FBR 2001 - The Real Story
RECOLLECTION issue 3
By tbb!
Introduction and article title by Jazzcat
Fucked Beyond Repair were an import/crack/demo and fixing group based in North America. In the last edition of Recollection, the scene was entertained by a brief story on the group by Ronski, one of its members. Since that publication, some of the former group members have voiced their concern that there was some inaccuracy. This provided the magazine with an opportunity to deliver an alternative, I approached The Bit Bandit to provide his factual recollection...
The FBR article that Ronski wrote for Recollection includes a lot of general details. Not too much specifics, however, for the most part I grudgingly say it's somewhat accurate, as far as the major history, but written by a real weasel and lowlife. I guess it's been a long time so I really harbor no resentment towards him (Ronski), it's just that he was a dick and unlikable when I did know him. Oh well, sorry Ron.
But...
The original FBR members were Infernal, Ninja, Microman, Changeling, Invincible Importer, and Death Demon. They started the group, and were instrumental in making FBR the legend it is today. Much of the history of those days are well known and can be gleaned from the FBR 2001 article Ronski wrote as well as the hundreds of scroll texts and memories of veterans. Then the torch was passed to Candyman, who brought in Oahawhool.
At this time, I was new to the scene, and only dreamed of joining one of these pirating groups and getting access to the exclusive and difficult to get on boards.
I downloaded some crack from a board called The CIA in New York, probably several games, and started taking down the numbers for the listed boards. Of course at the time, nobody knew me, and the door was slammed in my face for every board I applied to. I was an unknown lamer. The C64 pirate scene and the BBS's were, well, 'Elite'. You just couldn't dial a number, and ask for an account. You needed to be vouched for, or well known. It was a fact of the day, and the 'real' C= pirates stuck to it.
Until I got to Billy the Kid's board. Billy the Kid was a member of the group called The Alliance and his BBS was their headquarters. I called it up one night in the wee hours of the morning and during the process of applying only knowing that I would be refused, Billy broke in and started chatting with me. I told him I was a new to the scene lamer and was trying to get onto 'elite' bbs' like his. We spoke for a couple hours actually. He gave me access to his board, as well as vouched for me, and the rest is history. I was the very last member of The Alliance, and that's how I got onto Warez Galore and Wild Warez (in my opinion, the only boards that mattered; hey Jimmy'z and Gazoo!). Billy and I shot the shit but we didn't do anything. We had no contacts, but now I had access to every single elite Commodore 64 board out there simply by dropping his name, as he was a highly respected pirate, and one of the coolest people I met during the 64 days. And did sysops check to make sure that Billy vouched for me, you betcha. It's too bad it was so short lived (me, him, and The Alliance in general). The Alliance had a short but brilliant run, with a good membership, but they (the members) were all moving in other directions at the time (older guys getting out of the C64 scene, and computers in general I think, or members moving to other groups). Billy quit the scene shortly after that, and we fell out of contact, but this was the start of my Commodore 64 history.
So, now I had access to all the major boards. Warez Galore and Wild Warez were the 2 number 1 boards in the nation. Everything hit those BBS's first. Hell, I think The Shark uploaded his imports there before even putting them on his own (The Mind Slayers board) headquarters. I called them all, downloaded everything, posted every once in a while (actually posted all the time, as there was few people I liked, and I just loved to rag, as the veterans know). There was a group of Las Vegas kids starting a group called USA (United Software Association, I think) and they (The Pimp) asked if I would join as I was already an avid code hacker (phone codes), and had fresh codes which I hacked myself on a daily basis. The fact that I was seen on every single BBS across the United States caught someone's notice, and I was questioned on how I was able to do it. I stayed with USA for about a month. The group was a joke with no respect and released SEUCK's but I did get my very first contact through them. Tom of the Beastie Boys, out of Switzerland, who I took with me to FBR. I got my very first import from him as well (Overlander, if I recall correctly, but I could be wrong, which we could not release because I was not good enough at NTSC fixing yet, which by the way, never got NTSC fixed till like '93 or something, which we never got beat on cause at the time, no one could fix it). Now that I think about, I don't think it was Overlander but oh well.
It was with that import I joined FBR.
Oahawhool got in contact with me, asked if I could supply FBR with calling cards, 950's, 800's, every type of phone code known (the infamous Allnets, which I was the king of) and we were able to acquire and get contacts with many of the major Euro groups. 711 and Elite were a couple of my major contacts, and they were great as their members were coders of games for some of the companies, so we were able to get warez which others simply could not get, as we were getting it from the source. A major release of mine was Ringside Boxing, which got me respect from INC, The Shark most notably, as him I and warred on every board throughout the US and it was an ongoing war for probably about a year. Oahawhool and Dave (The Shark) had a special hate for each other but that subject was something I kept out of. It was more of a tbb!/fbr! vs. The Shark rag war more than it was an FBR/INC war, but the masses viewed it the way they wanted. It helped to gain me a bit of notoriety but I still could not beat Dave's record of the most hated pirate ever, which for some obscure sadistic reason I wanted. Hey, we as humans want to win at everything. :)
Anyway, Oahawhool had Fairlight, Candyman had Zenith (Steve of Zenith, but we knew that Ironfist was a really talented cracker who didn't need a freeze cartridge ;) ), I had 711, Elite, The Beasties, a few Dutch Groups, and a bunch of other contacts providing me with games. We were a force to be reckoned with, but then again, we always were. We released everything, and were rarely beat. There was one game that came out that INC and FBR got at the same time. That game was Rick Dangerous. Dave (The Shark) beat me to Warez Galore, but I beat him to Wild Warez. The FBR version was much better with more trainers, and a kill switch (there were some places you could get stuck, so had to kill yourself to continue the game). Dave jumped all over my ass because when you were beat, you were beat, and uploading a game that was already on a board from another group was really bad etiquette. Even I knew that, but of course I rationalized it away as our version was truly better (I think I trained that game, but not sure). I have to admit though, I knew I was in the wrong uploading the game because as a pirate, there were just some rules you didn't bend. If you got beat to a board, you went to another board and hope you beat the other group who was also trying to release the same game and move on. But again, Warez Galore (God Bless Jimmy'Z) was the premier board and if your ware wasn't there, it wasn't anywhere.
A short note on Ronski; Ronski I never liked and had distaste for. Actually, I couldn't stand him, but he always tried to be my friend. I just had distaste for him as he was just a loud mouthed punk with 0 skills, and claimed credit for stuff he never did. He tried to steal credit for a split raster routine which I used in one of my intro's (which everyone tried to rip, but the American's couldn't figure out the timing (I learned the routine from a Euro, a German, TK/711) so if you look way back at an old Havok demo, there's my ripped split raster routine, but the rasters are bent in the middle and go diagonal about halfway through the scan, in the middle. A couple of coders called me at the time the demo came out, looked through the code, and confirmed it was my routine. It was because of shifty shit like this I didn't like him. He claimed to be a coder but I challenge anyone to find an intro he actually wrote, a game he actually fixed, trainer code he actually wrote; you won't find it, and if you do, trust me, he didn't do it. I know because I have had coding talks with him and he didn't know anything. He was a liar, plain and simple. He got busted in a parking lot for buying laser printers on stolen credit cards and got busted. Good riddance I thought.
This is what caused me to leave FBR, and that was the day Oahawhool and Candyman formed The Humble Guys on PC and left FBR, and I formed DBX (DoubleCross), and FBR was officially dissolved ('92 or '93 if my memory serves me). I know that Ronski asked either Dave or Candyman if he could continue FBR, but it would be without me. FBR final membership was Candyman, Oahawhool, Microman, DeathMaster, and tbb! slash fuckin' FB fuckin' R. You'll notice Microman, an original member is in there with us. I really wanted to have some of the original members back and I even got in contact with Death Demon (Bruce) and had him back in the group when he had time (he was busy with other things and couldn't devote 24 hours a day to C64 pirating anymore like we did. No Ronski, none of this slave bullshit (The Shark had slaves, but I think TSM (The Shaolin Monastery) started the whole slave thing, but it has been a long time and my memory is faulty).
After FBR dissolved (in my mind) but before I started DBX, I could have joined Exodus (XDS), or NEC/NEI, or pretty much any of the big known high quality 'Elite' groups but I didn't. I helped out NEI with an import during my transition that I didn't want to release because it was a magazine game (Pub Darts). It actually turned out being an ok game and I passed it on to The Grim Reaper (Dave) and he released it 0 day under the NEI name. I actually was unsure about this game and suspected it was a re-release. I called up Bod/Talent (and hoped his line wasn't busy having phone sex with Aycee) and asked him about it (it was an English game) and he thought it was a re-release but wasn't sure. It wasn't but it was a budget game so I refused to stick the FBR seal of approval on it. I spoke to Darren occasionally; usually to pump him for information or tease him for having phone sex with Aycee (that story has been beat to death, no need for me to retell it here, unless you want my completely uncensored imagined version of it, which would probably be pretty good actually, but not for Bod).
As far as coding goes, I did a few intros (3, maybe 4 or 5) for FBR. I did an intro for Legend (anyone know what happened to Goldfish? He and I were good friends and I would have released everything from Legend at the time if they weren't already exclusive with NEC/NEI (if I recall correctly). I taught myself NTSC fixing and in the beginning, it was mostly either removing some scan lines (easy $d012 fixes) or actually modifying the game play (which was kind of lame, but I was learning). I then got the whole theory of unrolling loops and more advanced $d012 fixing from Horizon (talking to him, and ripping his fixes) and got better to the point that there was nothing I came across that I couldn't fix (except for Overlander, which I worked on for a week, with no success). Elric taught me most of my coding skills; I got the in's and out's of FLD from Stormbringer, who was an awesome (actually, the best American coder) and all around cool guy. Warewolf/XDS was another coder who I spoke when I was learning to code and he (Stan) was a cool guy and one of the guys I spoke daily to (I spoke daily with most XDS members, The Grim Reaper, Master Cracker/INC?, and I'm sure many others. I introduced Reverb (or was it Sequencer (I can't remember) to the C64 scene; one of them wrote me some custom music which I might have used in an intro, or possible it's still sitting on disk in unfinished form). TK/711 taught me some cool raster shit (split rasters) and hard timing (no more 8,8,8,8,8,8,8,1) as well as some more advanced coding concepts like actually working with NTSC timing instead of just stacking routines on top of each other. All the sinus code and routines in the Legend intro I wrote myself, by hand, but it was nothing special; hell, if memory serves me I think I cheated and just varied the xy coordinates. Not as advanced as some of my Euro coding hero's, but shit, I did a lot in FBR (coding, fixing, importing, phone code supplying, contact getting, warring to keep the FBR name good, and all around quality control (i.e., I wouldn't release budget games, SEUCKs, or magazine games under the FBR label). I never claimed to be an awesome coder, and I really wasn't. Excel/Ikari and I got into a rag war back in the day about coding skills. He started talking shit one day on a board where we were discussing sprites. He said some gay shit that I didn't know what a sprite was so I released an 'Excel Sucks' demo which had like 64 or more sprites in full motion, but of course it was in NTSC. I didn't know that on PAL the sprites didn't move. He picked apart the demo and told me I was lame because I had like shit loads of sprite data, when there was only 1 on the screen. And my point was proven that he was a lame fuck when he couldn't even figure out what the demo was doing. I Win! dickhead.
I was away from the scene 89 and 90 as I spent 2 years in jail for the phone stuff. bummer. '87 to '93 was my scene time. '92 is about when the scene was drying up big time (actually, it had been going downhill for a while at that point) and we all waited forever for Lemmings to come out, which we got beat on because our gay ass supplier was sick from partying all fuckin' night. I guess it was a good excuse but Lemmings was a game everyone was waiting on because we knew it was going to be a high quality game from a big software house. I wanted badly for that to be release under the FBR label, but, it's how the cookie crumbled.
I brought The Butcher/ESI into FBR for a short time as we had a contact we knew was getting Heroes of the Lance before anyone else and I actually cracked the game, but my crack was lame (save out memory, get start address (no funky level protection). The Butcher properly cracked the game and it was first released by FBR, and then I swear 3 or 4 other groups released it too but everyone knew we put it out first. <
During the time when the scene was active, I ran conferences on almost a weekly basis if not more often. We'd have 10-15 people on the phone just running amuck and doing/saying crazy shit. I was an avid hacker, and knew all about the phone system and Unix. I had voice mail boxes, divertors, extenders, every code imaginable. I use to hack the Operation Sun Devil (a government plan to catch and prosecute phone code hackers) outcalls by hand as it was an 800 number and you could find a code within 10 tries just using random numbers. A lot of sceners got busted or received phone calls or got big phone bills but it was relatively tame for the pirates. They (the government/police/whatever) were more interested in getting the big hacking/phreaking guys (Legion of Doom (LOD), Masters of Destruction (MOD), Kevin Mitnick. And besides, the quality of that line for transferring between Europe was very shitty. I mean 300 baud Kermit and/or X-modem transfers, if it would even work. No beloved Punter unless it was stateside. I had shitloads of AT&T's all the time, Sprint and Allnet fiber optics, so I never had trouble trading (gimme an A) with Europe. When I was a kid (I'm 40 now) I use to sit at hotels in San Francisco with binoculars (big hotels, like the Marriot) and get AT&T's and Sprint phone cards by watching people punch in the numbers on the phone (yeah, I know, get a life, but the C64 WAS my life at the time). The Euro's loved my cards because they didn't die after 3 hours of use.
We (all Commodore 64 Users/Owners/Pirates) were all integral to the scene. The shit we did was crazy and fun. I'm still dreaming of the movie that should be made about the C64 underground pirate scene. So much shit happened to us kids that in my opinion, it would make a fascinating movie. People got beat up, people went to jail, pirates and hackers pwned the phone system, hell, I bet if I look hard enough, there's killing in the C64 historical archives, but I really hope no one went as far as murder for a game, but if they did, imagine the mythos that adds.
Let me step back for a minute. Most of everything I have written has been from my personal point of view, and what I remember. It could be spotty or even incorrect as my memories from over 20 years ago, are, well, over 20 years old. Let me get a little general (but still my point of view). The time of Commodore 64 pirating was a magical time. I learned a lot of things. I learned to Blue Box. I made friends all over the world. I gained a little infamy. I think about those times and they were good times. I missed a lot of school, but I'm pretty much a fuckin' genius and graduated with straight A's (GPA > 3.5) anyways so that's pretty much irrelevant. Pirating didn't start with the C64, but it made it fun. The times were such an impact on computing and people; it's the reason the Commodore 64 still has its fan base today. Apple, Atari, Coleco, Mattel (remember Intellivision?), etc. etc. have nothing on the C64.
It would be nice to get a bunch of Americans together regularly (like the Euro's do on #c-64) but I guess as Americans do, we move on, and don't live in the past. Still, if you're an old American pirate and you somehow find yourself reading this, irc.stealth.net #c-64 would welcome you. Who knows, I'm probably there now surrounded by like 6000 fuckin Euro's who do nothing but trade kiddy porn (Hi Knoeki and Jazzcat, and the king of pron, xmikex, and of course, Fungi)...
These days I work. I'm a Unix systems engineer which simply means I'm an overpaid Unix geek who can do anything with a Unix box. My ongoing studies into theoretical physics (relativity, quantum mechanics, theoretical particle physics) take a lot of my time as well. I have a 6 year old son which is my best release to date. I smoke pot though not in the ridiculous quantities I did in the past, and party with the best of them.
I'm currently in San Francisco as I write this but I started this article in Portland, Oregon. I'm in San Francisco working a 6 month contract but will move back to Portland once this gig is over, as my son lives there with his mom. I've been promising this to Jazzcat for a while. It's probably still not done. But he'll get this much. Not much of a history, but it's a start I guess. Who knows, maybe a part 2 will develop...
Ron
tbb!/fbr!
