Knights Of Xentar Code Wheel
As the internet matured, scanned images of code wheels became standard accompaniments to "Abandonware" releases. The very physicality that protected the software became a burden for preservationists; while a floppy disk can be imaged perfectly, a code wheel requires flatbed scanning and careful re-assembly in image editing software to function digitally.
Look for a NO-CD / cracked KNIGHTS.EXE or DRAGON.EXE (often on abandonware sites). These remove the wheel check entirely.
If you want, I can:
Knights of Xentar (released in the West in 1995) is a unique, raunchy, and often bizarre DOS RPG that occupies a distinct niche in gaming history as one of the first Japanese "eroge" (erotic games) localized for North America . The Copy Protection: The Code Wheel
Like many 90s PC games, Knights of Xentar used a physical code wheel as copy protection. knights of xentar code wheel
Mechanism: At certain points (often upon startup or during specific in-game puzzles), the game would display a set of runes .
The Physical Tool: The wheel consisted of two or more rotating paper discs with symbols and characters.
The Task: You had to align the runes shown on screen on the physical wheel to reveal a corresponding code (letters or numbers), which you then typed into the game to continue .
Retro Perspective: While standard for its era, modern players often find this a major hurdle, frequently searching for digital scans or "cracks" to bypass it when playing on DOSBox . Gameplay & Experience Review As the internet matured, scanned images of code
The mapping between symbols and letters is a bijective substitution cipher modified by rotation. Essentially, the wheel implements a lookup table that changes with each rotation because the inner wheel’s alignment links symbol positions to output letters. Without the physical wheel, an attacker would need to know the fixed mapping of symbols to positions—possible but time-consuming to reverse-engineer.
Example (simplified):
In practice, the algorithm is a rotational cipher:
Output letter = (symbol_index + rotation_offset) mod 26.
The offset is determined by the current alignment of the inner wheel, which the player sets manually per symbol. Knights of Xentar (released in the West in
If you just want to play the game without a PhD in retro hardware, you have three options:
To understand the value of the code wheel, one must first understand the game. Knights of Xentar is the English localization of Dragon Knight III (also known as Dragon Knight 3), a game developed by ELF Corporation. Released in North America by Megatech Software in 1995, it was a landmark title for a specific niche: the "hentai RPG."
Unlike the sanitized fantasy of Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, Knights of Xentar was unapologetically adult. It combined dungeon crawling, turn-based combat, and visual novel-style storytelling with explicit anime nudity and sexual themes. For many teenage PC owners in the 90s, this game was their forbidden introduction to Japanese eroge.
But before you could see the pixelated titillation or battle the goblins, you had to prove you were a legitimate owner. That meant reaching into the game’s cardboard jewel case and pulling out the code wheel.
Knights of Xentar (known in Japan as Dragon Knight II) represents a unique entry in PC gaming history. As one of the first hentai (adult) RPGs to be localized for the Western market, publisher Megatech Software faced the dual challenge of cultural adaptation and piracy prevention. During the early 1990s, software piracy was rampant due to the ease of copying 3.5-inch floppy disks. To mitigate this, publishers employed "feelies"—physical objects required to play the game. The most sophisticated of these was the code wheel, a decoder device that required the user to align specific symbols to generate valid passwords.
