Phobia Imageworks 1989 Required items 1) Phobia (1989)(Image Works)[2225] 2) An Amiga or WinUAE (I’m using WinUAE) 3) Action Replay III or Rom Image.
Alternatively Beermon, Thrill Kill or Cartmon.
- Pencil and paper 5) Blanks, if you use a real amiga.
Given that this game was cracked over twenty years ago and the cracks/SPS originals are readily available on the Internet, we are not doing a disservice to anyone by analyzing the code. This is for educational purposes only and at your own risk and volition.
Make a copy of the disk using X-Copy to see what we are facing.
Looks like a one track protection. Boot the copy and it just goes to a game over screen
Read the bootblock to see if it does anything special.
It’s a Rob Northen.
Disassemble to see that it doesn’t do much. Directory the disk.
Look at the startup-sequence to see what loaded.
Load phobia.prg into memory.
Search for 48 7a which is a PEA command and start of the Rob Northen code.
This is the start of the Rob Northen. Given that it’s not an encrypted bootblock version, it must be the file version. This means that it will eventually return to unencrypted code and scrolling down to find this point. This happens at 464A4.
The Rob Northen key looks to be 7670CF6B due to the compare at 464BA. The standard way to modify this would be to assemble a patch
This way whenever the check it called it will return the correct values in D0 and 24.
Save the change back to disk and boot.
Loading picture loaded on the copy before.
The game loads and plays for both 1 and 2 players.
