How it all began!
RECOLLECTION issue 3
By Weasel
Hello everyone out there,
This is Weasel writing some words in this free space I got offered. I was thinking a long time about what to write in here and what might be of interest for you reading this article. And so I came finally to the conclusion that writing about 'The Good Old Days' to bring back best old memories to all your minds should be a nice idea. ;-)
When I got my first real computer back in 1984 (which never broke and I still own - my C128, which I used in C64 mode ONLY all the time as C128 mode was pretty bad supported from any companies etc.) I started - as most of us I guess - with copying games from school mates and other friends who also had a C64. One of my very FIRST games I copied on C64 were RAMBO II, COMMANDO, BLUE MAX etc. which I liked very much those days as the sounds were great and the games were very nice designed. From these days on I kept myself up-to-date with the latest games released from any companies by buying lots of game magazines. I began to collect more and more games (like: Jumpman Jr., Pitfall, Pitstop, Rat Race, Boulder Dash, Spy vs. Spy, Kaiser and lots more of course!). After a while I had a real BIG collection of almost all known titles around. So it happened that people were coming to ME now to get the latest game software they were searching for all around and couldn't find. I had 'em all! :-)
Another thing I always was interested in have been those great intros from all the groups (like Dynamic Duo, 1001 Crew, Triad, Yeti, Strike Force, Fusion, German Cracking Service (GCS), Papillons (Importer group!), Federation Against Copyright (FAC), Elite, Eaglesoft Inc., Fairlight, Ikari, Bros, The Wanderer Group (TWG) and LOTS more....!) who cracked those games I copied into my collection. I liked watching them and reading all the scrollers till the end. I was pretty amazed that there were people somewhere on the world doing - although highly illegal - things like CRACKING games - removing the copy-protection from the original software to be able to copy it to anybody around freely without a problem. I got more and more addicted from this situation that I once said to myself: "One day I wanna be one of those guys as well. Being part of a group and doing lots of cracks for all the people being in and outside of that so-called scene."
From that time on I tried to start learning how to code on my C64 (aeh...my C128 of course! But as I said before I used it almost only in C64 mode! So I'll continue to use 'C64' in the rest of this article! ;-) ) To be able to use that very nice computer system much better than just typing a few commands like 'Load"$",8', 'Load"*",8,1', 'List' and 'Run'. I also took by handle at this time: 'Wiesel' ! (Yes! It used to be in lame 'german' :-) ) It came from a sticker of a car-company which was pinned onto my room door back those days. The slogan was in german and said: 'Schneller als ein Wiesel!' (translation: Faster than a Weasel!) :-)
Anyway... whenever something didn't work properly I tried to find out WHY that happened and worked hard on fixing the problem. I de-coded several programs (at this time lotsa BASIC stuff!) and tried to learn HOW they made several effects and things like that. I was doing better and better in coding little basic programs during the days and weeks and months (I already cracked a game at this time! (WERNER - THE GAME!) Well, although it wasn't anything special anyways!) till that day, when my favourite computer magazine (64'er!) released a new programmers' course called: 'How To Code Machine Language - For Beginners'. I read the first edition of that course and got to know my FIRST few commands in REAL ML! You can't imagine how lucky I felt when the first very small ML-routine I did with those commands even WORKED from the first try on! :-)
After the second chapter of that magazine's course I took several games, intros and demos and looked inside the ML code I was now able to understand more and more. I changed certain routines to examine what would happen to them and how they'd look like after my manipulations which gave me lots of experience and training with ML coding.
This was the time when I finally started my real scene-life (around 1986!) with my first own group I founded together with a good friend of mine. That group I gave the name: THE POWERSOFT INCORPORATION or short: PSI. ;-)
In that group - consisting of only two members (that friend of mine - his handle was 'Yellow' and me) - I coded my first cracker-intro for the first REAL cracks I ever made. Games like OPERATION WOLF, SPITTING IMAGE and UGH-LYMPICS. I never spread that version around very much so it might be that only rather few people will have ever seen them. I just copied those versions to all my school mates and they did the same to other friends of them.
However, one very nice summer day I was going again to a small park where I used to skate a lot with my skateboard at that time. I never thought that THIS was the day in my life which was about to change everything for my future. On that day it happened that I found some 5"25 disks laying around on the ground at the top of that skateboard-hill I used to skate down a lot. I tried to find out who the owner of those disks would be and I was successful: After a while another skater came and wanted to pick up those disks as he wanted to leave home. That was the chance as I was sitting pretty near to those disks watching the tricks done by all those other skaters around that I started talking to that guy and asked him what disks that are and what would be on them. He was very nice and started to talk to me as well and told me about him being a musician with the handle HAVOK in a computer group called FRONTLINE on the C64. After a while when I told him a bit about my person it came to the point where he invited me to come with him to the next weekly meeting of his group. I accepted and thought I must be dreaming and couldn't believe that such a thing would really happen to ME!!! At the following weekend I met with Havok and drove to the meeting place - a Burger King restaurant - where all the other foreign sceners of Frontline met regularly. I was pretty shy at the beginning so that I was just only watching all of them, person by person, to get some impressions about those 'illegal' guys. On that gathering I also first met the guy I did lots of cracks with later in my future: DEEJAY ! When that meeting was over I held a game in my hands called IKARI WARRIORS which I had to crack till the next meeting to prove that I could really do cracks and to get accepted to join Frontline. Those guys let me know that the game had a pretty hard protection on it and that they doubt that I'd be able to do the crack anyway. So I was pretty afraid that they might be right as I never had done such a BIG PROJECT before.
So I went home and inserted the disk into my computer to have a look at that game. What I saw first looked like a never-to-be-able-to-crack-that game. So I was almost giving up at the beginning when I saw the game loading with a track-sector fast-loader. I have NEVER seen anything like that before. But somehow I never really stopped thinking about a way to be able to get into that damn program. I thought about everything I already learned in ML and tried to find out as most as I could about the loading routine, the protection and the game itself and how it worked. Finally I found a way to access the game and suddenly I had a working memory backup saved on my disk after a while. The only advantage I had was that the game was no multi-loader. So it had no parts or levels being loaded after the game finally started. It was a one-filer split up into several smaller files on the original game disk which got loaded into the memory at one time.
After I saw that this saved file worked almost without a problem (only a little sound-bug was still left!) I got most excited as I knew that THIS would be the chance for me to enter the so long awaited and adored SCENE. I crunched the game and tried to get a very short version out of it. I tried to erase as much garbage code as I could find in the memory to make the version even smaller.
And finally I got a very nice cracked and one-filed game version on my floppy-disk.
With that version I was very proud to appear at the next group-meeting where I could present it finally. DEEJAY was the only cracker in that group and he was also the one who had to 'examine' my work if it was good or whatever. I couldn't await his decision when he said - after looking into my work for a pretty long while: "Well, the crack isn't bad at all! Although he hasn't found out how to fix the little sound-bug. It's been a nice work though. My decision is: Let him join!"
That was the beginning of my long and still lasting scene-career as a cracker. That was also the day when I changed my handle from 'Wiesel' into the English form: 'WEASEL' to give it a 'more international touch' (to quote the words from the Frontline members! Otherwise they wouldn't have let me join! :-) ).
After that day Deejay and I became very good friends after a while. I visited him regularly every weekend and learned a lot from him about cracking, coding and training games and coding intros. During that time Frontline changed its name into MATRIX ! This was the time when Deejay and I formed a little group-sub-label just for fun. As we cracked more and more games together we called each other in our crack-intros like: '...cracked by the unbeatable Duo Deejay and Weasel....' or '...cracked by the unbelievable Duo Weasel and Deejay....' and similar things.
Our cracks got spread pretty well and I also started to trade stuff with several guys all over Europe (At this point I'd like to send some serious greetings to: Kristian Rostoen/Full Force, Guido (Goldrush)/Crest and Peter (Tycoon)/Crazy! - one of my very first contacts I had lots of fun with and very nice phone chats all over those years! ).
When Matrix split up after some time and when it happened by coincidence that GOTCHA of Crazy moved to my town and entered my school class, Deejay and me joined our next group called CRAZY. This was the BEST time in my opinion as it was the time where I have been most productive together with Deejay in cracking lots and lots of games. We became more and more well-known in the scene with our work and the release of one of the most well-known and successful disk-mags ever, called MAMBA, brought to life by CRAZY, was responsible for the whole group and its members (like Tycoon, Magic Man, Gotcha, Stingray, Martin, Frank, Deff, Deejay, Modern Bob, me (Weasel) and some more I can't remember yet at this time (Sorry guys! No offense!) to become even more famous in the scene to be always remembered in the scene's history.
After another while many of the former Matrix members formed a new group with the name LOTUS which went in CO-OP with Crazy to form an even more powerful force known under the co-op label CRAZY & LOTUS. Deejay left Crazy to join Lotus while I stayed in Crazy. It didn't matter as both groups where in co-op anyways. That event also counts to my best memories during my scene-life yet. ;-)
When Lotus decided to take a break of unknown length the co-op split up again and Crazy continued as a single group. And someday came the day when Crazy decided to stop activity as well. So the group died. When that happened I was asked to join CREST together with Deejay. I guess you will know that name pretty very good as Crest was and still is one of the best demo-coding groups ever on C64. I was asked to join them as they planned to open a cracking-section back in those days. And so we did. There were a few games released under the Crest-label from Deejay and I but it didn't take long when Deff (ex-Crazy!) called me and asked if I'd like to join a NEW group with many of the old Crazy-members called ENIGMA. As Crest wasn't sure about continuing the cracking section anymore I decided to take that offer and joined Enigma then. Deejay had bought an Amiga at this time and started a little bit coding on that machine, so he wasn't interested in joining another group anymore and so he stayed out.
Enigma also did a great job in the scene and released lots of cracks I also had many releases of (as I wasn't the only cracker anymore in that group! Richie of ex-Illusion was also in Enigma that time!). When Enigma died as well after a long time I joined RED SECTOR INC. and after that a smaller group called LEGACY (the group where I met Jack Alien first!). I also really enjoyed those days. (The thing is only that I can't write that much in here anymore as the article would grow tooooo big then if I'd explain everything in the closest detail...! ;-) And as I don't wanna get killed by the main editor I will take it a bit shorter now as the most important part was the beginning anyway: How It All Began! ).
After Legacy I was in PANDORA for a short time and after that in another big milestone in scene's history when AVANTGARDE was born. Ok, I admit that I wasn't doing that much anymore in Avantgarde cause we had got a few crackers where one of them had most of the releases in that group: JACK ALIEN ! Because I had bought an Amiga as well and about one year later I got my own PC (back in 1993 if I remember correctly) I hadn't had the time to still do lots on C64. I also lost motivation when I saw those cheap games being released with no real quality because companies didn't care about quality from C64 games anymore. :-(
Well, and that is where I am now today. As Avantgarde died in the summer of 1996 and most members joined F4CG (Fantastic Four Cracking Group!) I am typing this article on my PC right now in the middle of the night and remember the GOOD OLD DAYS where ALL HAS BEGUN.
All in all I can just say that I really don't regret ANY part of my scene-career. I always tried to do my BEST in my work - to supply the best quality in my cracks - and I guess it worked out in most of the cases (the positive feedback from most scene-guys should prove that, I guess.). I met a LOT of cool guys all over the world and that's a very cool thing I won't ever miss. The scene-spirit also was and is a very powerful experience which showed me that TOGETHER WE ARE STRONG and we can MOVE THINGS the way we want them to be. Just KEEP ALL TOGETHER and we will be successful. It also taught me to stick to my REAL FRIENDS I made during all these years and lots of other things I am proud of today.
I hope I could show all of you a bit of the way I went through all the years and maybe you saw yourself mirrored in certain situations again as well and that other people had the same problems and feelings like you had once. So I can just tell you to NEVER GIVE UP the goals you would like to reach but try to give your best instead. There are lots of similar situations in life which could be compared to certain scene-experiences. It's all the same and it all works after the same kinda scheme.
So if you want to reach something really badly always believe in it and it'll finally work out some day.
That's it for this article then. I hope you enjoyed reading it.
If you ever want to get in contact with me don't hesitate to write an e-mail to the following address:
weasel@nospam.gmx.net
And here goes a last little request from me to *ALL* of you:
If some of you still have got ANY CRACKS from me (and Deejay!) around in your disk-collections, PLEASE contact me on my e-mail address printed above and mail them to me! I've lost many of my releases due to some silly actions of scratching and loss of many disks I once had. So I'd like to collect as many cracks from me and my groups I used to be in, as I can again, to put them back into my collection.
Thanks in advance for all YOUR help in reaching this goal.
Stay cool - Act cool and keep the SPIRIT alive!
Signing off!
Yours,
Juergen
(Weasel of Powersoft Inc., Frontline, Matrix, Crazy, Crazy+Lotus, Enigma, Crest, Red Sector Inc., Legacy, Pandora, Avantgarde, Hitmen and Padua!) (in chronological order since 1984 on C64 !! ;-) )
Final greetings must go to:
- ALL MY GROUP MATES of all the groups I had the pleasure and honour to be a part of
- all the people who still know and/or remember me
- all the people who supported my work with either great acceptance, help or magazine-votes
- all the people without their help I wouldn't have come to where I am today
- all the people on all the parties I attended over the years
- and all my REAL FRIENDS I got out of the scene during the years (you should know who you are!)
Thanks for all!
Editor's Note:
Remembering details from well over 20 years ago is certainly a hefty task indeed. I would like to point out that I have a feeling Weasel is confusing 1984 with 1986 in regards to his inception into the world of C64 (the game Commando did not exist until 1986 and the C128 was not widely available in Europe until 1986 also).
Some extra trivia for this article: it was originally intended for the "Brainfart" paper magazine. When this did not eventuate it was intended for the failed comeback edition of "Pirates" in 2008 (still may come out hopefully) and finally has found a home here in "Recollection Issue 3".
