Mouse Stampede
Tinker Different is having another of its high score competitions including Mouse Stampede.
The game is apparently the first third party commercial game for the Mac. I was published originally by Mark of the Unicorn, better know for Midi software.
The versions on MacintoshGarden and MacintoshRepository are both of version 2, even those that say version 1.
My 128k came with an original copy of Mouse Stampede 1.0 that works — on my Mac Plus.
The disk won’t read on the 128k (I need to repair/replace its floppy drive) and won’t read at all on my IIfx with its known good FDHD 1.44meg superdrive.
The game file itself won’t copy:
https://snap.as/me/photos/MaKikaR5
The disk won’t image in either DiskCopy 4.2 or DiskDup+.
I’d like to get this onto the internet if I can.
A bit more information from a website I hadn't come across before called The Cutting Room Floor:
Copy Protection Strings The game's theme song riffs on “Three Blind Mice”, and so does its copy protection.
The disk check compares two otherwise unused strings in the application — FarmersWifeCarvingKnife at 70DF and 1.0.0 at 70B3 — with their counterparts at the beginning of the file Stampede Stuff. If either fails to match, the game is “cut off” by a spontaneous reboot. (And you'll never, ever manage to copy that file, because it's locked behind the impregnable bozo bit.)
The only other legible text in Stampede Stuff is the phrase “Stampede Protector”.
Version 2.0 no longer includes the file, the strings, or any copy protection.
The “bozo bit” is apparently “copy protection so weak that only a bozo would think of it, and only a bozo would be deterred by it.”
Colour me a bozo, I guess.
To be continued. I’m determined to unflip my bozo bit.
Look at that floppy! Original curvy window — that’s why the icons on the early Mac look the way they do:
