History of Newsstand Cassettes for Commodore 64
Software piracy refers to various illegal activities such as copying software or other digital material without respecting copyright. Pirates include crackers who deal with overcoming or removing computer system protections, active pirates who spread material illegally and passive pirates who accept it. The pirated software therefore is a software that has identical characteristics of the original but lacks the commercial license to sale or use.
Being a highly illegal activity, it would be crazy today to sell pirated software under the light of the sun, but until 31/12/1992 it was possible to do it with a few tricks being legally tolerated, and in fact pirated software was freely sold in Italy, especially in newsstands, with many companies that carried out this activity at national or local level.
The phenomenon exploded in the 80s, when the main supports for software, and therefore for video games, were normal tape cassettes, easily duplicable and very cheap. Many magazines, like mushrooms, appeared on the newsstands enclosing tape cassettes each containing different games, often replaced by floppy disks at the time when they became cheaper media. The games were produced abroad and sold as original products in Italy simply by changing its name, thus in fact pure piracy, but which at the time was incredibly a legally tolerated activity.
To make it more clear to people who did not know that era, it is as if today an Italian company took the commercial games Call of Duty, Fifa, GTA, Minecraft, and without paying rights to anyone, starts to sell a magazine on newsstands with diskettes containing these games with altered name such as Soldatino, Calcio da Stadium, Car Thief and Mattoncini.
Going back to the 80s, the phenomenon is known in Italy as "newsstand cassette", and was incredibly successful among the videogame players of the time. This phenomenon mainly interested computers users as the consoles worked with expensive cartridges hard to duplicate. It started with pirated material for Commodore Vic-20 and Spectrum first models, then switched to pirated material for Commodore 64 (where there was an incredible boom), MSX, advanced Spectrum models and also for Commodore Amiga, with little success in this case due to media limitations of 16 bits systems, unsuitable for making compilations. The hottest period was from 1984 to 1992, although it continued also in 1993 despite the new laws. After 12/31/1992 the phenomenon tried to attract less attention by proposing very old or semi-unknown games or inventories.
The phenomenon covered exactly 10 years: the first newsstand tape cassette was RUN released in November / December 1983 dedicated to the Spectrum. The last one was the COM64 of November / December 1993 dedicated to the Commodore 64. Apart merchandise inventories re-presented again in 1994, there was an extremely late initiative by Edigamma, which in November 1996 released a 100 Games compilations produced from 1987 to 1992 in a briefcase called Top 100.
The phenomenon was born and was stimulated paradoxically also by the copyrights holders of the original games, as Italian publishers, like SIPE, initially intended to produce their newsstand compilations by paying the copyrights holders, but this proved to be impossible.
In fact, has been discovered from recent interviews by those who made SIPE magazines such as Special Program and Special Playgames, it emerged that at the time, those who had the rights to distribute games in Italy denied to sell the rights, even for a fee, for publication in compilations from newsstands, while the holders of the rights to games abroad did not trust Italians and therefore proposed unacceptable conditions.
They demanded the publishing house to buy a certain number of licences, for example, pay for the sale of 50,000 copies before were made, instead of using the usual method of being paid in proportion to what was sold, which was obviously the only acceptable method for a magazine, as the costs of the unsold has to be covered by the publisher house.
In this situation it was extremely difficult to produce compilations for newsstands by paying the rights and in order to be able to offer competitive prices and quality contents, thus pushing the market towards the pirate compilations that constituted the phenomenon of newsstand tapes. A phenomenon that was widespread in Italy, it to say that those who created the newsstands from SIPE admitted that only in 1986 a million cassettes were produced for their magazines.
The duplication of the tapes occurred at the industrial level and was carried out by the same duplication companies that duplicated music cassettes, but it was necessary to instruct these companies in order to prepare dedicated copy lines or in any case provide precise rules and calibrations since the cassettes with the games followed different rules from the musical ones, and by ignoring these rules it was possible to run into cassettes with games that did not load, as small discrepancies in the engraving can throw off the loading of a game. The presence of "turbo" software, added to save the tape by shortening the size of the games, was potentially problematic when industrial duplication was carried out, since it occurred at double speed, with the risk of altering the frequencies beyond the safety limit already modified by "turbo" software.
In essence, for production it was necessary to rely on companies that knew how to work on these boxes, otherwise faulty copies would come out.
The software, both programs and video games, were partly mutilated, in the sense that the title was changed and any reference to the authors was eliminated. Furthermore, in the case of compilations, which were the most widespread form of newsstand piracy, games composed of multiple levels that had to be loaded separately, were divided into different games, essentially a game by level, but often only the first one appeared without ever publishing the other levels because this subdivision was not possible.
In many cases, especially for the most important and therefore full-bodied games released from 1987 onwards, it was not possible to mutilate the game to get it into a pirate newsstand box and therefore or was never published in these series (most of the times), or it was published as a single game, obviously with a changed name. For example the cassette with magazine Flight Simulator 11 (Computing Videoteca - play on tape n.40) contains actually the famous game Project Stealth Fighter.
The paradox was reached with the reviews and previews of video games in many magazines that contain tapes, which reported the games with their original name (they were articles generally copied and translated by foreign magazines, obviously without permission). In fact, there was the real possibility that sooner or later on that collection was published a game, a game that had just been reviewed a few numbers before, but with a different name!
In any case, there was some chaos and confusion in the newsstands sector, even the editions of Edizioni Foglia such as the popular Full Games and the less popular Best Games began to publish pirated games with different names like the competition, but copied from extremely famous titles of the time.
For example, the Yogi Bear game from Best Games 2 was called the famous Bubble Bobble, and on the same tape the game Mask II was called Rainbow Island! Again, in Full Games 15 the Short Circuit game was called as the famous Out Run, and in Full Game 17 the unknown Shockway Rider was called by the name of the famous Solomon's key! And so on for many other similar cases. Ironically, in Best Games 4 the famous game Gryzor is called by the name of the well-known shooter Salamander, and in Full Games 16 the unknown game Snodgits is called Gryzor!
In short, they combined the technique to circumvent the laws of the time by changing names to games and the technique of attracting people by putting extremely famous names of games at the time, so the most complete confusion was served.
It has been calculated that the number of different games published on the news-stands for Commodore 64 were about 3000, which then became infinitely more because different houses published the same games of the competitors, under another name. For example the Commando game came out in total with at least 15 different names! In this way 3000 single games were able to fill the over 100 series of newsstand games that came out over 10 years.
Paradoxically, the number of pirate products was so numerous and well distributed throughout Italy that it managed to stifle enough the market of the original ones. Even the original video games were much more difficult to find, and obviously much more expensive. For the price of 1 original game, a pirate compilations could be purchased which contains a total of 40 pirated games.
The cheap collection of the original games, such as the Hit Squads and the Kixx, were just the ones to raise a little the market of the original games, thanks above all to the fact that they had fairly low price, a much higher distribution of the classic original games and above all they proposed those important juggling that very often was impossible to find in the pirate newsstand compilations. However, this did not affect the thriving market for newsstand games, especially since they were always much cheaper than any original game.
Industriality and concealment in legal piracy in Italy
In Italy the Piracy was at an industrial level because the software was pirated under the light of the sun, as was for any other normal business activity and especially because pirates were not inexperts who copied a few dozen records and cassettes but instead experts who use the same equipments of the classical industry: reproduction plants capable of manufacturing thousands of copies each day, widespread distribution through newsstands and even advertising on television or in specialised magazines.
All the major pirates of the time were in fact companies already present on the market with other types of editorial publications (magazines, newspapers, etc.) or in the field of audiovisual distribution. In short, once the business was scented, it was a matter of reconverting its already established and consolidated structures and turning them to this "new" type of production.
Amazing were the cases of the famous series of newsstands (Special Programs & C.) that put up for sale compilations of games and the "Armati" cassettes sold in stores that generally contained individual pirated games and packaged in interlocking resealable plastic cases. Easy to imagine the "creative" process that brought the finished product to the shelves. The entrepreneur made use of a classic geek, often a very young boys highly expert in cracking copy protections, then very easy to find and that in some cases had skills that were not negligible at all. To them the task of find the original software, unprotect it, translate it and repost it. Then the duplication process of the master did the rest.
The other salient aspect of Italian piracy was the modification of software. In other words, in order to hide the real author of the original software, modifications were made that consisted of a translation, the removal of any type of reference to the authors by deleting the credits and the modifying the title name. This practice was the exclusive prerogative of newsstand collections, but not necessarily: Playsoft - a brand similar to Armati, sold his products not in newsstands but in stores, adopting the same tactic.
This modification process prevented, for example, to easily identify the original author of the videogame, making it possible to switch from a game of Catacombs (Caverns of Khakfa) to Maya Adventure (Aztec Challenge) ignoring that they are always playing at a software created by Paul Norman. Even today, on forums and newsgroups, it is not uncommon to read questions like "What is the real name of the Predatore ?" and "The real name of Sala giochi ?" and so on (respectively Montezuma's Revenge and Lazy Jones, for the record).
In addition to cultural considerations, it should be noted that the spring that pushed towards the marketing of games was never creativity, but instead profit, sacrificing everything else for it: quality, packaging and care. Even the translation process to Italian, which at first could be considered an advantage, was actually a further excuse to disguise the original software. Especially since the translation was in the great majority of cases consisting in only translating "SCORE" with "POINTS". Practically useless.
Not only did the Italian translation of the game bring no improvement, but in some cases it even went as far as disrupting the original software. In this case we can only mention the use of breaking up multi-level games like Creatures or Castle of Doctor Creep, to make them compatible with tape loading or the removal of sound parts in order to save space on the tape and insert in it as many games as possible.
Was the pirated software tolerated in Italy?
It is true that at that time there was no law that protected the software in an efficient and effective way by establishing penalties for the offenders, and it is from here that the basic misunderstanding arises. But it is equally true that there have been a series of convictions to pirates during this time started from the injured parties and based on the old law on Copyright.
Below is an excerpt from an article by Mc-Micromputer number 132, published at the time of the release of the new regulation in December 31, 1992 (which effectively put an end to the piracy phenomenon).
"[...] The civil law aspects had somehow been solved by the jurisprudence (that is the judgments of the magistrates), that, after some hesitation, had considered to be able to apply the rules on the copyright also to the software, as " ingenuity creations". However, there was no deterrent to criminal sanctions, which were impossible because they were not specifically envisaged as crimes.
The illegal copy of a software program could not in fact be compared to a theft or embezzlement, because these crimes must be committed with the removal of a "thing" from the legitimate owner, while the copy of the software does not remove the availability of the good from the original holder. European Union had issued a directive, 91/250 of May 14, 1991, which required member countries to extend the legislation on copyright to software by December 31, 1992, which has been the subject of international agreements for decades. The directive also contained some specific indications concerning, among other things, the prohibition of "reverse engineering". [...] ".
As can be seen from what has just been reported, we were in a gray region that lost its color over time. The trend after the first few years was that of condemnation and therefore there are no elements to assert that newsstand compilations were legal.
Again, this site has publicly revealed for the first time, in an interview with Roberto Preatoni, the practice of pirate publishers to ask the cracker to sign a contract in which he claimed to be the author of the pirated game. Obviously a form of indemnity of responsibility on the publisher side, which in practice moved the risks of the illegal business to the cracker.
From the web, testimony also reveal the existence of lists of Software Houses not to pirate, drawn up by the pirates of the time. In fact, this list contained the names of all publishers and importers strongly determined to protect their softwares on Italian territory.
And this brings us right to consider another contributing cause among those that have allowed the existence and spread of modified titles. Looking closely at the names of the publishers who have sued (many of which formed in a consortium called "Assoft"), we find out that they are all Italian publishers or official importers, like Mastertronic of John Holder.
In order for the publisher of the original product to have an interest or convenience in bringing a lawsuit, a legal presence in the territory in which the infringement was committed was in fact necessary. It is easy to imagine therefore the reason why very famous English, German or American houses did not try to block this phenomenon. To file a lawsuit in a foreign state would present a big question mark and the certainty of being able to assert its rights.
It should also be remembered that these publishers already had to fight piracy of their country, which although it took place in different ways (ie not "disguised" and not "industrial") still had such dimensions as to harm their business. In other words, the game was not worth the proverbial candle.
And all this if the foreign house could identify their game published in the endless sea of Italian pirate newsstand tapes, in which they were republished with altered names and without any clue on the cover that accompanied them. At the time there was no internet and therefore analysing the material in the local market, which was cleverly camouflaged and limited to newsstands, became an almost impossible task.
A couple of emblematic cases
It is right to mention a couple of cases, which clearly indicate that there have been cases where both users and production companies have strongly protested against Italian newsstand piracy.
From Home Computer No. 15 of July 1985, we report a significant letter from a reader, entitled "Copiers on newsstands":
"Dear Editor of Home Computer; I am writing to you for two very special reasons. I am a boy from Chieti who owns the CBM 64. I made the mistake of buying the magazine with the “Special Playgames” tape at the newsstand four times.
Why do I say I made a mistake? I will explain it to you immediately: among all the games I found in the tape cassette, many were copies of existing games, with the name changed and the text translated to Italian. Let me give you some examples: Gyruss, from Parker bros., was present in the tape under the name of Odixxeux; Orc attack, of Thorn emi, was under the name of Assedio; Bozo's night out, from Tasket LTD, was also among them, but I can't remember the name under which it was presented, as the tape that contained it is from a friend of mine; the Astro Chase game, from the First star software, was under the name of Terra out; and again, Congo bongo, from Sega, was under the name of Africa nera.
Moreover the subtle editors of this magazine (but this work, even if to a lesser extent, also does "Special Program") boast of these copied games, and in the explanations every ten words put phrases like "this wonderful game created by us to record time ”. I would like to know if it is possible to report this to AIVA, because it is very annoying to see these games for which the manufacturers have spent time and money sold under stupid nicknames."
Here another case:
"A completely atypical and probably unprecedented publication in the history of publishing was realized by Systems following a piracy episode, as remembered by Umberto Colapicchioni, historical collaborator of the CCC magazine, on ICSE:
"So, we had a game (Mezzogiorno di Fuoco from fratelli Barazzetta), and it had been done by one of our very young collaborators (15-16 years and programmed with ASM, well, I was 17 at the time). We publish it on our tape and the following month it appears on a newsstands competitor tape !!
Well, we sued the other company and get to the court hearing. I remind you that we are in 1985, before the law on software piracy in Italy.
The judge gives us reason but, given that the law did not provide for specific penalties, the only thing that can be concluded is the "withdrawal of pirate tapes from the market". You got it? After 3 months, there were no more tapes on the market, at at the most they had to get back the inventories!
The judge told us "I understand you, but if there is no law I can do nothing about it, these here have exploited the legislative vacuum".
You can imagine how we remained, besides the damage, the mockery.
The day after the "boss" of Systems, comes to me and tells me: "Umberto, please prepare a tape with THE BEST OF THE BEST OF C64 games, we put it on newsstands to protest".
And so I did: as you can see, I also had good taste at the time. The cassette had a clear provocative purpose; on the cover was a pirate with a bandage on his eye and a black flag with a skull. And we decided to do it, not to touch the names absolutely, since it seemed like a painful thing to everyone. After that we didn't do any more, since we weren't pirates, but I must say that it had a monstrous success and we laughs a lot at that time. "(Umberto Colapicchioni)
I recalled the episode with Michele Di Pisa.
"Maybe Umberto didn't tell her that we had called him "Morgan Software" from the name of the famous pirate, and that I sent a copy to all the houses involved so that they could delegate a lawyer to sue us.
Unfortunately no one adhered to my request and the thing died there. If I remember correctly, only one importer called me on the phone, but he was not entitled to take legal action. In my opinion, new laws were not needed: it was enough to apply the existing laws on copyright as video games contained texts (protected) and music (also protected).
If someone had sued us we would not have opposed these objections and so we could have created the judicial precedent with the features we needed. "
These two examples are from 1985, enough in the beginning of the great boom in newsstore piracy for the Commodore 64, and as we have seen, protests were worth nothing.
The strange case of "Neapolitan" pirate tapes sold at newsstands
In the 80s and early 90s, between the many newsstands selling games with fake names, there were some who in some cities of Italy, especially in Naples, took the road of selling cassettes with games with original names. As the phenomenon was mostly of Neapolitan origin, these cassettes are usually called "Neapolitan", and at the time they were distributed in the newsstands of different Italian regions.
The main Neapolitan tapes were the Alga Soft (later New Alga Soft, then Mr. Games), F.S.N. (Federation Software & Hardware Diffusion Center of Naples), Winnner Games, Wow! Games, D.J. HIT 64, Soft Home, Visa Soft, Penguin Soft, Magicsoft. In Sicily instead were well known similar compilations like Edizioni Trinacria, as well as R.C.S. Palermo software compilation.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the boom began immediately with the release of the first home computers: dozens of small groups of people (sometimes the group was composed of one), given the success of the "Italian" cassettes with altered title name (which arrived earlier and were produced mostly in the North of Italy) agree with most of the newsstand owners in the city to resell, at a low price, cassettes (and later also floppy disks) with dozens and dozens of titles, especially for Commodore 64, but also for other home computers. Result: more or less at the same time as the definitive decline of the Vic20 (circa 1984) the first Neapolitan cassettes were released, the Soft Home, followed in the coming years by many others.
In 1985, Visa/Nova Soft appears, in two formats: Soft Home compilations (always with original game names) and also in C16 / + 4 version sold at newsstands, the second ones containing a single game, copied from the original and sold in stores.
Shortly afterwards, starting around September 1986, the most famous "Neapolitan" pirate tapes appeared: ALGA SOFT, sold at very low price (10,000 lire for 2 cassettes). Alga Soft will manage to reach the number 20 plus a special, chronological ordered starting from January 1988 (1/88 ... 14/88 and then 1/89 up to 7/89). A total of 42 releases, 84 cassettes in total. Newsstands owners were also able to find back issues within a few days.
The price was fixed: 10,000 lire for two cassettes, but there were also the "Alga da 6000" which were single tapes, cost 6,000 lire and contained a single game (often the large ones with levels that loaded one behind the other). They were perfect copies of the originals.
These "Neapolitan" pirate tapes succeed to beat the competition of pirate "Italian" tapes (which hardly contained more than 8 games while Neapolitan tapes contained many more), not to mention the competition to other pirates who never dreamed of putting so many games. Furthermore, often were inserted also games composed by more levels with separate loading, something that was missing in the classic "Italian" pirate cassettes.
The "Neapolitan" cassettes were often customised, for example in the loading screens the word Alga Soft often appeared (mythical the one with the Italian flag).
About a year after the Alga Soft, were released the "Neapolitan" pirate tapes of the F.S.N. (Federation Software & Hardware Diffusion Center of Naples). The distribution was smaller than the Alga Soft, on the other hand with many more games and with higher support`s quality (Sony) and very often the software includes built-in cheats, and were also present large multi-level games.
In the F.S.N. Neapolitan pirates often changed the credits of the games, similarly to how the Italian cassettes did, without altering the names of the games. The floppy disk version also came out at the same price, for example the number 8 includes 4 double-sided floppies to compensate the poor capacity of the support compared to the cassettes.
We are now in 1988. It is the chaos. Every month with 20,000 lire (10,000 the Soft Algae and 10,000 the FSN) we took home 4 cassettes (or 2 cassettes and 3 floppies) with all the latest releases for C64, which were regularly reviewed on Zzap! and similar magazines.
About the middle of 1989 Alga Soft closes, but the following month comes NEW Alga Soft (with a purple cover and not white). The release becomes every 15 days and a single tape is sold for 6,000 lire (therefore an increase of 2,000 lire). Shortly afterwards, NEW Alga Soft also closes, being replaced by Mr. Games (same features and price, except for the new cover color: blue).
Meanwhile many competitors arrive at newsstands who will not have the same success as Alga Soft and FSN, and who prefer to rely mostly on floppie releases: Penguin Soft, Magic Soft, Hotline Soft (which will also continue with the Amiga and partly with PC floppy) and other minor names.
In short time, pirate floppies were released containing a court authorisation to publish: we are talking of Di.Erre, who had a distributor at national level. His publications consisted of a floppy plus magazine (only one page ... the most of the magazine was contained in the floppy). The three most famous were ZIP Disk, Superfloppy 64 and M.A.S.H.
The pirate compilations Wow! Games and D.J. HIT 64 also had some diffusion and some success which also featured important titles for Commodore 64, and among other things the Wow! Games were made on commission for a client by the same person who did the F.S.N. (on the other hand it was evident the similarity between the two collections and the games in the tapes before loading often reported a clear reference of it).
A special mention deserve the Winner Games, practically "Neapolitan" cassettes very similar to the FSN, which always came out in pairs but with different games, and furthermore all had really very large games composed of many levels. However there were only 6 releases, for a total of 12 cassettes, mainly because they appeared on the market too late, at the final life of the Commodore 64.
The F.S.N. were the "Neapolitan" pirate compilations to last on the newsstands of various Italian regions (Campania, Sicily, Puglia, Lazio, Lombardy, Liguria and Calabria), ending the publications with the number 16bis in 1992.
Many are wrong in thinking that the Neapolitan cassette "The new king of the games" was an FSN special, but in reality it comes from another pirated source and was practically a plagiarism against them, even copying the graphics of the cover.
Paradoxically, the "Neapolitan" pirate tapes were superior to both the classic pirate newsstand cassettes and the original counterparts, although there was the possibility that they could give reading problems.
Neapolitan pirate cassettes had the following advantages:
- tapes contain all the levels of a multi-level game that required separate loadings, while classic newsstand cassettes contain only the first level, and also in the "Neapolitan" one could often also play one single level as if was a stand-alone game, without having to load all previous levels;
- Neapolitan cassettes reported the games with the original and unaltered title name, allowing you to buy the tape to play exactly the game you were looking for;
- games at the time were very difficult and many titles were almost impossible to complete. At that time a lot of money was spent on original games but you could never finish them. The "Neapolitans" cassette included trainers or built-in cheats, which allowed you to easily complete any game;
- these cassette often contained more games than the normal newsstand cassettes, especially in the two-cassette releases where the games were anyway a lot, and furthermore Neapolitan cassettes contained games with highly important names that would never come out in the normal newsstand tapes;
- actually these cassette were much cheaper than normal newsstand cassettes, contained more games and were released as two cassettes pro Magazine. Furthermore loading times were shorter than the original game thanks to particular "turbo" recording techniques.
This explains why these cassette were so successful where they were distributed. Although it should be pointed out that in reality the Neapolitan cassettes were made by assembling and modifying cracked / unprotected versions made by pirates of northern Europe. This is why there were intros from these pirate groups on many games (often altered by the "Neapolitan" pirates such as it happened for the FSNs), and were these cracking groups responsible from creating the built-in chrats for the games and to divide them in separate levels. From hand to hand, these pirated compilations from abroad arrived in Italy and were modified to produce the "Neapolitan". Some Italian pirates, including many who worked at the "Neapolitan", downloaded games from foreign BBS via line telephone (the BBS was a kind of internet made up of many unique sites, which worked by calling a specific telephone number).
Main houses and editorial collections that offered pirated software on newsstands
Collections of pirated games in Italy on cassette were at least 130 for the different 8 bit systems (Commodore 64, Spectrum, MSX, Vic 20, Commodore 16), plus about a minimum of ten pirate collections on floppy disk, that were released regularly in all Italian newsstands, usually on a monthly or bi-monthly basis. And then there were the pirated software collections for the 16 bits, in particular for the Commodore Amiga, which were about 15.
But it does not end here, because there were also a dozen pirate collections called "the Neapolitans" that actually fall into a separate group because they had limited distribution to newsstands in certain areas of Italy, had no magazine or manual and contain games with the original game title instead of the modified one.
As you can imagine, at the time there was an invasion of this illegal software on Italian newsstands!
Main houses and collections specialised in pirate tapes for Commodore 64
There were also mega-collections of pirate games in collections like this that recycled games or cassettes previously released on other collections
and then there were even those who wrote the pirate name on the magazine
source: http://infogiochi.altervista.org
