Danish Scene History 1982-1989
RECOLLECTION issue 1
As experienced by rambones/TST
The first Danish crackers appeared in 1983-84, they are Sherlock Holmes (cracks Gryphon), and Danish Crackers (PMK) (cracks Suicide Express, Bruce Lee, Jumpman Jr).
In 1985 Sherlock Holmes is on Danish television and cracks a game in real time. Awesome we think, but I think the protections were nothing at all those days :)
Anyhow, they were the only guys who could do machine code, so they were gods!
PMK of Danish Crackers even puts his own names as sprites in Suicide Express, the animated stuff. Included also crossed bones and his name.
Sherlock Holmes uses the scroller in Gryphon to write his greetings etc. COOL!
The greetings list of Danish Crackers is below 10 people, observing the cracks from ACE Crackings - he greets the German crackers, Dutch - there are not that many. In his list are Dynamic Duo, FAC, EDE, Flash Crackings, ABC, Swedish Cracking Crew and Radwar.
ACE Crackings appear in 1985, and so does The Softteam (Judge Dredd, GI-Joe) and Danish Crackers has stopped.
Flying Crackers (Sodan) doesn't really crack games, but he makes a demo with 5 screens that all have scrollers and sprites and rasters, very simple. It's on CSDB, named "FC-Intros". Sodan's oldest production that can be found is the Rambo Music Selector. Sodan does an intro for ACE with ACE sprites in the top that bounce into each other - sprite collision. An upscroller in the middle, and a sideborder scroll on the bottom. This is the first really good intro ever made. It has the Model by David Whittaker in it, damn cool!
Now people want to be like Sodan, so they steal his scroller, and forget to change the BIT $FC in his sideborder. FC stands for Flying Crackers.
So, in 1985 we have Sodan, ACE, The Softteam, Danish Elite.
The Softteam are the first to take the globe from Crazy Comets and use it in their intro, so cool! Danish Gold and The Goonies appear, both are good crackers, but lame coders - so once again I can only guess that protection on games was lousy.
As it was, The Softteam was the beginning for The Supply Team, the first real demo group.
TSN collects Disney Comics, and through the newspaper he gets in contact with Judge Dredd of The Softteam. They then discover they can swap C64 games.
Softteam quit in early 1986, and by now all kinds of small demos appear from various individuals.
Sodan, Judge Dredd, GI-Joe and R2D2 make a demo with a 8x8 scroller that goes from top left to bottom right (diagonal), it's made with the slash char / - so freakin' cool!
In 1986, Kaze/TST meet Wizz in school, and Wizz is coding an intro for Danish Gold. We visit Wizz and he shows us his new demo "The Stronger TST", which has the first FLD. First screen has a jumping sideborder scroller that uses the FLD technique. It was released on the 23rd of December 1986. Many don't know this, but as Wizz didn't invent a name for the routine, The Judges became known for that invention, their release was on the 14th of August 1987. But you can credit The Judges for starting the whole craze to give routines technical names!
Wizz get's his stuff from Danish Gold who lives nearby, but as Sonny or Daryl uses his intro without crediting, they become enemies.
As a result, the first Danish war is started, and Rambones makes U.D.G.H., United Danish Gold Haters, featured in the demo "It's the Best/TST".
It never actually turns into anything, DG just won't swap with TST.
Wizz and TSN quickly make the demo "Act of WAR" in which there are two tombstones on the screen. It has stars in the borders to expand the picture, first time seen as far as I remember. The tombstones belong to DG and Gamebusters 1541.
However, DG just won't respond, so TST stops the nagging and calls The Gamebusters to become friends.
Business is slow in 1986 with demos, with only 2 good contacts, so The Supply Team go visit The Gamebusters who are only 12 kilometers away, and pay for 10 disks with demos from the CompuNet. Among them are "Fifth Dream Reprise" by Yip/Purebyte, and "The 10 Minute Trap" by Anthony Crowther and Ben Daglish. This stuff is the best seen yet, so TSN sends it to Ixion of Triad, and now TST has established a great contact in Sweden.
As said, only small, mostly ripped off routines, are published as demos from people who only make 1-2 demos, then go away again.
Tons of games come in the mailbox each day, but still no demos - we don't have CompuNet.
Sodan makes a great rip of the Rambo music, and by that the ripping business is started. We try to imitate TMC and his Gamemusic, but we can't program anything yet. :)
TSN loads up Picasso Joy, and paints together with Kaze a picture of Mickey Mouse on ice-skates from a poster he has. Kaze adds a ripped scroller by Sodan and this is the first (50%) self-made demo by TST. Once it was released it gave the opportunity of more contacts.
I'm afraid that was the point when it all got too international. The Danish crackers disappear and there are many wanna-be demo groups, but we don't swap with each other, we only want stuff from the other countries.
As we reach 1987, TST is ruling Denmark as a demo group, and we have a contact named Wizax - they also make demos and crack games, they are first called The Terminators.
Now the persons from all the Danish groups start to swap members big time!
We become a family, at last.
Wizz and Kaze join Wizax, then go back to TST shortly after because Ecan/Wizax steals Kaze's 3x sideborder scroller. He said he could give it to Sodan who would then put it on CompuNet so we could get famous. This didn't happen and Sodan was long gone to the Amiga.
Early 1987 we go to the first copy party, it's a small private one. There is The Danish Circle, TST, and some no-namers, below 10 people. We make a joint demo called Supplied Circles.
Out of these people from Copenhagen, they make Dexion and 2000 A.D.
Dexion decide to make the first real copy party, and invite everyone from the whole world.
This is the first real big party, everybody is there - new groups are formed on the party. For example I met the guys from Press Play On Tape there, they were called The Plasma Force and were heavy dudes on the Amiga. Razmo was dancing on a table, like in an animation in his demo. I hate the fact that the Bar-Brian Amiga demo is lost forever, it is soooo coooool! Some Barbarians (self made, not ripped) are on screen, and swing their blades of steel in action with the music, while they sing "Com-on, Co-co-co-come on" and "You're going to die!" This is of course ripped from the brand new game Sword of Sodan, by our master: SODAN! Which is an award winning classic Amiga game!
Apollon/2000 A.D. was tired of some lamer, so he gave the guys C64 1 litre of Coca Cola to swallow, that wasn't good for it…
A lot of people don't seem to remember there were two Dexion meetings, one in 1987 and the second in 1988. The second one was even larger and better.
Laxity composed "Depressed" in an assembler he got from TST, nearly without any listening, he just knew the hex-codes. WEEEEEE!
We have guys like The Dominators, The Papillons, Ikari, Zargon, New Life, Jewels, Zetrex 2005 (formed from the ashes of the real old Wizax).
JCH joins the new Wizax.
Triangle who is an old-time swapper with TSN/TST makes some great demos!
I think they are the first to have strange names. Swyx, Qed and Scratch. It's a whole new way of writing!
A lot of people want Amiga now, so the swapping increases.
We are now in 1988, and Danish Gold and Ikari make a party for the whole world, in Tommerup, Denmark.
The scene was divided in two, the crackers and the demo groups. The crackers didn't wanna swap with lame demo coders, and the demo groups were swapping members, becoming family. I swapped with anyone, so that way I got a lot of demos that the crackers didn't have, and Triad wanted them! I give you demos, you give me games and it worked well! What happened at the Tommerup party was a farce going into one of the best parties ever.
It was in a scout-camp, with one small hut with room for 30 people. Outside were 100 people who didn't have a place to stay! After some hours, we all moved to a community-house with room for over.
I tried to program a demo and make some music, but it was just impossible to do anything, because there were so many people who made noise and wanted to talk.
So finally I sat down with Omega Supreme of The Shadows, because we had some sort of music ripping compo going. I showed him all my rips, and he was impressed, but he had ripped Cauldron II - how????? :) He would just not show me what to do with it!
MIP!
The story of Danish scene is a lot about WAR!
It was very hip to emulate the big coders outside of Denmark, and declare war against enemies who stole routines and recracked games etc. Anti-greetings and fuckings was the order of the day - made popular by Flash Crackings, TMC and others.
A lamer was a dude who didn't do anything himself and stole things and didn't have any new software - it was NOT a newcomer! A lamer is a lamer!
The members of TST, Wizax, Zetrex, 2000 A.D. swapped often, back and forth. Friendships were in jeopardy, and for a long time all the demos were a response to the previous demo by the other groups. This was communication between hyped teenagers that had a big EGO!
What a great time!
All this only made us even better friends in the end.
So in 1988 we ended the wars, and made a cooperation demo: Mip Mip Police!
Police. Yeah, they were busting software pirates in big numbers.
Wizz was dobbed into the police by the son of a major law firm leader, Johan Schlueter's son. He only did it because Wizz cheated him for some sendings.
MIP!
Today Johan Schlüter leads the rage against internet music/movie pirates here in Denmark.
Wizz didn't get his C64+disks back until 1990, so he was coding on Amiga since 1988 and never came back to C64.
Most of the older sceners went on Amiga, because they thought they could make more stunning demos on it. Some could, but let me tell you, the Amiga is not easy to program when you come from the C64 - there is just a lot of new stuff that has to be learned, so many stopped or went back to C64.
In 1989 we went to the Ikari, 2000 A.D, Jewels, Upfront party in Esbjerg. The new generation of groups were there, and most of the world. Noise, Bones, SHAPE… in fact, look it up in the CSDB who was there, I simply can't remember. Upfront made a great demo there called "Mixer".
Einstein/Upfront had built a SCSI hard-disk for his C64 himself! And also he had a MIDI interface, so Future Freak/Dexion was ecstatic about it!
I was looking over the shoulder of JCH who composed music in his own editor. It didn't sound good, but it was *his* editor! How cool! I was afraid to ask for it, he must think I'm a lamer, so I didn't ask. I should have.
There was a piano there, so I asked Laxity to show me some stuff. Man… he was the only one I knew that could play on it, so we jammed for a long time.
Blitz/2000 A.D. went by a coder with me, it was a guy painting a Thanatos logo for his group, and Blitz was jealous, coz it looked so good - he asked if he had saved it? "No" he said, so then Blitz turned off the C64! The guy was in tears, and Blitz was in heaven! Mean, mean, slemme, slemme, Blitz, shame on you! :)
I saw a new group called Bones - so I said to the guy: how can your name be Bones, when I am RAMBONES!!?? He said: "We chose that name because of you!"
I didn't really complain anymore. :)
Back then my name was always displayed as big as possible with uppercase chars. I changed that in 1996 after we started HVSC, because I simply have to play my presence down so people don't get an overload of me.
Growing up is fucking hard, you should try it some day! ;-) Being humble is not easy, and it's certainly NOT what the old scene was about! The order of the day was to be as big an ass as possible! (read scrollers from Wizz and the New Limits scroller by Kaze/TST)
"We are the standard" is more or less the message.
On the Esbjerg party I also had my Amiga 500 with me, and Wizz was coding a TST demo with music by Laxity and graphics by Hagar, Blitz. It was a big bob-scroller with sinus. It used 80% of the rastertime, so after a long time he gave it up.
That was the last party I went to for C64 pleasure, the rest was Amiga for me, I was making MOD music every day with sound-tracker.
At the parties, the C64 and Amiga scenes co-existed together, emulating each other. The SID sound was moved to Amiga, and the routines from Amiga was moved to C64.
I'm afraid there is yet, no list of all the Danish groups that I know, it has to be taken from my old demos and database - there is a lot more to tell once I see these names again.
The last thing I will tell is what happened in 1991 when I graduated from the computer school.
I had been working together with a Peter S. for 3 years, programming etc. He told me he had an Amiga 2000, and was a member of Danish Gold. He was a pirate he said. Pirate he was for sure, I visited him. I then remembered the fuckings by Wizz to Peter S. "Cracker" of DG, so I finally revealed myself, and said I was in TST and told him my handle. His reply was, freezing of the body, looking like a zombie, saying "uh..oh..eh?". After that he never wanted to speak to me again! I never ever hurt him in any way, the only thing I did was writing UDGH in one single demo. Sphinx/DG has told me that Peter was never a member of Danish Gold. As usual (we invented many new words back then) I can only say: MIIIIIIIIIP!!?
Anyway, this is the end of this (hi)story, more to come in the future.
The C64 and our community will experience a lot more in the future. C64 is such a special platform, that challenges the creative mind, that it will never go out of fashion.
A force you can't subdue - the eternal spirit of real talents!
My eyes are in tears. Like when I was at TP5 and saw the "Dansa Med Achmed" by Jucke+Zizyphus. I said to myself, this is going to the next level very soon. Then we made NEW PARTIES, then we made HVSC, then we made CSDB, then we made Back in Time Live - and much, much more.
It all made itself! Nature just works!
It is the reason I keep going on - it's the essence of life itself, to create and exist. If you ever, ever go to the black hole and want to quit everything, then take a pencil and draw a small drawing - by creating you find the reason to live (it saved my life more than once).
rambones
