dlfrsilver wrote:At the same time, i don't see why Mastertronic would have use procopy when any standard duplicator can replicate this protection.
I don't have a fully reasonable explanation about what's going on with this release. As far as we know it doesn't even work correctly, so hard to know what really happened.
As I said, it is possible that they didn't use a software copier themselves. It is possible that they didn't have the original master and they made a master from a non original copy that in turn was copied with a software copier. That might also explain why there is a (deleted) saved game in the disk that is not present in the retail release.
We know a lot of strange things were done on some budget releases. Sometimes they reused cracks. Although, again, that was more common years later.
I really don't know for sure. I just know that the protected track in this release is a manually crafted track that can be created in a standard ST, and yet (almost) be read as the original copy protection.
With a second owner dumping his original it could be confirmed or infirmed.
As I said and Stefan is saying as well, we have three dumps from three different disks. They all match.