One fine May afternoon in 2024, I was reading up on some forums regarding Atari's 2024 re-release of the original MicroProse title "Gunship" from 1987. Word was that they had spent some months trying to get rid of the in-game "countersign" copy protection scheme, to little luck. So, not accepting that as something impossible, I took it upon myself to fix it.

By patiently debugging the sim, I finally found the offset on which it prompts the player for the password. After some byte changes and successful gameplay trials, it was then just a matter of refining the hack. I had to call in a good friend for that, he proceeded to take care of all calls leading to the function in question. The end result? The game doesn't freeze to prompt you for the countersign, neither does it shoot you down. You get only the message on the MFD when you near the base, but the game plays normally and you can land as normal. Press space to clear the screen. The copy protection is bypassed. All in all, it was a busy day.

Patched EGAME.EXE
(Game version 429.05 required)

Click below to view a demo video!