Cracker's Map: Denmark



In this segment we will take our journey to Denmark, the proud cracking nation that has a rich history. Each group will have primary detail, in some cases directly from the people involved, as well as some interesting trivia dug up from the depths of time. Special thanks to Mason for his help also!
Disclaimer: notice missing detail? something wrong or want to leave some feedback? Send me a mail.






State of the Art Software
Who doesn't know this group? We start our Danish segment of "Cracker's Map" with the very well known 2000 A.D., which was founded by Apollon, Blitz, Droid, Jolly, Network Ten and Softtech on the 8th of October 1987.

The core of the group was located earlier under different names. The Danish Duo changed name to The Danish Circle. When TDC died some of the members went on and created Illusion 2016. Blitz then had an idea to rename the group to 2000 A.D. after Apollon had received a letter from a Dutch group also called "Illusion" and thus 2000 A.D. were born.

They did quite a few cracks, music rips as well as a whole bunch of demos, their last one being "Chilly The Most".


Trivia:

* The 2000 A.D. guys loved to play pranks on lamers. At their 1989 party in Esbjerg one of their members poured cola into someone's C64. At the Upfront party, Blitz reset a guy’s computer while he was drawing a logo for his group.

Apollon: "I especially liked to slag off lamers. We had a lot of small wars going on - mostly in order to make our demos funny and with an edge. There were great demos out there but ours were also aggressive towards other groups...and the best coder, musician, cracker, graphician, trader, swapper (you name it) was at some point a member of 2000 A.D."

* 2000 A.D. were known for the short intros taking a few blocks with the 2000 A.D. block logos. The intros were coded by Softtech and were much more colourful than Triad's intro at the time.

Besides Softtech's coding skills he was also known for his quality cracks. The most famous crack is R.I.S.K+M, which contains a lot of trainers and bug-fixes to the games. Softtech also cracked games like Bubble Bobble that used the famous Bleepload.
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Ace Crackings was founded by Ace & ASC in 1985 and was one of first cracker groups that showed up after Danish Crackers and Sherlock Holmes. One of the members from Danish Crackers called PMK was a member of Ace Crackings. Rumours say that PMK even taught the famous Sodan a few tricks.

Ace Crackings were of course known for their cracks, but they also imported a lot of games to Denmark from the rest of Europe. It was the standard in those early days and they were able to import a lot as they were good friends of crews like Radwar, FAC and FCG. Their most famous intro was used on Cauldron and International Karate. It contained music from Kraftwerk's The Model by David Whittaker and had up-scroller and sideborder scroller.

A big part of the membership quit the C64 scene early to concentrate on game development, they became involved in making games for Kele-Line and Starvision. The group folded in 1986.
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The Perfect Handcream
Founded by Triss in August 1989 this group had plenty of cracks and demos.

The group died in November, 1990 however Atrix was rebuilt in July 1991 by Exulans, Zensonic and Dagger (all ex-members of Dunex) but only briefly lasted some months and then died again in late 1991.


Trivia:

* The name of the group derives from the brand of hand cream that was developed in 1955, the first of its kind!

* Atrix had a Belgian division who joined in from Unicess. The Danish HQ kicked them all out (Apollo, Brainkiller, Divine, Einstein, Exor, Jones etc) in February 1990. The Belgians then claimed they had left to join Orion. The result of this was Atrix releasing an "Antidemo Against WOW".
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More than just a tree
Most guys in the scene would have heard of these dudes, they were "More than just a tree". The group was created by Trap and Sonny in 1988. Crush was the main cracker of Bonzai. His companion in the dark underworld was Enjoy. Together they released a whole bunch of cracks such as "The Spy Who Loved Me +9", "Amazing Spider-Man + fix" (import with NEC) and "Back to the Future 3 +5". Before Crush joined Bonzai he was a member of Blacklords and did cracks for the group. Enjoy and Infocomie were in the Depredators and Class before joining Bonzai. Their cracks were well spread thanks to their two megaswappers Mr. Smart and Janec.

The group had an enormous amount of talent which allowed them to perform in all arenas of the scene such as the demo and magazine markets. Because of this talent it was easy for them to extend to another platform such as the PC and have a section there, albeit not as famous as their C64 counterpart.

Bonzai died on the 13th January 1992 with their final demo release by Kwon called "We Are Dead". After Bonzai died the members went to Starion and Crush even released a handful of cracks under the Starion label.


Trivia:

* A lot of members went on to take over Starion (C64) as well as The Silents (Amiga) they also had a background in The Black Lords (C64) with members from that group joining into Bonzai in 1990.

* Before it went bankrupt, Crush was a Sega-Saturn game developer for the firm Scavenger. He later went on to create his own firm called Bankrupt Ltd.

* They have an unreleased demo that is due to come out sometime that contains parts by Ricky and Walt (they released a teaser for it back in 1999).

http://welcome.to/bonzai
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Founded in 1989 the group was mostly run by Rooze and Magic who had been in Dominators and Ikari before Channel 42, the group also had the well-known Zoolook as cracker. Besides doing a lot of cracks for Channel 42 they also were the Danish alternative to import games from the states, some groups did a few imports now and then, the most known in Denmark for this were the Danish members of Ikari.

The group died in August 1989 after Rooze, Zoolook, Magic and Anthrax left to join Rough Trade. After Rough Trade they joined DCS and continued doing a lot of cracks besides importing several games from the states.


Trivia:

* Channel 42 - the group name - the number is from the apartment where some members of C42 lived.

* Channel 42 did a few co-op cracks with Action.

* The whole group joined Ikari for 10 days and then left to reform C42. The reason is that Anthrax was kicked from Ikari by Just Ice for training other people's cracks, so the other guys followed stuck with him.

* JCH was a member until he decided to become totally legal and get paid for the music he was making.
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Only First Class Cracks by Class
After Fusion and Contex split in May 1990, Magic and Rooze started Class. Soon joining was Infocomie, Hewitt, Infix and Mr. Smart and some of their first cracks were titles like KGB Superspy+3MH, Wizard Willy+4 and Yogi's Great Escape+3.

The group had plenty of cracks in their short history including a few first releases, they also did some imports from the states and to the states (through NEI and Fantasy). After Class died Enjoy joined Bonzai, Danix joined Dominators, Infocomie and Mr. Smart joined Nato and Rooze and Magic formed Discovery.


Trivia:

* Related to the same Class as on the Amiga and PC!

* Infocomie made some errors in his crack of Spacebike Simulator+2 and should have been kicked from the group according to Rooze!
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The group was a mix-up of Atrix and Bonzai members and was founded in February 1991 by Wyteboard, Thorax Design, Villain, Tjagvad, Byblow and Jack Slade.

Satan came from Daniax and Exulans came from Atrix and they soon became their main-crackers.


Trivia:

* Thorax Design was actually a label with several members, Fox/Dominators was one of them.

* Villain apparently owned a pet kangaroo!
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Danelaw 1219 was formed in 1987 by members from Wizax as well as Popeye who was famous for doing plenty of cracks for Hotline.

The group did not live for long as the members went to Amiga, but they were quite active with several of their cracks missing from the online archives. Danelaw was also the starting point for guys like Rooze and Count Dracula.
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They make'em, We break'em
Founded by PMK & Jellyfish in 1984 they were the first cracking group in Denmark. They used an alphanumerical tagging system in their crack intros and in that system you could see who did the crack. Their intro with the smooth-scroller is quite famous and should be one of the first intros that had encrypted code so lamers could not edit the intro (unlike their first intro which was not encrypted). Some of their early cracks included titles such as Suicide Express, Bruce Lee and Jumpman Jr. The group broke up in 1985 as members bought Amiga's and became active on this platform, when this happened PMK went to Ace Crackings and Sherlock Holmes went solo again.


Trivia:

* One of the first scene groups to add intros to their cracks.

* Creators of the world's first smooth scroller.

* Danish Gold and TCS later used the same slogan.

* PMK got an Amiga from the first batch of Amigas coming to DK - same with Sherlock Holmes.

* PMK used several nicks on C64´in this order: PMK -> The Joker -> The Wizard.

* If you see the game "Crackers Revenge" http://csdb.dk/release/?id=10266 you will notice that "The Wizard" helped Sodan on this game.
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They make 'em - we break 'em!
Founded by CAB and MSL in January 1984 the name did not come around until early in 1985. Danish Gold was one of the big names to come out of Denmark, releasing heaps of cracks and hosting several major events. One of these parties was the Danish Gold Copy Party 1987 in Odense. At this meeting took place one of the most important events in the C64 cracking scene history, the forming of the new cracking standard, which was to be followed until present day. This is as important as prior there was chaos in the land of C64, people naming their cracks "game name ++++++" and the like.

Now there was a standard where crackers could adhere to some proper rules, making it easier for everyone to understand what was improved or modified over the game original. Sphinx: "Odense Party July 1987 is probably the most important event in DG's history. It the party where the rules for releases were written down and unanimously accepted: "+", "+M", "!" "101%" and "#" ect. Every major group was present there and it was the first time Sodan and Honey met face to face. The best event in my 64 years."

Their famous cracker was Sunny who did plenty of cracks for Danish Gold. KNP did several imports for Danish Gold to prove that he were able to PAL-fix the games (as mentioned in Bop'n'Rumble that people expected only MZP and Mr. Z to be able to PAL-fix the game), but he also packed some of the US-releases while importing them. KNP was also the coder of the famous Danish Gold intro with the small logo and the scroller (you have to exit the intro pressing fire on joystick port 2).

The group was ended after a meeting in August 2004, Sphinx and Turtle telephoned CAB and after a quick vote it was decided that the group should die - "we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun"...

http://www.danishgold.dk


Trivia:

* Made some releases in coop with Reflex Cracking Squad.

* Same slogan as Danish Crackers.

* Sphinx and Turtle are brothers.

* Turtle, who was also involved with Fairlight, died in November 2006.

* Tommerup Party '88 - Turtle/DG came from Copenhagen on his bike (120KM/Great Belt ferry/50KM), but lost his way in the heavy storm and rain, so he left the bike at a factory area in Odense to be picked up by a German team that could not find the party (so it worked out well for the Germans and Turtle in the end!).

* At the same party some guys in Triad smashed a railroad wagon on the farmer's grounds, so the guys in Danish Gold had to move the party to an indoor stadium.

* HCA (Michael) took his own life in 1993 with a machinegun in his apartment, his girlfriend Betina found him dead with blood all over the wall and even his beloved Amiga 500 was filled with it.

* One of the early Danish scene wars was between DG and The Supply Team. Rambones created U.D.G.H., United Danish Gold Haters, featured in the demo "It's the Best/TST". Nothing much eventuated, the two groups just did not want to trade together.
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Obey your master!
Founded in 1988 by CSN (Christian Soegaard Nielsen) and Buksaws (Claus Engberg). The group held an internal meeting on the 17th of July 1988 and they finished their first demo called "Corperation", which was never spread. Their main crackers were Infocomie and Enjoy who released plenty of cracks until they joined Class and later Bonzai.

The German division eventually took over and the cracks were done by Blockbuster and Slator. Blockbuster lived close to God/Dynamix and got some of the same originals as Dynamix (one example is Fire & Forget 2).

DDT folded in April 1992 with both Blockbuster and Slator joining Chromance, in their almost four year’s existence on the C64 they released around 300 cracks and demos!

They did have some slight resurgence through Depredators Music Division (DMD). The group still remained dead, but the demo and music label, founded by Yaemon in 2003, was created out of respect for DDT and the SID chip. It had a couple of music releases before closing shop again in 2005.
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After Class died a new group was created - Discovery was founded by Rooze, Magic & Zoolook in August 1991, whilst the group only survived the competitive cracking scene for around 5 months they did manage some first releases together with Empire during that time and they had an Amiga division with other ex-Class members such as Hewitt. Besides the three members, Twist was also in the group as swapper. When the group died in December 1991 all the members joined The Dominators.
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Founded in 1989 by Kazar and Spikes the group did quite a few cracks through Spikes, including a cracking cooperation with Brutal. The group dissolved in late 1993 after around 200 releases.

Trivia:

* Spike was caught by the cops for carrying illegal weapons. He  made some bombs for new year eve!

* They had a war with Demotion.

* Kazar and Spikes are brothers!
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The Sons of Satan!
Founded by Crossfire, Faith and Mason on the 15th of September 1992 with most members coming from Image and Unicess. Epic was another group having Crossfire and Mason as main members. They did quite a lot of cracks including some first releases and eventually were taken seriously by the rest of the cracking scene. They did a first release of Parsec, which turned some heads but the crack was quite poor, so some other groups did a proper one with NTSC fixing. Epic stirred the pond a bit with the release of Woody the Worm. This game was made by Amok, as most knew back then was the game company of Antichrist, aka OMG of Genesis*Project. With this release a lot of ragging took place.

The group had a cracking coop with Device which was split up shortly when Device died and Lexi moved on to join Legend. Epic was not without controversy, especially with re-cracks like the old Ash & Dave game Dynamix (the start-up screen was modified).

Epic was truly an international group with the HQ in Denmark. It had Cruel and Clive in Belgium, Merlin in Holland, Sonic in Germany, The Torch in Sweden, TG-ACME in Norway, Dutchman in the USA and of course Danish members like Crossfire, Decane, Flower, Jason, Loyalty, Marie and Mason.

Dissolved on the 7th of January 1994 when Crossfire left to create Motiv8.


Trivia:

* The group was born when ex-members of Unicess and Image joined forces (both groups died at the same time).

* Mason left before Epic was dissolved and formed Archaos together with Heavyhead. Later on Jason and Doom suggested Mason to bring back Unicess.

* Huge board presence with the Epic flag flying above boards like Cold Fusion, Cyberdome, Dreamline, Graveyard, Particles, Power Surge, Satellite, The Gateway, The Lost Empire and Wares a' la Carte.
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One of the old groups from Denmark, starting in the scene in 1985 and having only two members, R2D2 and Sodan.

Flying Crackers had success where others failed, mainly due to the uniqueness of Sodan, who proved to be innovative with cracks and demos alike. Sodan claimed to be the first to open the upper/lower border, although 1001 Crew has also been credited for this historic event. Sodan's border sprites appeared in the intro to his game "Crackers Revenge" from 1985. During this time of who was first with the border, there were arguments between Sodan, 1001 Crew and The Soft Import, this "discussion" is evident in releases such as "Sodan Letter I". In 1987 he left the C64 scene for the Amiga. Sodan had apparently only made one demo on the Amiga called "Tech Tech" in 1987, which he claims was the first mega demo (multiple parts) ever. Among other things the tech-tech effect was invented in this demo.


Trivia:

* Sodan also designed the games Sword of Sodan and Datastorm for the Amiga.

* Sodan was also responsible for possibly the first real disk noter for the C64 called Super-Writer in 1986 (it was used by ACE Crackings amongst other early crackers in Denmark).

* Sodan about his games: "Got a Commodore 64 in 1984 and began coding basic right away. After some months I got into machine code and did a game named 'Terrible Lillian' (Lillian was a teacher at our school). The game was a mix of basic and machine code but was never finished. At the time I was writing intros and demos and hacking away and one day border sprites was invented. So I did a 100% machine code game and put the border sprite effect in that game. The game was Cracker's Revenge! and was put into public domain in 1985."
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Founded by Hercules & Freddie in November 1991. The group was built on the ashes of The Cracker Duo (TCD) and was basically just a name change to Heartbeat.

A nice group with plenty of releases and some solid cracks by their main cracker Hercules such as Turbo the Tortoise +4, Plural +4, Black Panther +3 and Hagar the Horrible +7. The group also built up the magazine Internews, which started of inside a disk noter but eventually became a solid magazine, sporting crack charts similar to the Gamer's Guide by Triad.

Dissolved in March 1993 when most members joined the rebuilt X-Factor. The group was rebuilt by some lamers but the original members (then in X-Factor) put a stop to it.


Trivia:

* Triumwyrat asked for a coop but Heartbeat refused.

* A lot of members had stuff stolen from them at The Party 1992 held in Aars. Freddie lost his C64, Spratt lost his disk drive, Hercules lost his disk drive and tape deck.
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Slogans are so 80ies
Founded by Exory & Living Trash Head in 1990. Exory built the group after he left Unicess. There was a lot of focus on recracking after Exory had been accused for recracking in Unicess. During this time when the heat was on Exory, he decided to leave the scene, as his "grades at school were not the best". When he left, two new handles showed up in Holocaust, Dystan and Reconner - both of them were accused for being secret handles of Exory.

Some of the members left Holocaust to join Miracle. When Holocaust died in December 1990, Exory formed a new group called Trauma.


Trivia:

* Was in co-op with Fresh for a brief while.

* Crossfire, I mean, Exory, was constantly at war with Antichrist, I mean OMG. Some of their flirting was funny, read notes such as Die Hard OMG and Die Hard OMG II as well as Pride of The Scene.

* Did some imports together with Demonix. Had some insults thrown against them by Lamers 'r Us doing imports of Holocaust wares (Lamers 'r Us was the lamer label of NEC/NEI).
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Founded by Crossfire, Mason, Dishy & Zak in March 1992. The group was created because some guys were not happy with Acrise and decided to leave and find fortune elsewhere (arguments over who the leader was in Acrise and why it was not communicated to the members properly - Crossfire versus Mendrake). The main crackers were Crossfire and Mason. Dishy was one of the main swappers in the beginning. Later, sceners from other countries joined the group. After a few months and a quick effort of around 80 releases, Image was dissolved - Dishy, Mason, Rip and Zak left the sinking ship to rebuild Unicess with some former members and Crossfire leaving later to build up Epic.
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Stay cool or stay away
Founded by Janek (ex-6510 Operator) & Fletch (both ex-Danish Game Smashers) in September 1987. The group was launched with their first demo called A Few Bytes and some of their first. cracks were Bubble Bobble, Mega Apocalypse and IK+. Jewels - a girl's best friend - did plenty of cracks and they had the best cracker in Denmark ever: Doc, who later was in Ikari and Legend. They were close friends with Zacho/Zargon who supplied most of their originals (also later in Ikari).

Jewels died on the 22nd of June 1988 when the members left to join Ikari (their first crack for Ikari was Shackled +2).


Trivia:

* Science 451 joined as a subgroup in May 1988, but left again when Jewels dissolved.

* Fletch and BlackFire are brothers!

* Had a division on the Amiga that continued after the C64 section died.
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Better than sex!
Mechanix 2124 was founded by Zephyr in 1987 and the group did several cracks and some demos. They were also known for the Mechanix Busts with ripped music. The group died in 1988 when most of the members went to Amiga.

At the end of 1992 Tecon and Zephyr asked Mason if he wanted to bring back Mechanix. Zephyr wanted to see the group back if there was some quality behind the releases. The main crackers in the rebuilt Mechanix were Iceball and Mason.

Iceball did plenty of tools in Mechanix. Some of them were spread, but also level packers and depackers were made for internal use only, which was quite common for groups during that time.

The group dissolved again in the beginning of 1993 and Mason and Iceball left to join Motiv 8.

One of their most famous crack was Street Fighter 2 which only was cracked by Legend. Most originals were supplied by Derbyshire Ram.
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Founded by Mason, MZK & The Invisible Man in June 1990. Also included in the early days of this crew was Dimitri (one of Exory/Crossfire's handles). Later on people like Tecon, Walt and some other members joined. A few demos and cracks were released before the group died. The group came back in the Summer of 1990 after the Unicess members reformed the group and released several quality cracks (in doing so the group Unicess died).

The group also released the demo Showcase Bonanza. The demo got the name from the Bally Game Show pinball machine from Bally Midway. When you got jackpot in the game you had "Showcase Bonanza". The unfinished sequel to this demo was released at the Jazzmacx Tas Takeover event in 2007. Also released was JCH Music Collection, made in 1990 but not released until 2007.

The group died in February 1991 when MZK and Invisible Man joined The Ruling Company. Whilst the group did not manage a huge amount of releases, it is important to mention it here as a midway point for some guys who later went on to bigger groups.
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Mean and Motivated
Founded by Tricket & Crossfire on 8 January 1994.

The cracks were done by Crossfire, Iceball and Mason. Iceball also did the tools in Motiv 8 one of these was an internal version of the Level AB cruncher/depacker. During the nineties, this group was one of the last active cracking groups in the scene handling over 200 releases. Some of their releases were frowned upon, such as some basic stuff from the Loadstar magazine, but on the other hand they surprised the scene with some good titles too Arc Doors +2P 100% (together with Vision) and Super Nibbly +4P.

Mason stopped cracking for Motiv 8 C64 in 1995 and continued his work with Motiv 8 PC which he had started with Xerox in the summer of 1994.

Motiv 8 continued until Crossfire left in 1998 to join Fairlight. Iceball was almost active to the end of Motiv 8 which was somewhere at the beginning of 1999.

Motiv 8 Quality (M8Q) also existed, which was a branch of Motiv 8 (same group). The funny story about M8Q is that the cracks were actually recycled. For example, old Image cracks by Crossfire or Mason that were just improved and new intros added. Black Hornet +8M, Golden Pyramids +13M, Suburban Commando +8 and Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy +6M to name a few of their 30 or so releases. The idea if the group is explained in their third release Creatures 2 +5M.
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A single scener, not a group, Popeye was an ex-member of Danelaw, Hawk International and Hotline.

Popeye was known for releasing tons of cracks for Hotline and was able to do several first releases too. After leaving Hotline he was still releasing the solo cracks under his own handle. His main years of activity were 1986 and 1987, his quality releases put him up there with Doc and Sodan.
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Razor Express 2722 was founded by Lucas in early 1987 during the time when he left Wizax to form his own crew. The group seems to have been centered in the Danish city of Varde where several members lived. During 1988 several members shifted towards Amiga, but there was still activity on the C64 including imports from the states to Europe.
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The king of cracks
Founded by Cosmo, Viking, Warfreak & Matrix in 1986, the group was created when the Danish Import Team and The Infiltrators joined forces.

With over 700 releases the group was the biggest producer from Denmark and is one of the most remembered cracking groups in the scene; this tally included many first releases and imports to the states. Zoolook was famous for releasing plenty of Dominators cracks in 1987 and 1988. After that Macronit, Nemesis and Dogfriend took over (Mason and Steel were in Dominators shortly too). In many years Dogfriend and Animal did plenty of cracks and for some period together with the UK division of Dominators also. The UK division eventually left to join Illusion after there was some argument about some money for that was owed by to the Danish members from the UK section (which should have been used for buying originals for group, specifically I remember Warfreak owed Rooze money).

Like a lot of active groups back then, The Dominators had paying members (you paid a monthly fee to have the membership), this also was a concern for the UK division and is another reason for the move to Illusion by the UK part of the group (according to a chat I had with Derbyshire Ram back in 2004).

When Dogfriend and Animal went inactive on C64 because of their cracking on the PC, Twist did a few cracks and later on members from X-Factor joined in too. Eventually the group folded in August 1993.


Trivia:

* Two members have passed away. Hulkster (many years ago due to organ failure) and Derbyshire Ram (in 2007 due to cancer).

* Held some of the best boards such as The Forum, Reign In Blood and Tunnel of Wares stateside and Dominic, locally in Denmark.

* The group also was involved in the magazine business with a paper magazine called Business (edited by Slider) and the well known disk magazine called Corruption (brought to the group when 3DK and Jack Daniels joined).

* Duke and Dr. Zivago are brothers, the Doctor being the elder bro.

* August 1992 was an unlucky month for Twist, his girlfriend left him, police busted him, post office gave him a warning over cheated stamps and then finally someone stole his wallet!

* Their legal division was called Dominators Design and it contained lots of talented members such as Double Artistry (Erotyc and Alien), Fox and Mick.

* The Dominators currently has a Facebook group organised by Tricket with a 100 scener membership.
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Pride of Denmark
The Papillons 1449 was founded by Catman, Lennart and Martin in November 1986. They soon became one of the leaders in Denmark living up to their slogan with their very first crack being Twin Tornado.

Lennart: "Summer 1987 - after our first crack we had to find a way getting new originals. It seemed rather tough, but we did have a chance 'cause Jacob owned this company called 'Secret !!!' and by using that company we were able to get originals directly from 'Secret Business'. A lot of new stuff arrived and new cracks were released. New contacts and customers were added to our list. It was almost August when we got a modem - new doors were open to us. The Armageddon Man was our first real fast crack. It was spread all over the entire world and we got quite popular on that one."

The group did many quality cracks and also many imports with FBR and The Wildboys (TWB). They even imported some NTSC stuff to Denmark, their very first of which was the Eagle Soft Inc crack of Superstar Soccer back in November 1987.

The group died in August 1988 as they wished to stop while they were on top of the scene.


Trivia:

* They had famous intro containing the unforgettable music 'Coco Intro' by Markus Mueller (Hayes). It was used on cracks such as Platoon.

* Jewels had a war with them claiming that they 'reset  cracked'. Eventually they became good friends.

* 2000AD made an anti-demo against them due to some feedback TPI had given them about one of their demos.

* A rumour said they never used calling cards, but their rich parents just paid the phonebills.
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Triangle 3532 was born on the 1st of May 1987. The founding fathers were Swyx, Chix, Tenzet, Fun Fun, Cozmix, Xenon and Condor.

Many know Triangle for their fantastic demos, but they were also a very skilled cracker group. Some people even went as far as saying that Swyx and Scratch was better than Doc from Jewels/Ikari fame. Unlike many other groups, Triangle always strived to pursue quality over quantity and speed - consequently a release was never rushed.

Like Fairlight, Triangle were one of the few groups who were really good friends with The Sharks - this gave them access to the latest Dark Squeezer tools and led to TCD/Triangle doing the menu system for Dark Force/The Sharks.

The last Triangle crack, Sergeant Seymour Robotcop +2, was released in December of 1992.

http://kwed.org/triangle


Trivia:

* Their demo L'etranger placed second at the Dexion Party in 1990. It was never fully released and only a preview version is available.

* Their first Compunet demo was Dreamix II, which was released in November 1987.
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Power From Denmark
Fathered by Mason & Exory in January 1989. Some other early members joining were The Invisible Man and MZK.

Exory was accused of recracking Space Racer from Transcom as he released Kilimetri Impossibili. Exory said he got the game from Italy, but no one believed him and as a result Exory left to form Holocaust. As Ian Coog found out the game was cracked from an "original" tape from Italy called "Special Games" and they had the frozen game with the Transcom screen.

After Exory left the rest of the members decided to drop the Unicess name and the majority of them rebuilt Miracle.

In 1992 after Mason left Image he decided to rebuild Unicess with some of the other Danish members of Image. After Unicess was started a lot of people helped Mason by supplying originals fast and Mason released several cracks in no time. Ray joined as cracker too and some close friends of Mason joined Unicess under secret handles to help.

Unicess stopped again in Autumn as Mason was busy outside of the scene. Eventually Mason went to Epic with some members and others went to Vision. Later in 1992 Unicess came back yet again. Their comeback release was First Samurai +3P.


Trivia:

* Unicess released the papermag Imagination. They also released 9 issues of the disk magazine Popcorn.

* At times Unicess and X-Factor had some small wars/problems, some of the old X-Factor guys obviously did not like their old group mate Mason. Check some of the funny scroll text in their cracks Robocod (X-F had just declared war to Unicess), Bug Bomber, Pharaos Revenge, Duckula II, Locomotion and Tetrados. Most of the problems with X-Factor were resolved when Faith got involved (an experienced war monger, also a member of 2000 A.D. in the Amiga scene).

* Rumours were that Crossfire was quite angry that Mason was doing so many quality cracks for Unicess.
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Founded on the 28th of May 1989 by Hulk (later known as HIC), Wraith, The Creep (later known as Ace), Dwain, Sadist (later known as Hewitt) and Spiderman.

X-Factor has always been an all-round group who managed to release over a dozen demos and about 500 cracks as well as 20imports during the time when the US was still an active scene.

Although releasing 500 games, they only managed to do 1 first release. On the other hand, they never had any ambitions of becoming speed crackers. They cracked games for fun and often put a lot of time into making an outstanding version.

Despite not being involved in the first release scene they still had boards in the states from 1989-1992 (Excalibur, Split Infinity, Galaxy High, Beyond, Boot Camp, Backdoor, Ninja's Kingdom, Garden of Eden East and Point of Entry). They also had a local board in Denmark called The Lonely Island.

The group dissolved in 1994 with members moving to the PC as well as on C64 into groups like Dominators, Brutal and Camelot. Skyhawk and Protector were working on an official farewell demo but it never got finished.


Trivia:

* Spiderman and Janec/G*P were busted watching a porno by Spiderman's mum!

* Had a PC division also.

* During an X-Factor meeting one of the new members Neptune came along. Dexter, one of the older members, told Neptune that he had to punch his hand into a wall to become an elite member... and so, Dexter showed him how... and actually broke his hand by doing so.
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Originally based on The Terminators Denmark (TTD) (which was founded by Ecan & The Nop in 1985) the group renamed to Wizax 2004 (because there were too many other groups with the name Terminators) and was founded by Count Dracula in 1987. They did quite a few early cracks, music rips and demos.

The group died in November 1988 with the main portion of its members forming Danelaw together with Popeye.


Trivia:

* Niel/Wizax continued to sell games after Wizax died and was known for having ads in the newspaper every week.

* Ecan/Wizax was one of the earliest scene thieves when he stole Starman/Dexion's Final Cartridge at the Dexion Copy Party in 1987. He also stole Kaze/TST's 3x sideborder-scroll and released it on Compunet as "Cool - Indeed!" which was the reason Kaze and Wizz went back to The Supply Team after  just 1 week as Wizax members.
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Others:

In the beginning there was a C64, someone turned it on... things have never been the same since...


* The first Danish crackers appeared in 1983 and 1984, they were Sherlock Holmes (cracked Gryphon) and Danish Crackers (PMK) (cracked Suicide Express, Bruce Lee and Jumpman Jr). In 1985 Sherlock Holmes appeared on Danish television and cracked a game in real time.

* Soren Gronbech aka Sodan, as mentioned in the Flying Crackers section was one of the border-sprites inventors. He did the first Letter-Writer or Disk Noter and was responsible for games like Cracker's Revenge 1+2 (C64), The Vikings (C64), Datastorm (a Dropzone clone on the Amiga) and of course Sword of Sodan (Amiga). Sword of Sodan was published by Discovery Software in 1988 for the Amiga computer and was on the top 10 selling charts for more than 6 months, selling about 55000 copies. Sword of Sodan also received the 'Software Oscar 1988' for 'Arcade Game of the Year'.

Sodan kept reminding 1001 Crew that he opened the upper/lower border before they did and 1001 Crew kept reminding him that they were first with opening the sideborder. They kept doing this in various scrolltexts in intro and demos. Nobody seemed to care that Flash Inc. opened the upper/lower border first. There was also a group called Grendel Crackings Inc., GCI - they were amongst the first who made actual demos. In these days, 1985, a demo was a collection of crack intros. Not demos as we would come to know them during 1986 and onwards. Sodan helped create a few intros for ACE Crackings, and there was a guy who called himself TinTin who made a quite stunning intro, in which he moved his TinTin sprites in a circle. This was before 1001 Crew did any circles.


rambones:

"When I was 18, 1987 - we went and beat up some lamers. We had our 'rocker' TSN taking care of things. :-)

It was really fun, and we were just wild!

I see now it wasn't 'fair', but TSN liked it, so…

He still hates lamers, and piss on them 'virtually', but he's now an old fart that has more in his mouth than in his doings.

It was fun to have Warp/2000 AD visiting, driving to Odense, and using some fake UZI machineguns to raid the train-station. People panicked! yeah why wouldn't they :-)

And Warp had his Russian commy-flag with him, so that made people extra scared! LOL.

The stories in some demos that TSN beat up Kaze, and turned in Wizz to the police are lies.

Kaze got beat up by a mechanic, because he put stuff in the exhaust pipes of his cars, so they fucked up when started.

And Wizz got turned into the police because Johan Schlter's son bought games from Wizz, and was 'cheated' for some sendings.

Bad bad Wizz...

LOL!!!!!"








Released on the 27th of July 1987 at the Danish Gold Party by 1001 Crew, Danish Gold, Fairlight, Raw Deal Inc., Triad and Yeti Factories. A very important document that had all major groups agreeing on a standard for cracks to replace the old, more confusing method.



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