Long Term Review: Fast Hack’em
You know what bothers me? Duke Nukem Forever was in development for 14 years and when it was finally released, reviewers pounced immediately. If you took a roast out of the oven after 14 years, you would let it rest for at least 15 minutes before carving.
Here at Paper Tiger, we like our software moist and tender. This, therefore, seems like the earliest possible moment to review Fast Hack’em by Basement Boys Software. The ultimate version, 9.5A, was released some time in 1989. Fast Hack’em remains the premier disk copy software for the Commodore 64.
Let me start with some of the downsides. If you’re anything like me, you haven’t had any Commodore 64 disks or software or hardware for about 30 years, so it may be hard to get your money’s worth from this software. The second glaring problem is the price. $29.95 is a lot to pay for software in this economy and that’s in 1985 Junior Senator Biden from Delaware dollars. With inflation, that’s now President Biden and around $86 thankyouverymuch. But it’s even worse than that. If you had invested that same $29.95 in a Savings and Loan in 1985, you might have not a dollar to spend today, while neither Fast Hack’em nor anything else are available from the defunct Basement Boys at any price. You’ll have to pull a Gordon Gekko and pirate it.
With that out of the way, it’s smooth sailing and good times. Fast Hack’em can copy an entire 170kb diskette in around 35 seconds. Notably slower than using UNIX cp to duplicate a Commodore 1541 disk image file for your favorite Commodore emulator, which runs about 2 milliseconds longer than it takes to type the command and hit return. On the other hand, it’s undeniably quicker than properly cellaring a 1985 Chateau La Serre (also around $86 in today’s Bidenbucks). It’s in that enviable Goldilocks zone of user experience.
Our Paper Tiger score is 3.5 paws. That last paw is really a weak bit placed there as part of our copy protection scheme, so you may need to read the review several times to get the right average value. We recommend Fast Hack’em as the best way to copy, I mean ‘back up’, this post if you absolutely must.
Fast Hack’em and this post pair well with a 1987 Radiohead bootleg from Jericho Tavern. A bargain choice is “How to Disappear Completely” / “Kid A“ / Radiohead / 2000.