Hi Danny,
Thank you for your answer that was a nice one though. Also please accept my apologies for having suggested that you could be a Skid Row fanboy in my first post.
In fact I think that our paths may have already crossed, possibly on one of our BBS’s at Delight either The Chaotic Entity or The Lost Dutchman Mine in 1993. I’ve noticed two days ago that Global Overdose was well placed in the intro greetings in front of our release of Stardust playable preview which we did together with Blackbird from his home, including the scrolltext mixing both our lists of regards… so if it wasn’t me (sorry I can’t get a hold of everything I did 20 years ago), maybe you were in touch with Blackbird.
I’m currently in the process of rehabilitating the Delight brand as a scene group; in fact this is what brought me here. It was nice to see some of the Delight intros converted in Flashtros. And the one for Springtime also features one of my chiptunes (“Bingo.mod”). Ironically Skid Row also used a music of mine (“Atomic Failure.mod”) in one of their intros (not a flashtro but can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I28s-D7EGFI), while Paradox never did. Max was kind of worried that musics would take too much room and that replay routine issues would delay crack releases.
Also, I didn’t want to mean that you were a casual trader present only on a few BBS’s (sorry if i’ve left you with that impression). I didn’t know Killerette myself but have been a user on Unlawful Entry long ago. I met Kimble once at the 680xx Convention 1993 party organized by Complex, Sanity and others in Hamburg. As far as I remember I didn’t tell him I had been a member of PDX and SR and I knew Max and whatever. I had just retired from the crack scene and didn’t want to move the discussion there. He tried to sell me some cards and I said no, not interested.
About Lithium I was not involved in PDX “stealing” your BBS. I’ve “stolen” (I prefer to say I’ve convinced sysops, hehe) quite a few ones but not to your group.
Let’s get back a little on the points:
1. I already knew this article plus in my last post I’ve contributed a few others about the other affair involving Max and Intreq. I didn’t say that Paradox was bigger (How many members? Huh?) but that it was making more money. Also about better organized, well I wasn’t mentioning business (I have no idea, was not concerned with these aspects, did not see the account numbers…) but the group’s organization in itself.
Btw regarding money if you re-read all of these articles, you’ll notice a big difference between both affairs.
The MCI affair with Knight Shadow/Kim/Killerette/Phonestud/Major Theft etc. but also Max on a certain extent (I think one of his best contacts in the ring was Speed Master – trying to recollect my memory) had a rather similar number of cards involved, but all of these supplied over a three-years period (1992-1994), which means smaller quantities each time.
In the Cleartel affair involving Andy Gaspard/Max/Intreq the cards were supplied all at once. Yes that makes a big difference. It means bigger money, as the business was supposed to be recurring, and of course it means a lot of end users far beyond the scene. I have a little idea where a part of this business could have been supposed to occur, but as I’m not sure, I prefer to stay quiet on the topic.
At last someone previously asked whether cards were stolen or hacked. I’ve responded that here in these two affairs they were stolen of course. But if Kim or Max said something else to someone else, well, I also have an idea of what they could have been talking about – as far as I know it’s not in official articles. I’m not supposed to know anything so please don’t ask, I’m not going to respond.
2. Yesterday I’ve stumbled upon a page which says that Phil Douglas had been a member of Delight (along with The Fugitive) in August 1993, it was in a crack for Delirium and it seems to be right before he joined this group. This is something I should have known at this time, not only because I knew Phil Douglas but also because I had been founder & leader of Delight, so this kind of things may happen, yes. I guess that Blackbird or one of our German co-organizers probably recruited him but he didn’t stay long enough in the group so that it would matter to inform me when I came back from vacation.
3. One last thing about Skid Row, this time regarding the perimeters which could be defined within potential statistics methodologies (apart from what I said that SR was post-releasing many games).
Over their three-years high (1990-1992) it’s true that they did a lot of releases. But for limited periods of time within this era, Paradox, Quartex, Nemesis and Fairlight were better.
So for an all times high, it’s unfair to compare Skid Row with only, say, Paradox. Instead, one should consider the continuity of competition between core networks of members and their friends & followers, which means that in front of WoW+Paranoimia+Skid Row, the comparison should be made with The Champs/Bitstoppers+Quartex(1)+M.A.D.+Paradox(1)+Quartex(2)+Nemesis+Interpol+Paradox(2). There you get a different picture. Otherwise, if we should keep a name vs. name basis, due to longevity Fairlight would probably be the best, ahead of Skid Row. Of course I’m just considering Amiga, excluding past C64 and later PC releases.
Now I know that this aspect of the methodology has its limits, notably because Skid Row and Paradox sometimes exchanged members, the more so as I’m a living proof of this (PNA+MAD+QTX+NMS+SR+IPL+PDX among others). On the other hand, if someone asks I considered myself a member of the QTX+PDX network, something that won’t be surprising for anyone here. I guess that it’s the same for Max, Blackhawk, Babydock, and others who were also members of SR at once in their lives.
4. Mmmh I do not want to be ultra-picky, but:
> Ackerlight: they were mostly based in the East of France (Strasbourg, Metz, etc.) with only one member in Paris, doing just some part of the original supplying.
> BS1: they were based in Belgium and to my knowledge had no French suppliers. They were notably supplied by The Kent Team in the UK. Also were one of the first groups with modems and BBS’s.
> Angels: you could ask Foxy, if he comes back here. As far as I know he made friend with Annakin, a salesperson in a northwestern shop in Paris (not a FNAC) who was also a member of the French Amiga demo group Concept, and he got some of his originals this way (closest to where he lived).
Before Angels, on the side of TGS / Paranoimia & Vision Factory, yes I did the FNAC (had an inside there) and a few others, and on the side of The Band they had a duo (Infernal Duo) based in Paris with a supplier and a cracker. The supplier was Wonderboy who also did the FNAC and sometimes got insides by a well-known ST troll fucked in intros by some groups (cf. the acronym FTDG!). The cracker was Dark Blitter (not Lord Blitter/BS1!) an ex-Alcatraz then lead programmer at Ocean, who coded Pang! for the Amiga after he stopped cracking.
5. “I had slower access to stuff that was uploaded in Europe first…” – at the beginning of the 90’s (1990, 1991) everything was uploaded first in the U.S. except if you were more interested in demos. Indeed like you, nearly all of my accesses were on U.S. 0-day boards.
“I sense you also liked to build up BBS’s from zero’s to hero’s as that was what we liked most at GOD.” – Mmmh that’s not really what I did, but I highly respect what you’ve done.
I was not a modem trader, except for Delight and occasionally for Quartex boards. I had most of my special privilege accesses from being an original supplier. I just came and said ‘hey I need unlimited access to your board because it will help bring more originals to our group’. That’s not modem trading at all.
Then for Delight I did not pick unknown BBS’s to grow them up, but I did “steal” the WHQs of Alpha Flight (The Fiend Club) and of Miracle (Inner City). I did like the aura of mythic oldschool boards which had already been well advertised in the past i.e. later I also got The Lost Dutchman Mine, in the same category. Chaotic Entity it was a two-nodes and the sysop was just cool. For The Fiend Club it also had second best H/P/A conference WW, plus it was run by Mitnick himself (years before he became really famous, so it was just coincidence). So they were WHQ of past renowned groups, but yes I grew them upper from the point they were before, until I got caught in a phreaking scheme… but that’s another story, less fun, which I don’t want to remind now.
Regards,
François