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«c2»*** THE SCENE HISTORY AND THE HISTORY OF THE AMIGA! ***«»
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               - The First Years!«»
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«c3»BY ZEROX/GODS WITH HELP FROM LORD HELMET/SPACEBALLS«»
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«c1»Also thanks to Adonis/IRIS for giving me some ideas for which productions
to watch without even knowing it, hehe... and Punisher/DarkAge for being
my companion when watching some of these productions!«»
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In this article I'll try to give a summery of the history of the scene
and the amiga. Of course I can't really go into the depths, but I'll at
least try to mention the most important events and productions. I got to
warn you that this article will contain some real bad language. Because of
the lack of time, I won't have time to correct my spelling-errors etc.«»
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In the mid-80s the ruling computer among the younger population was
definately the C64, but this would soon change with the launch of the Amiga in 1985.
It was pretty normal in the C64 scene at that time that they cracked the
games and inserted their own small intro to tell the world they had cracked
the game for us. This can be described as the beginning of the computer scene,
but not the amiga scene. Still, the same happened the first years in the life
of the amiga too. Not many games were released between 1985-88 though, but
enough to create cracker groups which made these small intros also refered to
as demos in those days. Until late 1987 not many people were familiar with the amiga,
except from the fact that they knew it was an amazing machine with a very high
price. The A1000 with the 256k memory costed around £1700 at that time.
When Commodore launched the A500 in 1987 this changed, and the sales exploded.
The A500 with 512k memory was the first low-end Amiga OCS chipset as the A1000
loaded the kickstart from disk. The A500 had DMA expansion slot, and was sold with
the kickstart 1.2 and 1.3. The price was around £599, so more people could afford it.
The same year also A2000 got out with 1MB memory (something else than the lousy 64k, eh?)
Zorro II slots, OCS/ECS chipset and kickstart 1.2-2.04. It costed around £2000 though.
Many C64 groups moved to the amiga, but not all were satisfied. Some returned, like
Triad and Abnormal. This tells us all even today that the scene isn't really
dependent on the hardware it's based upon.«»
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The amiga scene in generall was very very small back
then, infact ALOT smaller than today. The scene was mainly located in Germany,
the Benelux countries and in Scandinavia. The most important country was probably
Germany which had many famous teams; like the Kent Team, BS1, Champs and Hotline
which more or less controlled the software flow. Some groups tried to make demos
instead, as they couldn't get hold on originals. The demos are not demos as we know
them today, they were more like very small intros - one screen intros. The first demo
ever made, was probably Starfrontiers Vector Cube released the 8th of August 1986.
This demo still works on all amigas. Perhaps other small demos were made before this
time also, but they haven't been spread around very well. Other groups which released
demos in the very beginning, were Red Sector, Kinbat, 1001, SSS and RBB I've been
told. The first mega demo ever released is said to have been by Sodan & Magician 42 back
in the early 1987, and it was considered to be faboulous at that time. Again it's real
hard to say which one was the first one to get released. I didn't get an A500 before
later that year, and didn't even know about the scene at that time.... so the information
above is just what I've been told. Anyway, the few games released were cracked by ECA,
Red Sector and a few other groups.«»
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When it comes to the effects in the beginning, most sceners of today wouldn't even
call them effects. The sceners had enough trouble to figure out what copper and blitter were.
Simple rainbowcoloured copperlist was more than enough to make computerfreaks breathless.
The new technology was of course superiour to what we all had been used to before, like
the C16/Plus 4, Vic20, Spectrum 48, Tiki 100 and C64 just to mention a few.«»
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In 1988 new demos started coming more often. While the crackergroups remained in
Germany, Belgium, Holland and UK, the Scandinavians (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and Finland
a bit later, started to code demos instead as they couldn't get hold on originals
as mentioned above. Until recently, this is an advantage the Nordic countries have
continued to have. Active demogroups at that time were SCA, Tristar, Crusaders, Alcatraz,
It, Cryptoburners, Red Sector, DOC, Kefrens and many others. I guess most of the older
sceners today can remember these teams.«»
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There were many cooperations, and one powerful was certainly Bamiga Sector 1 & The Kent Team.
They were basically cracking groups but their intros always included cutting edge
technology which made people want to get the new games only to see wheter Bamiga Sector 1 &
The Kent Team had a new intro or not. They did a great job combining cracking and
demo programming. Other groups who were good at combining these things were surely
Trilogy and Thrust. Other cracking groups that weren't that much into doing intros/demos
at that time, were Quartex, The Band and Ackerlight.
The megademos also started coming after 1988. Some of the better ones to remember were
the "Megademo" by Cryptoburners, IT, North Star, Fairlight, Link, Red Sector and Alcatraz.«»

Parties were a rare thing back then compared to today. There weren't really any Amiga-only
parties before 1989. Even in 1989 many of the parties were combined C64 and Amiga. I remember
my first party, which was a local copy-party had lots of C64 people. And certainly before
before 1989 the majority of the parties were dominated by the C64-guys. Today there are
still C64 people present at the biggest parties, and still only a few Amiga-only parties.
The biggest parties at that time were arranged in the Scandinavian countries, with a few
exceptions - just as today really. And then there weren't a demo without a scrolltext.
Scrolltexts with lots of greetings, logo at the top and an effect in the middle was the
standard demo. Sculpt 3d was great when it was released. One of the best games was probably
Defender Of The Crown which is still harddisk installable and should work on most amigas.
Another great game which I think most of you remember, is Ports Of Call. Other early games
were various sport games, like World Games and Winter Games. Some really great demos at
the start; Mega Demo III by Northstar, Party Demo by Tristar, Mega Demo by Anthrax,
Demons Are Forever by DOC, Uridium Demo by Starfrontiers, Ottifanten Demo by Thrust,
Mega Demo by Joy-MGF-Jungle, Mega Demo by TSK and Demon Demo by DOC just to mention a few.«»
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First in the end of 1988 and in the beginning of 1989 the scene got to see the
first real demos. It was back then we first got to see a big variation of effects
in the demos. We got to see equalizers, big scrolls, sinus scrolls, many scrolls,
bobs (small and big, and many), melting effects, starfields (not 3d at that time),
line vectors, dots, plasma, logos and of course coppers and sprites. It was very
popular to include as many of these effects as possible in one screen. The battle
to have as many bobs in one screen (often refered to as the bobrace) continued
through 1989 but faded away when unlimited bobs where introduced. Vectorballs also
became a popular routine because of the fantastic Vectorballs demo by Thomas Landsburg.
On the 17th of May the
first demo with filled vectors got released. The group IT from Norway made it.
The coder was Jabba. The same year the first scene stars introduced themselves through an amazing megademo.
It was Red Sector which presented this demo which was far ahead of all other demos
at that time; in code, in graphics and in music. That's also why the scene got its
first real stars; Romeo Knight, Delta, Dr.C. The demo is a must in every collection.
Other good demos in 1989 were Seven Sins by Scoopex, Mega Demo by Kefrens, Mega Demo II by
Defjam, Beach Volley by Paradox, Vectorbobs by Armada, Universal Pictures by Unique,
Mega Demo by Predators and of course a whole bunch of others.«»
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The improvements that
year were not only in demos, but also in the software. The musicians got some new
soundmakers like new soundtrackers and noisetracker.
Perhaps Crusaders weren't the first group to make musicdisks, but they
were the first ones to put some effects in the musicdisks. And those musicdisks
became very popular, especially since Dr.Awesome made the music.
The magscene got expanded. In the start
Cracker Journal with all its issues dominated. Now Zine and Hackmag were the mags to
read, and the work with D.I.S.C. and I.C.E. had begun. Also the EuroChart got introduced
that year. And also the cracking scene was bigger than ever. The software companies
created alot of games, and the various crews cracked them; like Quartex, VF, Paranoimia,
Quicksilver, Oracle, Tristar, Supreme and Tarkus Team to mention the most active in that
period. In 1989 the first big parties got arranged; like the Venlo meeting, and the parties
by Powerslave^VF^AF and IT/Razor 1911.«»
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In 1990 the A1500 got launched. It has 1MB memory and the same 68000 processor as the
previous amigas. It costed then 999 pounds and was generally an A2000 with two disk drives.
More important was however the release of the A3000! It costed 3000 pounds, but had
an 68030 processor, kickstart 2, Zorro III slots and ECS chipset. The A3000 opened new doors
even though it only had 1MB as standard memory.«»
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In 1990 bobs were more or less out. The last good bobs-based demo was Spacedepth by IRIS.
Now it was vectors for all. Everybody did vectors in 1990; stencil vectors, vector landscapes,
solid vectorscrolls, vector objects... just all kind of vectors. Very few demos that year
didn't contain vectors.«»
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The Mental Hangover demo was probably the most important demo of the year as it started
two trends. It was the first ever trackmo released. Afterwards everybody released trackmos,
and it was the end of mega demos. The other trend this demo created was the long introduction
part which also everybody copied. The men behind this production were; Slayer, Reward and
Uncle Tom which of course are real scene legends.«»
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It was not only a question of doing new things with vectors. It was also a question of
who had the fastest vector routine. It was Phantasmogovia by Dan/Anarchy and of course
the legendary The Hunt for the 7th October by Tec/Cryptoburners which won the competition.
The line drawing routine by Tec was used for almost a decade. The Hunt for 7th October also
have a module by Walkman called "Klisje på klisje" which is still considered to be one
of the best amiga modules ever. Therefore this demo is also one of my favourite demos of
all time. I think it was ahead of its time.«»
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The first raytracing in a demo was done by Northstar in the Megademo III. But it was
Celebrandil/Phenomena who first used a succesful raytracing, with his great demo called
In My Room.«»
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Budbrain introduced a funny style with cartoon drawings which got very popular.
Later on however, some sceners said that there weren't much talent behind their
productions. Anyway, Budbrains second Megademo is really a great production!«»
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Delta presented Cebit 90 which was a great demo, although it never reached the
same heights as his megademo. Red Sector, Scoopex, Phenomena, Razor, Cryptoburners
and Anarchy were the most popular groups of the year. And for the first time, demogroups
were more popular than cracking groups. Some other good demos in 1990 were Mega Demo VI
by Kefrens, Mega Demo II by Cryptoburners, Mega Demo by Crionics, Vectors for all by Vertigo,
Journey by The Link, the famous Iraq-demo by Animators, Freddie is back by Paradox,
Vertical Insanity by Razor, Materialized by Cryptoburners, Trip to Mars by Tomsoft and
Blue house by Silents.«»
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The modem made it to the scene, and some boards appeared. Many people thought that
the scene was getting to business minded, and started a friendship movement. 
Groups like Quartex, Oracle and Vision Factory died. But at least Quartex got reborn later on.
Skid Row, TRSI and Defjam were the new teams of the cracking scene. However, the police
busted many. At that time the cracking scene got smaller and smaller.«»
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Musicdisks became more and more popular. But there weren't many who could compete
with Crusaders. Bacteria by Crusaders and Delicate Sounds by Razor 1911 were the best
ones in 1990. Other good musicdisks were the very first ones from Phenomena; Music Dream I and II.
And a quite interesting musicdisk was The Chip Music-Festival by Magnetic Fields. It contained
alot of famous chip-tunes from the past.«»
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The mags to read were Zine (which was the best), D.I.S.C., I.C.E, Hackmag, McDisk and Cracker Journal.«»
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There were also alot of parties that year. Many people will probably remember that
the Cryptoburners party in Drammen/Norway got busted! Good parties were NoLimits/Imp 666 party,
Ami Expo, Xbeat/Bloodsuckers, Cebit, Flt-Miracle party, Silents/RSI party and the
Dexion X-mas party.«»
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TO BE CONTINUED...  USE THE BUTTONS TO READ MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY!«»
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