Security codes, color wheels, etc... for old PC games?

[fastbilly1]

Uptime for Steam tends to be quite good

And others, not so much sometimes when it counts.

Steam actually went down when a buddy of mine and I were fighting Hyperius the Invincible last night.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Quick update with more info.

These are the games I've tried to run and couldn't. The disks appear to be in good working order and uncorrupted.

Pitfall II
One-on-One
Ghana Bwana

This is the message I see when attempting to open a game:

ACESS CODE: ?

Yes, "acess" with one "c".

I've typed in random strings of numbers just for kicks and am greeted with a DENIED message upon pressing Enter. Then I'm booted back to the main Tandy interface.

I assume this is a copy protection measure, but I know next to nothing about Tandy Color computers.

Any thoughts?

[Anapan]

Before I was able to get RawCopy, Neverlock, Locksmith, CrackAid and others off BBSes I actually used to open the game's executable in Edit like a text file and search for the words it printed on screen to ask for the code, then I'd print the page with all the possible answers. Later, for a few games I'd run Game Wizard Pro 32 and do the same thing, but actually viewing the computer's memory/ram for the code it was looking for (on games that encrypted that data on the disk, they decrypt it into the active memory). The easiest way is to grab all the game cracking tools I mentioned first, and hope one of them supports the game you want to play.
You might try looking for code lists on textfiles.com - those types of things were common.
Another possibility is to try and download a warez copy of those games and hope that the provider left a .nfo with instructions on getting through the code entering screen.

http://retro.icequake.net/dob/ - part way down the page is cracking utils