I just read that the newest Ubisoft on-line connection best DRM has been cracked. Nothing special. However this reminded me something else. Do you remember how it was in the old times? A user had to have original manual in which he was forced, from time to time while playing, to find a particular word in a particular sentence on a particular page and then enter it into a game.
Let's focus on a Flashback for example. User was presented there a strange symbol, then you had to find it in manual and enter the corresponding code. One one side it was an interruption in game, on the other I kind of miss it, it was a part of game.
Now here are my questions: What are your thoughts about this? If Flashback was released on GOG, would you like to have this stripped off from the game, or have it included? Should game with such restrictions be treated as DRM-free or not?

check the ishar forum.
There is a discussion about it as one of the games still features this protection (and gog provides the codes)

True DRM free is the best way to go for the user and publisher.

I remember such "find word X in sentence Y on page Z" systems. They used to use a limited number of words and it wasn't too long before you could just create a list of them to have at hand -- far quicker than looking them up in the manuals =)
Even the color codes, or spinning wheels and so forth were to easy to "decode" rendering them all but unneeded.

Star Trek 25th required you to have the map in the middle of the manual to get to the missions. Or at least a photocopy of. Wasn't really interfering with the game, but you'd expect Checkov to know where he was setting course for :P

Pfft, with the SSI Gold Box D&D games you needed the manual to get the STORY

Reminds me of Ultima VII, where to get out of Trinsic you needed to answer the mayors questions to prove you were really the Avatar.
These questions were all based on the manual, including how much of a reagent was needed for a spell, or map coordinates. Typical stuff that the saviour of the world should know!

Was going to reply earlier but I got an error message:
"Please enter the 4th word from the 5th paragraph on page 127 of the User Guide"
:p
That sorta DRM was more annoying to me than the current forms - mainly because I tend to be absent minded and often lost manuals :D.

Mostly it's just an annoying interruption. I've got no time for things inserted into games for seemingly no purpose other than wasting the gamer's time. This is coming from someone who likes deep games and will happily spend over an hour on a turn too.

Yeah, I thought about those as well...
"Welcome", says the knight, "we've been expecting you." You record the rest of his speech as journal entry 157.
Then you had to look that up in the novel-sized manual that came with the game.

Back in the days when novels could still hold more data than games. :D

Which was probably another reason for doing it that way, not just DRM. The SSI games were on the C64, among other platforms, so the resources were limited.

My favorite DRM was the Monkey Island code wheels.
The worst was Castle of Dr. Brain. At the end of the first hallway there was a symbol lock. My poor brother could never figure out that the lock was just a code from a table in the book. So, for 10 plus years he only ever saw the first room. I seem to recall that I brute forced my way through that "puzzle." The worst part was that you could use your hint coins to get part of the solution which made it appear to be a normal puzzle. Argh!

I think that was probably the main reason, to be honest. Hardware limitations were hugely restrictive, even for text based games. I remember some text games were floppy-only for C64.

Tapes could hold more than floppies
Hehe and those of us who played ultima a BIT too much never needed to look the answers up...