At a sale I purchased an old computer game called Friday Night Poker Club (which must be about 10 years old). The box contained 3½” discs and a “How to Play” booklet (which is not the game manual). When I tried to play the game on my Windows XP computer, the message appeared ‘Please enter the first word on the third line of page 12 of your Manual’. This instruction varies apparently at random. As I don’t have the game manual, I have been unable to get into the game. I have been unable to find an Australian representative for this game. Is there a way to get around the message? I only paid a couple of dollars for this game, so I don’t intend to spend any money on expert consultants to help fix the problem!

You have encountered the copy protection found on many old games, prior to the advent of more sophisticated copy protection mechanisms. Then, it was very easy to make illegal copies of games, since all that was required was to make a copy of the game discs. To make it more difficult to copy the game, in order to play the game you usually had to either type a word from the game manual (as you have encountered) or use a code grid code given to you on a brown piece of paper (being brown to prevent people from photocopying the code grid). Unfortunately, unless you can find the manual you will be unable to play this game. However, many older-generation games have been released on the internet as either freeware or ‘abandonware’. It may be worthwhile searching to see whether you can find a free version of the game, where the copy protection has been removed by the game manufacturer. However, you must be aware that not all old games which are posted on the internet for download have been released for free by the manufacturer - many games are posted on the premise that the game is so old the manufacturer may not mind if it is released for free. You should always be aware of the copyright status of the game (or any other software) before downloading. I have also seen some websites charging for the download of these older games. You should never pay to download older ‘free’ games, unless you are certain they are not available for free download. Also, I wouldn’t completely trust these ‘game download’ websites with my personal details, given their obscurity and rather questionable policies with regard to the copyright of older games.