Knights Of Xentar Code Wheel !link! -

In the mid-1990s, software piracy was rampant due to the proliferation of floppy disk drives, CD burners (emerging), and BBS (Bulletin Board System) culture. Publishers responded with various forms of “physical Digital Rights Management (DRM).” One common method was the —requiring the user to enter a specific word from a specific page of the manual. More sophisticated was the code wheel (or “decoder wheel”): a rotating paper device that generated unique codes.

Nostalgia and retro-collecting: why code wheels still matter knights of xentar code wheel

Some fan sites still host scanned wheels you can print, cut out, and assemble with a brad fastener. In the mid-1990s, software piracy was rampant due

(originally Dragon Knight III in Japan) was a bawdy, humorous JRPG that brought an unusual form of gatekeeping to western DOS screens. The Mechanics of the Wheel Nostalgia and retro-collecting: why code wheels still matter

: When prompted, the game would display a set of icons or names. The player would rotate the wheel to match these inputs, and the resulting code visible through a "window" on the wheel was entered into the game to continue. Modern Preservation and Access