Hercule is the (French) conceptor and developer of the following CPC software (disc utilities mainly about floppy and its protections):

Software

• Copylock
• Hercule
• Hercule II (famous disk copier that could copy any CPC protected game until 1988)
• Phoenix
• Ulysse
• Floppy
• Display
• Sector
• Copyfich
• LATIS protection

All these software were published by Esat Software, in France.

Activities

The main job of Hercule was to ensure that Copylock / Hercule / Hercule II was always capable to copy/backup any protected floppy:

1. receive the new CPC games that could not be copied
2. crack the game and understand its physical protection on the floppy
3. conceive a way to copy it
4. improve the code of Hercule to reproduce this copy
5. test then integrate the new code into a new master copy of Hercule to be sent to the editor

A second activity was to conceive physical and logical protection for all the software of the editor (Esat Software): the LATIS protection.

Hercule stopped CPC programming and activities in 1988.