I heard about this programme while reading the GamesMaster book. It's a look at piracy presented by Dominik Diamond. Brought back lots of memories and lots of very familiar faces. Even my old work place, Virgin Megastore in Glasgow's Union Street. The detective working on behalf of F.A.S.T in it, I had the 'pleasure' of meeting his acquiantance once halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh after they seized several box loads of public domain and shareware from one of my stalls in the Barras Market. That's probably the reason they mention PD disks in the show - once bitten, twice shy and all that. Anyway guys, hope you enjoy watching it. Share & Enjoy
Ah, Wee Davy Jones, I had the pleasure of reviewing and renaming one of his first games, was going to be called Draconia but I rang their Psygnosis offices to tell them there was a current C64 game out with that name, the game then came out as Menace. This link confirms this https://www.nostalgianerd.com/from-dma-to-gta-the-story-of-dma-design/ It also mentions "The Kent Team", one of whom was my boss for a while.. Heard about the Barras markets, a right little den I heard..
The Barras had to be seen to be believed Paul Grea times back then and still keep in touch with a couple of the guys.
Makes me think of Hackney Wick boot sale but on a bigger scale, the stuff that went on there was just amazing, and highly illegal . One stall always had a big queue and then one week it was raided (I missed it), and it turns out they were selling special African meat products, the stuff they use a blow torch on to cook it, bit's of monkeys and gawd knows what else. There was always a burnt smell, but it was all pre-bagged up, so you could not tell what they were buying. I've eaten many an odd thing, but I'll pass on that gear..
Okay, never had any monkey meat at the Barras. Although some of those breakfast rolls did seema bit strange....
Enjoyed the pirated software report from Glasgow way back in... I dunno - 94, 95? I'm trying to date it from software like Lemmings etc showcased and DMA games etc. All those cases full of 3.5" copies of the best-selling titles takes us all on a trip down memory lane as we used to send mates disks through the post for SWAPS (least I hope we never fleeced another?!) The thrill of getting the latest games on either multi-menu disks or stacks of multi-span game and data disks/demo disks was bloody great and when you reminded yourself that your pal in Plymouth, or chum in Cardiff had saved you approx £80-100 I don't think I felt very sorry for the software guys driving around in Porsches and Lambourghini's BUT it was probably done on much too much a grand scale, so much so, that the Amiga new releases market dried up and eventually shrunk to nothing as no-one was making any money at all out of the scene any more. Shame. I did have to laugh though, didn't you, when some Charlie came on and said that the "new" medium of CD would stop things as they are harder/more expensive to copy and I guess they were... for about the 1st 6-12 months then the self-same thing happened to CDs as had already happened to tapes and disks - they became mass produced - as did the players/burners/hardware and then every Tom, Dick and Dominik had a stack of copied CDs. That's humans for you - an inventive and ever-seeking solutions kinda bunch (when they're not trying to blow us all up - and I'm not talking Lemmings!) Night, folks.
