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I finally pulled the trigger and bought an accelerated A1200 with Gotek / SD-card etc… Bit risky given (a) it’s obviously vintage equipment and (b) it had to be shipped to Singapore.
Today, it arrived and I couldn’t be happier. Been playing a few games and trying to get used to the UI and how sluggish everything appears after not having touched an actual amiga in over 20 years. How spoiled we have become with modern computers and response times!
Anyway… Just wanted to share with you guys how happy I am and this being sort of the only amiga-related community I frequent (nearly) daily, whom else would I tell?
Yes, Maddy was the founder and original sysop of MI. He probably ran it for 2-3 years before I took over from him.
As I am originally from Belgium (as you might have guessed in the meanwhile), I had the pleasure of meeting some of the legends of those days ; unfortunately, I was slightly too young and still into the C64 when I met them so we never “amiga-connected” properly. The Red Baron (Yves) and Ermida (Eric?) & Freud (Marc) of BS1 were the closest ones. Then the whole gang in Brussels: Badamon and Joey Beltram, Mr.Solo (Manu) and what was the name of the guy working at AmigaCity? Then you had Ken (forgot his real name :() with the hot Norwegian girlfriend that would make us sandwiches at 3AM in the morning and make sure our glasses remained filled ; he was close to the AmigaCity store also and supplied some stuff to GOD in the early days.
Never met with anyone from The Band until 20 years later over here on the forum I met Gonthar. They you had Anthony/The Silents (biggest copiers seller in Belgium) & Cenobyte/Crystal (cc reseller) + Crazybyte/TSL (later Purple Haze/GOD) all based in Antwerp.
Junior/Paradise (Fusion) in Liege with his huge coca cola collection and The Mighty Fred way down south of Belgium and finally ofcourse Phil Douglas that lived in a little cottage near Erpe-Mere (or was it Ghent?)at that time.
Oh – what I’d give for a reunion of some sort but not before we all get a “Royal pardon” because a lot of historic crime could be solved at that meeting 🙂
I knew Deature (Thomas?) of Delight pretty well ; I believe he is from Denmark and his old team was called “Kingdom”. He is still pretty active and sometimes comes by this forum so you should ping him. Other than that, my memory fails me as to other people / BBS I might have known. I am in Paris a couple of times a year for business ; if you are still based there, we should meet up for drinks sometime 🙂
@NOOw: As a matter of fact, I am not “Pro” or “Against” Skid Row. I was just sharing my view/opinion as an outside observer, obviously influenced (biased?) by what boards I was on and what people I was closest to. I was never a member of any of those groups (except for short “stints” with Vision Factory / Agile / Fusion) so I clearly lack the inside information you were privy to.
My activities in the early 90’s were mostly limited to extensive trading on the US boards (you may remember my name from the rankings on Unlawful Entry / Danse Macabre / Lithium (which used be to our WHQ before they went to Paradox) / Pirate’s Haven / Mirage / Ghetto / Point Blank / Death Row / Zions Hideout etc…), hacking/phreaking and organizing GOD (Global OverDose) and so that’s where I have my recollections from.
I knew Killerette as I was supplying Micro$oft stuff to her group: High Voltage ; I also knew Kimble as I was supplying JAP stuff for his group: Romkids. Both of them ‘paid’ me for my services with cc’s. Ultimately, their respective busts and my name popping up too many times in different (wrong) places inevitably led to me getting a “friendly visit” in 1996 also.
To your points:
1. As you could read in some articles (one of them posted here), Major Theft (Lee) was heavily involved in the MCI-calling cards and was probably channeling some of that money into Skid Row. Subzero is a somewhat active member of this forum ; perhaps he cares to comment? I will take your word for it that Paradox was a biiger and better organized business than Skid Row :). I think I have met Strider/FLT once when he lived in Waterloo/Belgium and given what he turned out to be now, you are probably right he was an excellent organizaer/business man 🙂
2. Wildcard – it’s funny you describe him as a gifted H/P/A. I lived maybe 50km’s away from him, I met him once or twice but never knew him to be a hacker/phreaker ; let alone ‘one of the best’ – I guess it is one of those ironies of life where you find out things about your neighbour 20 years later 🙂
3. Glad we agree.
4. I was citing FNAC as an example as it was where everybody started (Ackerlight / BS1 / Angels?) and was pretty common knowledge. It was actually very interesting to get your insight into the French supplier-“scene” as that was pretty much uncharted domain for me. Flashtro is turning out to becoming the most complete source for understanding some of the mechanics behind the 80/90’s scene :). Clearly, you are still proud of the goals you reached in those days and I respect that ; I did not want to make French suppliers look like “FNAC errand boys”. And yes, Bomberman & Willy were the Prestige-suppliers.
5. I mentioned some of the boards above so no need to repeat and yes, given I traded like a maniac on multiple lines, I was granted special privileges on most boards. I did make the mistake not to trade in Europe a lot as it killed the cards much faster but it also meant I had slower access to stuff that was uploaded in Europe first. 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. We would pick a BBS with the right setup (number of nodes), right sysop (with enough cash to keep up with the expansion/upgrades) but that was lacking the support to make it a 0day. We would then start pumping day/night and make it a big/fast board at which point usually a major group “stole” it away. This used to piss me off like hell but in retrospect actually a nice compliment as it is sort of a confirmation of the work we had delivered. Boards that come to mind are
– Hornets Nest (quit the scene)
– Lithium (went to Paradox)
– 11th Hour (don’t remember where it went)
– Concept Elite (disappeared one day)
– Point Blank (quit)
– Zions Hideout (went to Prestige)
Those were fun days and I still think of them from time to time with a lot of nostalgia in mind 🙂 – Those are usually the days I end up on this site, delighted to see messages like yours 🙂
Thanks for your insight & sharing Francois – I hope you get well soon and do check in on this website from time to time and share some other stories for nostalgia’s sake.
A bientot,
Danny
@annatar: you have to put this in the proper context. I am sure you have read some of the other posts on the forum and by now you have somewhat of an understanding how things worked ‘back then’. As long as cracks were being spread by mail, nobody really cared as distribution was key in order to get your crack out and about “fast & wide”. So, sure it happened that the same game got released by 3 different groups sometimes even days apart but nobody cared. The masses were getting their free games and every single group thought they were the best anyway.
In come the BBS’s and the concentration of the so-called top boards. A file-listing on a bbs was ruthless: it clearly showed who was first and so it was very confrontational for a group to lose out on just a few minutes / hours after you put in all of the effort / money / etc… People would tend to download the first version and spread that + the sysops hated to see their expensive hard drives filled up with 3 versions of the same game and hence NUKING was invented. So, this intensified the competition among groups and when they had squeezed out every ounce of inefficiency of the “releasing-process” (a the way from obtaining the original to the actual uploading to the WHQ), people started taking risks (i.e. releasing without testing) and that degenerated even further to blatant “cheating” (release non-working now and fix later / upload disk 2 out of 2 to all boards whilst cracker is still cracking main disk / etc / etc ). In the modern day scene, this still applies. Releases will be nuked for “dupe” or not following the rules and then the competitor finds some bs-reason to release a “proper”.
Your statement where you say you wouldn’t care about what other thought and still put out your release the way you wanted it –> would not have made sense in the reality that the 90’s scene was. Your time/effort/work would simply get nuked and denied existence on all the boards that mattered. Given boards were the main point of origin for the rest of the scene (mail-traders / the fat guy on the corner selling games / etc…), nobody would have known about your “great work” and all would have been in vain. The only way around it could be like some of the “micro-scenes” did: crack their own originals and spread it within their country (Turkey and certain Latin-American countries come to mind) or start a “boutique” BBS where people following your “philosophy” can get your releases but believe-you-me: it would have had very few users in those days.
A good way to illustrate that, are “foreign language” releases. All the time, they were treated as “second class” but why really? The originals were as expensive to buy? The protection as hard to crack? Some languages had HUGE target audiences (French / German) but still 90% of the boards did not accept other languages but English and the scene generally frowned upon groups releasing other languages resulting in budget labels (E.g.: Diamonds & Rust -> Fairlight) or fake groups altogether.
Bottom-line: that was the scene evolved to ; for better or for worse. Clearly in this case for worse.
Correct, whereas in the early days of the scene, it only took some time and dedication to put releases out – by the early to mid 90’s that had changed significantly. Competition had pushed the levels of efficiency to a point where “management” and money were required.
A statement often voiced by people that left the scene was “…it is all about business…” or “…all about the money…”. There is no point denying it – money was needed to run a group in those days:
– Money to buy calling cards (if you did not have hackers or a source yourself)
– Money to buy originals (certain distributors required you to buy a certain minimum amount!)
– Money to buy hardware (modems for suppliers / crackers or hardware to copy/warp the originals)
– Money to pay people (some people took part-time jobs or remained unemployed just to supply/crack/organize)Initially, money was needed to keep up with the competition and that was why certain commercial activities started. Obviously some saw the potential and went completely overboard 🙂 In the end, I believe most of them got busted for one reason or the other
Popular ways of collecting money:
– Selling calling cards (for the happy few that a good source)
– Selling copiers (SNES/SEGA/etc…)
– Selling software
– Leech-accounts on top boards
– Paying members (yes some were willing to pay just to be “in” XYZ)
– Distribution BoardsThe latter was an interesting one as all you needed to do was (a) put the bbs name/number in your intro + upload your releases there or (b) upload all you could to that board. Generally, the more “exotic” the location where the BBS was situated, the more you could charge. Everyone will probably remember seeing boards in the middle east (Paradox had one / Quartex had one and … Global OverDose had one!). These must have been the sons of some Sheik running (usually) a single-noded BBS to get access to software they would normally never get in their country. These would pay _substantial_ amounts of money. The one we had paid us $1000 a month just to upload amiga/pc games to him. Remember, this was 1993 and $1000 was a shitload of money… GOD was making close to $1500 a month combining all activities but still that was not enough to propel us into the “major league” ; we simply could not get a proper original supplier and hence the group always stuck with doing loads of trainers / one-files / hd-versions and the occasional half-decent release (some French-version games / CD32 conversions and the odd ugly game that the other groups had overlooked or skipped).
I think all in all, GOD lasted a good 3 years and I have very fond memories of those times. There is not a single MBA-program that can prep you for corporate life as being a group organizer for a little while:
– You need to attract the right talent/skills and retain them
– You need to coordinate all activities and drive for results
– You need to compete in an ultra-competitive environment
– You need operating income to cover expenses
– You need a distribution model and need to overcome logistical challenges
– You need branding/marketing/image/PR
– You need quality assuranceObviously, down the line I also made some mistakes (and got busted for it) but I’d do it all over again (in a heartbeat!) since today I am applying the same skills in a business environment (and loving every little bit of it!)
There is little that hasn’t already been written about SR ; suffice to say, they were dominating the scene in pretty much every aspect at a given time: they had excellent original suppliers ; dedicated crackers (though quality was not always consistent) ; plenty of “ways to communicate” (i.e. bluebox for the Germans and a steady calling card supply from Killerette & Phonestud) and some of the world’s fastest and/or biggest boards (Danse Macabre / Unlawful Entry to name just two in the US). At one point, they have the Europeans release pretty much every single game that was out there, whilst their Canadian (Devious Doze / also sysop of Akira Project) team was releasing all of the high-end (expensive) professional programs such as Scala / Lighwave / etc…
So, there isn’t a straight answer to your question but to say: SR had the ideal combination: right timing / right people / right tools and all of that brought about a pretty unique momentum that allowed them to dominate in the way they did. Just think of it this way:
– If no software is being released / there are no originals to be supplied
– If there are no original suppliers with plenty of time/money on their hands to pick up the software, there are no originals to be cracked
– If there are no dedicated (and skilled) crackers with plenty of time / availability, there are no cracks to be released.
– If there are no ways of communicating (BB / CC) and traders with plenty of time (and phone lines!! – Phonestud traded on 5 lines), there are no releases getting to the boards
– If there is no constant stream of releases, you don’t get the best & biggest boards to be your WHQ
– Without the fastest & biggest boards supporting your group, distribution of your cracks would be slower and less geographically stretched (at least in the early 90’s)SR mastered all of these elements with a combination of coincidence and good planning. That allowed them to be more efficient than the competition and hence they beat them time and again. Sure SR got beaten too ; supplier was too late / cracker not skilled enough / technical problems / inside supplies / etc…
If memory serves me, the group was founded by Metallica in Germany and I think it is fair to say that without the “German backbone” (Including SSR / FFC / Magic Drummer / etc etc), the group would not have become the legend it now is and it most definitely would not have lasted that long. A few of these core-members were pretty seasoned guys that knew “their way around” ; had a good understanding of how to operate and how to beat the competition. Sure SR had members in Denmark but their contribution was mostly $$$ (from sales of software) and calling cards. I believe they may have had a cracker there towards the end but not so sure anymore (20 years ago!).
SR’s presence in Belgium was trivial. As far as I know, they really only had one official member: Wildcard and to this day I am not sure how he got it in or how we was contributing to the group? The infamous Pobox in Amay (near the German border) was operated by a non-scener (rumored to have been a Belgian army-soldier stationed in Germany) who couriered all the mail to Germany in exchange for free software. Other Belgians may have been in SR briefly or did some freelance work (Phil Douglas) but that is pretty much it.
What happened to them? I am guessing a number of elements coincided:
– They got arrogant/complacent and quality of releases went down (hence popular variations of their name Fix Row or Kids Blow)
– It grew beyond proportion and some people were craving for a smaller scale group
– Some people did not feel they were recognized enough for their contributions
– Busts (Akira Project in Canada / Unlawful Entry in the US also taking down an important supply of calling cards through Phonestud & Killerette)
– Competition increased efficiency and beat SR on a more regular basis (either in quality of crack / speed of releasing or “major titles”)
– Loss of interest –> what was left to prove? so some key-members left the scene or became less activeIn the end, it just fell apart and some other (new) groups emerged though they were short-lived. Other members went to the competition and that was it…
Added 33 minutes later:
Prestige is a story in a somewhat different setting BUT you will find that there are quite a few similarities 🙂
By the time Prestige emerged, the scene was a different place. There were less releases and less (competent or internationally organized) competition. To understand this, you need to understand where the originals were released first: this was typically in the three main European countries: UK – France – Germany and each country had it’s fast distributors or shops (Centresoft in UK / FNAC in France and I forgot the name in Germany). In the early days of the scene, you’d have some stuff emerging first in the Nordics or North-America but beyond 1993, that had decreased significantly.
It was unusual for a group to be so organized & geographically spread out that they could “control” all of these sources of influx of originals into the scene. Skid Row (above) and Paradox being true exceptions but generally, most of the “major” groups were specialized in one or -at best- two countries and usually dominated that “source” for a period of time.
So back to my point: Prestige did an excellent job of controlling these sources. They had the best suppliers in the UK and France ; (I am not so sure about Germany as I seem to remember they got beaten by Hoodlum / Prodigy on quite some titles that were released in Germany) and they had the very best and fastest cracker with waaaay too much time on his hands: Mok. (granted – Samir/Groo did some cracks too). Adding to that is the fact they had the fastest board in the US as their HQ (Zion’s Hideout which they had stolen away from my group as WHQ — Grrr, still pissed about that! –). Not coincidentally, Zion’s Hideout was also the main source of calling cards into the entire scene at that moment in time. (the Sprint cards if anyone remembers?) ; Internet/telnet were emerging and steadily being adopted in Europe so in a nutshell, you see the same characteristics:
– Original suppliers [CHECK]
– Fast & good crackers [CHECK]
– Best in class distribution ; i.e. communication-media and BBS’s [CHECK]
– Seasoned “management” [CHECK] (Samir did a great job and learned a lot at Zenith)Again, all of those components combined and that extra little dedication put them ahead of most of the competition, which -in turn- created momentum and this just creates a vacuum-effect for talent/skills. Everybody wanted to join Prestige and they picked the cream of the crop. The rest is -as they say- history.
In my personal opinion, I remember both groups differently. Skid Row truly dominated on an unparallelled scale and for a LONG time. Prestige also dominated ; perhaps in a less competitive environment but they delivered 100% quality. Either way, it was an honor to have been part of the scene in that era!
PS: You forgot the period where Fairlight was pretty much putting out every single release 🙂