Manuals of various versions

Discuss other PoP1 related things here.
David
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Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

I found a site that has manuals for some versions of PoP1: http://gamesdbase.com/game/apple-ii/pri ... ersia.aspx
(And PoP2: http://gamesdbase.com/game/nintendo-sne ... flame.aspx )

Some have things that are not in the others. For example, the Sega CD manual has a letter from the princess.
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

Other interesting things:

The GameBoy manual has a screenshot of a room that does not exist, on page 5.

About the potions:
DOS: Learn to recognize different kinds of potions by sight.
NES/GameBoy: Learn to remember the different kinds of potions by their locations.
Secretly admitting that they are indistinguishable? :)
SEGA CD manual wrote: Save: This saves the game at the floor you are currently on.
If you’re past a locked gate, the game will start from that point.
Make sure to save the game at those points, so that you don’t have
to start from the entrance to that floor. Games are automatically
saved under the name you’re currently using.
The description ("past a locked gate") matches the level 3 checkpoint.
(And now that I think of it, this also matches the SNES checkpoints.)
I tried this (on the SEGA CD version) some weeks ago, but:
* I did not find any checkpoint other than the one on level 3. (Though I did not try level 8 and 9.)
* On level 3, if I save the game after the checkpoint, then at loading, the level starts from the beginning.
(But with the number of HPs I had the checkpoint!)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

The Spanish manual has an extra section about copy protection.
I typed it in, in case someone wants to translate it... (see attachment)
esp_pira.zip
(1.47 KiB) Downloaded 146 times
The French manual has some (parts of) sentences not in the English version:
(Translations by Google Translate)
page 2 wrote: Mise en scène, cascades et effets spéciaux réglés par Jordan Mechner.
Directed, stunts and special effects regulated by Jordan Mechner.

Doublures: David Mechner, Michael Coffey et Tina La Deau.

Par ordre d'apparition à l'écran:
In order of appearance on the screen:
What is this, a movie? :)
page 5 wrote: Jusqu'à ce que le dernier grain de sable tombe au fond du sablier, elle attendra .... puis n'ayant plus rien, elle se jettera alors par la fenêtre.
Until the last grain of sand falls to the bottom of the hourglass, she waits .... then having nothing left, she then will throw herself out the window.
Ugh... Is this the answer to the poll's question?
page 11 wrote: N'oubliez pas cependant que le fait de lâcher le bouton aura pour conséquence immédiate de vous faire lâcher votre prise... plongeon spectaculaire puis viande pilée au menu !
Remember though that releasing the button will have the immediate effect of making you release your grip ... spectacular plunge then crushed meat on the menu!

A ce moment du combat vos chances de victoire seront tellement infimes que je ne pourrais m'empêcher d'assister à votre mort avec délectation.
At this time of the battle your chances of winning will be so tiny that I could not help but witness your death with delight.
Ouch...
page 12 wrote: • Vous pouvez traverser les buissons de pointes acérées sortant du sol brutalement sous vos pieds et systématiquement mortelles SI ... vous les avez repérés préalablement et que vous vous avanciez de manière à ressembler à un certain oiseau dans la gueule d'un crocodile.
• You can cross the bushes of sharp spikes coming out of the ground brutally under your feet and systematically deadly IF ... you have identified them previously and you go ahead so as to resemble a certain bird in the jaws of a crocodile.
What bird is it talking about? Maybe this?
page 13 wrote: De toute façon vous êtes là pour ça, et vous n'avez rien d'autre à perdre que: La Vie, La Princesse et Un Royaume (dans le désordre).
Anyway you're here for, and you have nothing to lose but: The Life, The Princess and A Kingdom (in disorder).
page 14 wrote: Pour les autres; vous noterez que vous commencez le jeu avec 3 points de Vie ( ou de force etc...).
For the others; you will notice that you start the game with 3 Life points (or force etc ...).

Les événements qui peuvent vous causer la perte d'un de ces fameux points de Vie (etc ...) sont:
Events that can cause you the loss of one of these famous Life points (etc ...) are:

• L'arrivée inopinée d'une partie du plafond.
• The unexpected arrival of part of the ceiling.

Si un point (etc...?)reste obscur dans ce domaine n'hésitez pas à reprendre la fastidieuse lecture de cette page depuis le début.
If a point (etc ...?) remains unclear in this area do not hesitate to resume the tedious reading this page from the beginning.
That last one is a different meaning of point... :)
page 15 wrote: Pour la rejoindre, vous devrez trouver votre chemin à travers le dédale labyrinthique de piéges et de gardes que sont les donjons, puis à travers le Palais, tout aussi dangereux mais infiniment plus confortable, et enfin dans la tour elle-même.
To join, you need to find your way through the labyrinthine maze of traps and guards that are the dungeons, then through the palace, just as dangerous but infinitely more comfortable, and finally in the tower itself.
:)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by Andrew »

David wrote:
The Spanish manual has an extra section about copy protection. I typed it in, in case someone wants to translate it...
Here's my attempt:
Spanish PoP Manual wrote:
Protection System

Prince of Persia is equipped with an original protection system which aims to make things more difficult for pirates, although without harming those who purchase software and deserve all our respect.

At a certain time (between levels) the game will stop and a message will appear on the screen asking you to look in your manual for a given page, line and word. Once you've done so, you will have to press a key, entering a screen where you'll see different bottles of magic potion, each marked with a letter; you have to drink the one with the letter corresponding to the first letter of the word that you looked at in the manual.

As the protection is based on the original manuals in English (IBM and Apple versions) and French (Amiga, Amstrad CPC and Atari versions), this Spanish manual includes at the end, in two appendices, the original manuals as reduced versions. Each block of paragraphs separated by a centered boldfaced number corresponds to a page of the original manual and the number indicates the page in question. The line count is facilitated by separating these five to a paragraph. With regard to the words it should be noted that in the French original (Atari, Amstrad CPC and Amiga versions), the apostrophe separates two different words; for example, l'extinction counts as two words within the line.

Nevertheless, it should remind all users that piracy is a crime under the law and one who thinks that a protection system is a provocation to violate it, as a sport, is like one who believes that a closed door is an invitation to enter a home.

People with an irresponsible attitude who systematically pirate programs cause the greatest harm to users, especially those who pay, because they can not enjoy a future with quality programs like Prince of Persia.

It has required years of work by several people to create this program, during which the author and his collaborators have needed to eat, go to the movies and enjoy all those things that any honest person deserves in return for their work. If they are deprived of their hard-earned money it is evident that one day they will be devoted to something else.
Wow, that's quite a lecture! I don't remember the English manual having anything remotely similar in it.
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by oitofelix »

Spanish PoP Manual wrote: Protection System

Prince of Persia is equipped with an original protection system which aims to make things more difficult for pirates, although without harming those who purchase software and deserve all our respect.

[...]

Nevertheless, it should remind all users that piracy is a crime under the law and one who thinks that a protection system is a provocation to violate it, as a sport, is like one who believes that a closed door is an invitation to enter a home.

People with an irresponsible attitude who systematically pirate programs cause the greatest harm to users, especially those who pay, because they can not enjoy a future with quality programs like Prince of Persia.

It has required years of work by several people to create this program, during which the author and his collaborators have needed to eat, go to the movies and enjoy all those things that any honest person deserves in return for their work. If they are deprived of their hard-earned money it is evident that one day they will be devoted to something else.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Contrast this with the reference to the protection system in the MININIM manual:
MININIM manual wrote: In the original game the activation potion is designed to be used in the potion level, a copy protection mechanism employed to stop people from sharing. MININIM is free software, and we repudiate this kind of measure. Thus here activation potions may be used to handicap the kid, but certainly won’t be used to do so to you nor to your friends.
;)
Bruno Félix Rezende Ribeiro (oitofelix)
MININIM author
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

Andrew wrote:Wow, that's quite a lecture! I don't remember the English manual having anything remotely similar in it.
Well, one manual has a "Please do not make illegal copies of this software!" page: http://www.popuw.com/files/pop1manualbw.pdf
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Re: Manuals of various versions

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oitofelix wrote:Contrast this with the reference to the protection system in the MININIM manual
While I do think FOSS is great and that the Spanish manual's admonitions were way over the top, I have no problem whatsoever with PoP 1 and 2 employing such common copy-protection measures back in the day.
David wrote:Well, one manual has a "Please do not make illegal copies of this software!" page
That's much more acceptable than an entire lecture, wouldn't you agree? :)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

Andrew wrote: [...] I have no problem whatsoever with PoP 1 and 2 employing such common copy-protection measures back in the day.
I see your opinion on these is different from those on DRM.

~~~~
Andrew wrote: That's much more acceptable than an entire lecture, wouldn't you agree? :)
Maybe they thought that Spanish people need more?
Or they just wanted to fill the page?

~~~~
By the way, your translation is missing an interesting phrase:
que pretende poner las cosas algo más difíciles al usuario del parche en el ojo y el loro en el hombro,
Google translates it as:
which aims to put more difficult for the user of the eye patch and parrot on his shoulder,
I guess it should say: "the user with a patch on the eye and a parrot on the shoulder".
Arrr!

~~~~
Speaking of copy protection...
The help file of the AppleWin Apple II emulator says:
Software publishers have always looked for ways to prevent people from making unauthorized copies of their software. Today, when you buy a game, it might ask you for a word from a random page of the manual, to ensure that you have purchased the game (complete with manual) and not just copied the disk. Back in the days of the Apple II, publishers were much more direct: they simply tried to make it physically impossible to copy the disk.
When I first saw that, I immediately noticed that the first one matches PoP for DOS (and some others), and the second matches Apple II (see here) (and maybe some other versions also used custom formats?).
But then I guess there were many other games like that...

And when was that "Today"?

~~~~
All this piracy makes me want to post a screenshot I saw some time ago:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/eric- ... tId,27969/
Note the third option! :)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

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David wrote:I see your opinion on these is different from those on DRM.
Yes, it is (DRM's a whole different beast altogether). When the copy-protection mechanism is not onerous such that I as a paying customer am ill-treated, or worse even harmful to my system like Sony's rootkit, I don't have a real problem with it. PoP's copyprot is basically harmless. I have even enjoyed certain copyprot mechanisms like Another World's codewheel, which (to me) offered a fair bit of fun. I'm also not a militant FOSS activist who believes that commercial software shouldn't exist and that all software should be free. IMO both have their place in this world.
David wrote:Maybe they thought that Spanish people need more?
Or they just wanted to fill the page?
Possibly. Or perhaps the Spanish publisher was experiencing an unusually high level of piracy.
David wrote:By the way, your translation is missing an interesting phrase:
que pretende poner las cosas algo más difíciles al usuario del parche en el ojo y el loro en el hombro,
Google translates it as:
which aims to put more difficult for the user of the eye patch and parrot on his shoulder,
I guess it should say: "the user with a patch on the eye and a parrot on the shoulder".
Arrr!
:) It's not missing, I translated it as "pirate".
David wrote:When I first saw that, I immediately noticed that the first one matches PoP for DOS (and some others), and the second matches Apple II (see here) (and maybe some other versions also used custom formats?).
But then I guess there were many other games like that...
Yeah, such copyprot mechanisms were hardly uncommon. That's why I've even copied certain old disks with custom formatting and deliberate bad sectors and what not with a KryoFlux.
David wrote:And when was that "Today"?
According to Wikipedia AppleWin dates back to 1994, so I suppose that's when Mike O'Brien wrote that text.
David wrote:All this piracy makes me want to post a screenshot I saw some time ago:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/eric- ... tId,27969/
Note the third option! :)
:lol: I've never played that game, but now I plan to.
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Re: Manuals of various versions

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David wrote:But then I guess there were many other games like that...
It seems that asking a word from the manual is not even limited to games: (somewhat expectably)
For example, I recently found a list of codes for Moviesetter, an animation software for the Amiga. (linked from this page)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

I was reading the German PoP2 manual... http://popuw.com/files/pop2de.pdf
...and I found that the last line on page 14 is not German but French!
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by David »

Another thing from that German PoP2 manual:
PoP2_DE_hole.jpg
PoP2_DE_hole.jpg (10.03 KiB) Viewed 7650 times
And someone, somewhere has a tiny round bit of paper that says... you can probably figure that out. :)
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by Andrew »

David wrote:Another thing from that German PoP2 manual:
PoP2_DE_hole.jpg
And someone, somewhere has a tiny round bit of paper that says... you can probably figure that out. :)
So they cut ___ out and left a hole. Hmm... :lol:
Last edited by Andrew on October 17th, 2016, 2:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Manuals of various versions

Post by Norbert »

I don't get what you mean, David.
That PDF file contains scanned pages of a copied manual that was kept together using holes created with a hole punch.
All pages have these holes.
See the attached example, that contains part of your image and another random page.
Attachments
holes.png
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