... moving swiftly on...

I remember at the time of the dongle release a number of magazine openly praising Ocean for being brave enough to try and release something like this.

If memory serves me correctly, I think Fairlight cracked the game a day before the official release date. I could be wrong though.

English Software released their 1987 Amiga title Leviathan with a dongle. Not a very good game.

Can anyone reveal how the dongle on Robocop 3 actually worked? Did it contain some kind of lookup table?

Rob (who hopes the argument above quickly stops)

[Mark Jones Junior]

Jim said:

Baiting comments? This was more of a post for you to set the record straight - try Googling your name with the word dongle and you'll find lots of rumours, which as you have stated above are untrue.

LOTS of rumours? Hardly! I 'googled' '"Gary Bracey" + dongle' and came up with one thread in an 'Atari' forum.

www.atari-forum.com/ftopic3703-0-asc-0.html

That hardly constitues 'lots of rumours'.

[Mark Jones Junior]

Jim said:

Now the reason I found this site is because it is public, and not some private reunion club - although it feels like it some times

Correct me if I'm wrong Bill but wasn't the MAIN purpose of this site for us all ex-workmates to gas about the old days? The fact that anyone can come and join in is extra. Bill didn't HAVE to allow people who didn't work at 'Ocean' to join. The fact that they can makes it a much more interesting experience, for us and them. We never really got to speak to the end users at the time. People are interested and that's good.

But at the end of that day it IS, as you put it, 'a private reunion club'. It just so happens that a lot of people find coming along to our 'private reunions' interesting!

[Paulie]

With all due respect Jim - public forum or not - there should be a modicum of civility towards its members.

There are a million ways to ask about the R3 dongle without the insinuations. Whether anyone likes or dislikes the old Ocean software is immaterial - this site is here to relive the old days and invite people into the history behind the games that you either loved or hated.

To question why someone left a company or insinuate the reasons behind their departure on a public forum or not IS wholy innapropriate on any forum.

Now - shall we move on???

[Bill Harbison]

Mark said:

Correct me if I'm wrong Bill but wasn't the MAIN purpose of this site for us all ex-workmates to gas about the old days? The fact that anyone can come and join in is extra. Bill didn't HAVE to allow people who didn't work at 'Ocean' to join. The fact that they can makes it a much more interesting experience, for us and them. We never really got to speak to the end users at the time. People are interested and that's good.

But at the end of that day it IS, as you put it, 'a private reunion club'. It just so happens that a lot of people find coming along to our 'private reunions' interesting!

Got it in one. It's nice to get questions from people who liked our games - as long as they don't piss us off.

[Gary]

Ok, Thanks for the support, guys.

It's forgotten and moving on......

IIRC, the system was devised by the co-founder of Quicksilva (was it John Hollins?). That's about as much info as I can remember.

[roberthazelby]

Gary said:

IIRC, the system was devised by the co-founder of Quicksilva (was it John Hollins?). That's about as much info as I can remember.

John Hollis

[Barry]

Who wrote timegate...

I think that was the first speccy game I seriously played.

[Paulie]

Hey guys - the dongle kind of still works! I was just reminding myself of what Robocop 3D was like, and guess what; a straight IPF image of R3D doesn't work on the emulator 'cos of the dongle check! ;D

[Gary]

Paulie said:

Hey guys - the dongle kind of still works! I was just reminding myself of what Robocop 3D was like, and guess what; a straight IPF image of R3D doesn't work on the emulator 'cos of the dongle check! ;D

Does this mean I can have my job back?