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December 10, 2023 9:11 AM   Subscribe

Wired called it the 'The Shadow Internet'. Inverse Phase (Previously) talked about 'How Software Piracy Birthed an Underground Art Scene' at HOPE 2018. A recently released full-length documentary (website) details how teenagers ignited a computing revolution in the 1980s with illegally copied video games.

Previously: Piracy is progressive taxation, Welcome to the scene, Shipped off to a foreign jail for warez, Lo-Fi Video Game Anti-Piracy, "host activist...advocates a radical conception of freedom of expression", It's Spanish For Girlfriend, Space: The Final Demoscene, Features include rickroll, CGA = 4 colors, amirite?, The real party is in the SHUTTLEBUS!!!, Confessions of a Disk Cracker: the secrets of 4am, A 3D graphics demo, minus the graphics. Sort of, "A preservation of the shady side of the 90s internet in Japan", Did a vigilante ROM leaker go too far to “preserve” a lost Atari ROM?, A Demoparty in a Browser, and For music what vi was for text.

How have games been protected?
People of a certain age will remember Lenslok, The Secret of Monkey Island took a more whimsical approach, other used hardware dongles. Taking the Atari ST as an example, various software schemes were used. Trace vector based schemes were popular. With Rob Northen being the most widely used, for example on Arkanoid. HLS was another scheme used on multiple games. Over the lifetime of the ST protection progressed from the simpler methods in, for example, Brataccas, Spy Vs Spy, Leatherneck, Gauntlet II, The Sentinel and Garfield. To the more in-depth version used in Turrican. Midi-Maze makes use of fuzzy bits on the floppy disk. Dungeon Master took these methods and ran with them.

How were cracks done?
On the Atari ST and Amiga, sometimes with a copy program, sometimes debugger with the Datel Action Replay as a secret weapon. On the C64 various techniques were used for the bootloader, cartridges and tape loaders.

The result were shared at copy parties such as Alpha Flight, Vision Factory and Powerslave 1989, Dexion Christmas Party 1990 and The Party 1991. Bulletin board systems were the other main source of distribution which developed an art scene.

BBS The Documentary (Previously) All this was illegal, at least if you were outside Italy. Bill Gates wrote an open letter. Amiga Computing said "pirates" is too good a word for them. Amiga Format said "It's killing the industry". Federation Against Software Theft (F.A.S.T.) in the UK ran adverts in many of the computer magazines, and of course Don't Copy That Floppy. Police Raids were not far behind.

Today some of the old groups still exist. Fairlight with some members going on to surprising things (Previously) and even lawyers. Other people went on to be game developers. Others are still active cracking old games. The Replicants released at 100% working version of Son Shu Shi (cracktro). People are trying to preserve the files, scrolltexts, ANSI/ASCII/Amiga text art, intros and papers from the scene.

Interviews Creating your own intro Books Cracktros and some selected intros and demos:

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
posted by Z303 (14 comments total) 81 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well I never!

[what an extraordinary post]

p.s. belated thanks to Mr Xerox, whoever you are, for cracking Star Blazer for the Apple II+!
posted by chavenet at 10:29 AM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]


Amazing post. I was an avid fan of the demoscene from 1992 on. I always wanted to attend a party, but Finland (and later Canada with NAID) seemsd so far away to a young teen.

Fond memories! Thanks so much for this, it will sustain me through the dark winter 😝
posted by keep_evolving at 10:42 AM on December 10, 2023


Bill Gates wrote an open letter.

Just this one link (to a Wikipedia article) would have been worthy of an FPP by itself. I'd known the basics of the matter for a while; Steven Levy put it in his book Hackers, which is still one of the better books about the early days of the personal computer revolution. But the article is very well-written, putting the matter in the context of how much the early microcomputers cost and how little software was written for them. (It shows the ad for the Apple I, which notes that Apple BASIC was thrown in for free.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:24 AM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]


Absolutely fantastic post, I'm digging into some of these links now. The demo scene is endlessly fascinating to me.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:37 PM on December 10, 2023


Just echoing how great this post is!
posted by JHarris at 2:21 PM on December 10, 2023


starting from an argument between 2 teenagers about pkzip vs arj over the live chat on a self-hosted BBS in... '93? i forged a friendship that lead to greater friendships that lasted decades
posted by glonous keming at 5:51 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]


I've found at least one blog post for my own blog from among all these links, attributed of course. It's the kind of post that doesn't get too much discussion because everyone reading it feels out of their depth.

Ah, I see Freespin among all these! I posted that here myself a couple of years ago! Under 2021, if you missed it back then and know anything about Commodore 64s, you really want to see that one, it is not hyperbole to say that you will be amazed.
posted by JHarris at 3:33 PM on December 11, 2023


Ah, I checked the link to Freespin and the video isn't of the demo itself, or of its remarkable setup. Here, this is what you want to see. And here is my post from back then.
posted by JHarris at 3:41 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Freespin is one of the productions. My entry building script had no end of problems processing. I ended up mostly creating that one by hand. Something to improve if I ever do a third one of these
posted by Z303 at 4:19 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Ah, sadly all of my posts (including that one) I built by burning <a href=""></a> into my muscle memory with a soldering iron. If I had considered that approach it'd have saved me a lot of time/energy/labor/sanity.
posted by JHarris at 5:14 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]


Mod note: [By the way, this post has been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:18 AM on December 12, 2023 [1 favorite]


Super post. Thank you! This is going to take me a while.
posted by Elmore at 4:52 PM on December 12, 2023


All my C64/BBS childhood memories are coming back.

Downloading whatever game, watching the XMODEM client slowly . . . accrue . . . its . . . bytes . . . at . . . 300bps . . . 100%

Couldn't even think of calling anyone, lest the byte-stream be interrupted and the download fouled. I was totally an end-user, but I had friends on various boards and at school who spent a lot of time futzing about cracking, hacking, phreaking. Fascinating tales to listen to but just gimme the disk and hand me the damn joystick or let's play some D&D eh?

Thanks for posting this. Unlocked a lot of memories.
posted by not_on_display at 8:25 PM on December 13, 2023 [1 favorite]


When I was a baby programmer I saw crack intros and was awed, wondering if I could ever produce something with such raw coolness. Now (*leans back with a self-satisfied smile*) I write enterprise software.
posted by a faded photo of their beloved at 3:23 AM on December 21, 2023 [2 favorites]


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