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Well, let’s see … Trying to sort out all these things is not *that* easy. :crazy From small groups to elite. Elite to legal troubles. Legal issues to secret but boring come back …
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First step into the scene
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1988 (early)
I remember joining some local groups as a swapper (mail) & gfx artist. As far as I can remember, I joined Cpu, and then Amnezia … I feel like these are the only groups I dare to remember.
Well, atleast these ones were releasing various things such as small cracks or demos.
At that time, it was not this hard to release some cracks :
1) Protections were not heavy (very MFM protections, really)
2) Trading was mostly based upon good ole mail trading so it was not really much of a "0 day warez scene". So you could still type a long scrolltrext, test your game and why not even train and pack it before letting your good ole postman deliver it all around the world.
3) There were not tons of games released in a month. So, a group with a single cracker, single original supplier, few traders and very few $$$ could do the trick.However, I was still far far away from what I considered to be the Elite at that time : HQC (the real ones), Ackerlight, The Champs, TRSi, World of Wonders …
Anecdote
The Amnezia leader, an ex-member of The Band, once asked me some logos for some of his old austrian contacts. They were forming a new team called Scoopex, and were working on a demo. They were badly needing some logos. I made a few ones he sent ’em. Well, if you wanna know how one of these logos looked like, you can give a look at the famous "Glory stars" demo from Scoopex. Ofcourse, Joe’s logo has been improved, but took the exact same design … Ofcourse, no credits for me.[hr]
The first success
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1989
With some Amnezia members, we started a group called Dragons, mostly known for its megademo.
Initially created to release both cracks and demos, we quickly found out that our attempts to set up a great cracking group failed (lol, failed is a nice way to say that we s*cked).
So, we ended by kicking away the inactive members (90% ?) and falled down to 5 guys. The five guys signing the famous Dragons megademo.
This was my first experience with the "few but competend friends and partners" concept.
I was mail swapping like nut, trying to get always get more and more contacts. Elite contacts. Men, my mailbox was sometimes filled with like 20 floppy disks day :
10 craps ;
4 dupes ;
5 decents stuff ;
1 great stuff.
Now with time, we mostly remember good demos, cracktros, games … But hey, how many ugly craps went released at that time. Including so called commercials games that were not even worth a coleco rom … WeLL.Anyway, all my modest pocket money was spent into floppy disks, phone calls and ofcourse, stamps.
Yeah, ok, faking stamps was THE trick. Trick it one, trick it twice … Til’ your stamp looks like some old and washed toilet paper. Then you really gotta buy some (stamps).
I also managed to get a hold of some unprotected previews of games we released. Hey, you need some materials to trade you know, so intros, previews, that’s still some meat for trading needs :satisfiedBy the way, the main thing we released was the megademo. And frankly, that was a great one. You can still find it almost anwyhere right now. As soon as it’s been ready for the release (a million times delayed release) we sent it to all of our contacts, plus all the elite ones who we were not in touch with (mainly coz they didn’t care of us). That was about 50 letters & floppied, just 4 me.
Men, what a success!
How could we measure this? Well :
1) Good groups easily replied to your mails and sent back their latest releases. Often cool words ;
2) We appeared in several groups greetings amongst good groups ;
3) We were getting enemies. Mostly in our own country, France.But in my opinion, it was about time to think of a new step toward the cracking sphere … But how 😐
Anecdote
Stickers. That is something you can’t see, but most good trading groups had their own floppy disk stickers. Rather than using the ugly SKC/Memorex/Kodak ones, we designed and printed our own stickers. Some had very nice ones (likes us, a nice lil green dragon holding a disk), and it was kinda fun to collect some of these Phenomena, Scoopex, Rebels, and other stickers at home.[hr]
The cracking sphere
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1990
I was getting some offers from here and there, but nothing really amazing to me. I needed to step in but in my own humble opinion, it had to be a significant move. It is really funny to see how important these things tend to become days after days. Not that you only live thru you nickname and for the scene, but you’re still looking for some fresh new experience. You want to come closer to the top.Talking about top, a local group asked me some help in order to get some originals for them. In fact, they were supplying Paranoimia, a leading german cracking at that time. Since I already contacted various people in Paris in order to get originals for Dragons, i helped ’em a couple times.
And they wanted me to join. I declined their invitation.
Then, during summer 1990, Paranoimia died because one of their leaders went busted. Officially for credit cards abuse.
That local french team mentioned up there decided to create a new group. And they still wanted me in.
And this time, I accepted and joined … ANGELS.Ok, most people only knew their official and lame french leader. The guy couldn’t speak english and was plain stupid.
But the man behind Angels was a belgian freak who was the former leader of The Band (an oldskool cracking group).
The guy had experience, a good cracker, some idiots slaves, modems and money.Yeah, you got it right. Money.
Sorry if I break any kind of illusions, but from now on, it is just gonna get worse.
1) Modem time (Ring my bell, babe) = money time
Let’s clear up a few things. We have left stone age and US Robotics HST modems (9600 bauds, 14.4k or 19.2 v42bis) are now standards for crackings groups and real trading.To trade warez and spread releases, there was no Internet, no web, no http, no ftp … you only had BBS’ (bulletin board systems). Even tho’ a BBS is not sweet as http, it has more feature than ftp : nickname, login, forums, private messages, newsletters, ratios, users profiles, chat with admnistrator …
However, they were running on some private users Amigas. They were home servers. Based in U.S.A.
As you may have mentioned, most groups were europeans.
Does that ring a bell? Why would you trade in USA ? Because illegal ways to call for free from europe to USA were numerous. Most common way was the calling cards/credit cards way.
"Call our bbs they said". Yep, right. 1.5$ a minute and it took like 15 minutes to upload a disk.
You needed calling cards so either you got one of these rare phreakers/hackers or you bought stolen cards.But even tho’ you could buy them, you oftenly ran out of cards and you always needed cards because …
a) You needed to spread your late products (now IT IS 0 day warez) ;
b) You needed to make sure that the game you’re about to buy/crack has not been released yet ;
c) You needed to make sure that yesterday’s release was correctly cracked/spread/working ;
d) You needed to stay up to date (mainly if you were selling games) ;
e) You were addicted!For a reason or another, you had to make some DIRECT calls to the USA, europe .. and then pay huge phone bills.
Yeah, you got it right. Money.2) Original games.
Oh yeah, I know, you believe that we were getting all of these game for free. No. You are well aware of the fact that that groups were buying games but they only bought the games they cracked.That is right, but now look, you are an original supplier and, like every day, you are visiting some computer stores …
a) A new game has just been shipped into a store. Possibly, into many stores. Possibly in another country aswell … Or even 2 other countries.
b) Is anyone else in the group currently buying it ?
c) How many groups are currently buying/getting it ?
d) Who knows, it might be heavy protected, and some goups might be working on it for days by now …
e) Someone might have got it from some internal source before it was shipped to the stores.
f) I might be wrong … could be an old game. Looks like a bad game anyway. Nobody can tell me of it is new or old.
g) [Ok. Now look at the left of this game. Same shelf.] Oh! Another new game (see a).Guess what. You might end up buying both games even tho’ the response to a, b, c, d, e, f were true, true, true, true, true, true …
And during Xmas period, when you could get an average 4 – 5 games a week for weeks (around 50 USD a game at that time). So this is an expensive side as well …3) Paid members
Cracking for fun ? You’re right, for most people, this was true. But some skilled crackers just didn’t care about fame anymore. However money was a serious motivation to them.
So they offered their services for money. Very few groups would admit it .. but they paid their crackers, atleast one or more crackers.
Later on, when I was leading The Company together with Juergen (ex Paranoimia co-leader), he paid one of our crackers.
And you always pay a way or another : you send a modem (they were xpensive at that time) or cash, you pay the phonebills (coz he doesn’t wanna use fraudulent ways to call out), some hardware … As far as I know, only very few known groups never had to pay some members (crackers, suppliers, phreakers/hackers).Paid members, phone bills, originals … Money. Take it the way you want. It takes money
Still can’t believe it? Look at these cracktros texts : "to buy the lastest warez, write to [address #1, address #2, address #3].". Or, "TO contact us, write to [address]. No swapping".
No swapping? What then? Buying software. Either you had a lot of money and were willing to spare some into your groups (hrm, well it fits to some situations/groups) or you had to "collect" some…Back to my decision to join Angels
As I said, the man behind Angels was a belgian freak who was the former leader of The Band (an oldskool cracking group). He had experience, a good cracker, some idiots slaves, modems and money.So I joined Angels. Short time after, all of the Dragons members followed me (and released the Coppermaster demo, formerly due to get released under the Dragons label).
I first got a fre 2400 bauds modem then a US robotics 19.2 for some cheap price. Decent amoubt of calling cards, easy access to most elite US bbs’, unlimited leech accounts on Angels bbs’ and started trading again as well as getting new contacts.
At that time, Angels were in competition with a brand new group called Paradox. Both these groups simply sent guys to buy games in stores and then cracked the games. Since Paris was a good originals source, they had a quite easy life compared to the quality German and UK groups. For each shipped game, tons of groups were in the starting blocks.
There were not many cracking groups left in France because of 1989 severe busts (end of Ackerlight, Black monks & Quartex France, Aces, CBC …). So no real rude competition.
Angels were filled with idiots. I didn’t like Paradox France … But I was still looking for some new and exciting experience. …Anecdote
When I am talking about idiots slaves, I mean the so called french leader of Angels. The belgian guy, Duncan, found a perfect idiot in that guy. He was stupid enough to buy a game in Paris, then, when it was mfm and couldn’t be easily transfered via modems, brought the game to the cracker in belgium (with his own car). A 500km night ride (320 miles). To perform such a madness, he had to be an unemployed and full time devoted idiot. Devoted enough to bring his wife with him.This way, when he was about to fall asleep, she could drive for him.
Oftenly, when he went back in Paris, the game was already cracked by another group
To be continued …
Foxy?… this Foxy: http://www.foxysofts.com ?
oh no… Dominator… Dominator : ultraHLE N64 emulator !every time i read such stories about the good old times, there is nothing i’d wish more than just being about 5 years or so older in 1988.
today’s warez scene is total crap compared to C64/amiga scene, as you mentioned the groups had at least some time to code a nice intro, and test their cracks properly.
what about those rumours, some crackers were able to break into the software companies networks and steal their (not yet released) software??i really respect the big coders and crackers from the early days.. i mean there was no internet to just download quickly a tutorial about whatever you like.
let’s say these days, you’d like to learn how safedisc/manualunpacking/keygenning/whatever works – no problem after 3 minutes searching you got at least 10 tuts explaining the topic. then you just need to afford the time and et voila you understand it and you’re able to use your knowledge.Slash : No, not this foxy. Had to change my nick after I got busted back in 1991.
And yeah, this Dominator http://www.thecompany2064.com
The UltraHle 2064 site is down tho’. And domain name is currently cybersquatted so I dunno what will be the next.
scenex :
i really respect the big coders and crackers from the early days.. i mean there was no internet to just download quickly a tutorial about whatever you like.
let’s say these days, you’d like to learn how safedisc/manualunpacking/keygenning/whatever works – no problem after 3 minutes searching you got at least 10 tuts explaining the topic. then you just need to afford the time and et voila you understand it and you’re able to use your knowledge.Informations were rare and precious. Tools were not numerous and oftenly home made/weaked.
I rememner that one of our crackers made his own Action Replay thing. In fact it was suppoed to be released for a software company. Dunno how it ended up but, during the dev. phase they asked him to removed a feature : a Rob northern protection tracker.
It also had a scan feature for password protections.
It was far-west really …scenex:
i really respect the big coders and crackers from the early days.. i mean there was no internet to just download quickly a tutorial about whatever you like.
let’s say these days, you’d like to learn how safedisc/manualunpacking/keygenning/whatever works – no problem after 3 minutes searching you got at least 10 tuts explaining the topic. then you just need to afford the time and et voila you understand it and you’re able to use your knowledgePeople were always able to trade the information… whether by mail, meeting at computer clubs, BBS, phonecalls. It was the same on the amiga, for every 1 good cracker (nowadays, think of the guys who are writing the tutorials and making the safedisc/securom unwrappers etc.) there were 100 newbie-to-average crackers (these are the guys reading and following exactly the tutorials without really understanding). BUT – there’s nothing wrong with this… eventually the interested/capable ones will learn from the tutorials, and graduate to a higher level, perhaps faster than if they had only been stuck in their bedroom working on it alone for months… so I don’t really see the problem. One good example from the Amiga days for you… MOK. Mok is, as far as I know, widely regarded as one of the best crackers of his time on the Amiga (92/93 onwards?), but he started out as an interested but not very capable guy, until he finally persuaded Phil Douglas to teach him how to crack ‘properly’. The rest, as they say, is history
Anyway, just my take on it, please continue w/ your scene history Foxy
very interesting stuff
do you still know any of the old amiga crackers?it has always been my aim to have an interview page, so i can interview all the old crackers
top of my hit list are
I.B.M
BlackHawk
Eurosoft( last i heard he was doing cracks for CLASS-PC as late as 2001?)
Bob duncan
Phil Douglas
ect…………musashi9 :
very interesting stuff
do you still know any of the old amiga crackers?I am afraid I don’t have any old amiga crackers left on my buddy’s list. But if I can help you getting in touch with some of them, i’ll try my best.
musashi9 :
@musashi9
thats a nice idea! foxy could be the first participant for the projectMy pleasure
Foxy :
[quote]scenex :
i really respect the big coders and crackers from the early days.. i mean there was no internet to just download quickly a tutorial about whatever you like.
let’s say these days, you’d like to learn how safedisc/manualunpacking/keygenning/whatever works – no problem after 3 minutes searching you got at least 10 tuts explaining the topic. then you just need to afford the time and et voila you understand it and you’re able to use your knowledge.Informations were rare and precious. Tools were not numerous and oftenly home made/weaked.
I rememner that one of our crackers made his own Action Replay thing. In fact it was suppoed to be released for a software company. Dunno how it ended up but, during the dev. phase they asked him to removed a feature : a Rob northern protection tracker.
It also had a scan feature for password protections.
It was far-west really …
[/quote]Probably by the tool you mean Action Replay MK IV BETA v1.00 (By Blackhawk of PARADOX in 1993), it is really a good tool. I’d like to get my hands on the rom version (if it exists), so I could use it instead of AR MK III in my Amiga emulator every time….
It has the Rob Northern decryption function….
scenex :
@waynek
do you think phil douglas is still around and could give us some training
phil douglas was around a few years back.. he was interested on gba stuff at the time, dunno what happened with that tho’.
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