We copied the (100% pirated) cassettes very carefully in CZ, never mind recording fancy radio waves. And it was still unreliable as hell!
The magnetic cassette loading was sometimes more suspenseful than the actual loaded game :-)
Gamified by live-tuning the cassette head with a screwdriver...
I remember the early games on Amstrad CPC464 were pretty easy to copy. Then game makers started compressing the signal heavily in order to shorten load time, which at the same time made cassettes much harder to copy due to increased sensitivity to errors.
The sound was pretty different too. I still remember the sound of the Sorcery tape which was a lot more distorted than the early games :)
Luckily, nowadays you can still get that suspenseful experience by attempting to flash BIOS/UEFI on your motherboard. Will it work? Or will my motherboard get bricked in less than two minutes?
We copied the (100% pirated) cassettes very carefully in CZ, never mind recording fancy radio waves. And it was still unreliable as hell!
The magnetic cassette loading was sometimes more suspenseful than the actual loaded game :-) Gamified by live-tuning the cassette head with a screwdriver...