Here for a look around....

[Electra]

Hi All,

A quick introduction. I used to be known as Nitro from Mirage UK / Electra from Slipstream and Scoopex and finally Fusion from Anarchy UK (not that I ever released more than one or two small demos for Anarchy.)

I was having a good look around the net and spotted some of my old Amiga days exploits so thought i'd pop by and day hello.

I can't believe that the Amiga, after all this time, still has a strong following. Just wish I could get back into things like it was still 1991.

Anyway, as I say... Hello.... Nice to see you all. I'll be popping in and out once in a while to see whats going on.

[ck1200]

Glad you found us and welcome to the forum

Chris

[TCD]

Hi Electra, welcome to EAB and enjoy your stay

[Peter]

Hi Electra - Welcome to EAB! - be great to see some of your work on the Amiga - can you let us know what Demo's you did?

[prowler]

Originally Posted by Electra

Hi All,

A quick introduction.

I was having a good look around the net and spotted some of my old Amiga days exploits so thought i'd pop by and day hello.

I can't believe that the Amiga, after all this time, still has a strong following. Just wish I could get back into things like it was still 1991.

Anyway, as I say... Hello.... Nice to see you all. I'll be popping in and out once in a while to see whats going on.

Hi Electra, and welcome to the board!

We are at the sharp end of the Amiga community here on EAB and we ask for a little more commitment from our members than "popping in and out once in a while" - especially from someone of your pedigree.

How else do you think the Amiga would still have such such a strong following after all these years?

Originally Posted by Electra

I used to be known as Nitro from Mirage UK / Electra from Slipstream and Scoopex and finally Fusion from Anarchy UK (not that I ever released more than one or two small demos for Anarchy.)

Please tell us more...

[AlfaRomeo]

Welcome Electra,
good to know that some of the people that made amiga history joins to our board
Stay forever

[Electra]

Peter:

I've had various Amigas over the years from the old A500 to a A4000 060 etc etc but lost the old source code disks a long time ago when I moved house.

I have been scouring the net and the only thing I had been able to find, was two really awful mods from when I started in Mirage UK as Nitro. As I say, they are awful. Before I left Anarchy I was working on Multi part demos and a vertical 5bp scrollers based on the graphics from paradroid 90. I could do all the 1 pixel sine scrolls but vector graphics were beyond me. My coding was good but my maths skills were a little lacking compared to others on the scene, so I would have struggled with the rotation thing. So I just didn't bother doing it.

Prowler:

A brief run through of my Amiga "career." At the time, none of us ever thought we were doing anything special, we were just having a bit of a laugh and trying to beat everybody else to release games, etc.

I Bought my first A500 from a small computer shop called B Bytes from a guy called Chris. Nice guy, ran the shop from his front room. I was so impressed with a demo disk he had, containing demos such as the DOC demo. One of my first games was Goldrunner and then Defender of the Crown.

I Got into music and briefly joined a group called Equinoxe. They had no coders, so had to ask someone to make our first demo. Can't remember but I think some of my music was used for the demo.

I remember back then that disk swappers used to put their phone numbers on the disks and in the local paper. Totally opposite to today. This is how I met up with the guys in Mirage UK who , in my opinion were a bunch of old me. Note I say this now as a 40 year old.

Nothing was happening really at Mirage UK, apart from Dynatron, who coded my first music disk, they were really just a disk swapping group. So I looked around and found the contact details for the quarterback(Vince) from Slipstream. SO went to meet up with them the next weekend.

Basically what we used to do was catch a train to Brum, go to our suppliers computer shop, where "gin and tonic" 2 guys, would copy us the latest games. We'd then go have a few pints, get on the train back to Vince's house and Marc would crack the games with a little help from me.We'd often leave Vinces house around 6am. I'm sure Vince can still remember the days of the slow 9600 and fast 14400 modems and £900 phone bills.

The death of the northern part of Slipstream happened when someone contacted Marc from Scoopex if I remember correctly. SO we joined them. I did mainly a few compilation disks, a few nice 8k intros and cracked a couple of games.

I know most people probably still won't admit this these days but after the action replay came out, we all used to use that for cracking. It made life so very easy. It was a case of "never tell anyone you use an action replay" at the time. You'd be called a Lamer if you did.

Anyway, finally my sense of humour got the better of me. I made fun of Marc who didn't see the funny side. This backfired and I got myself slagged off big time. The results prompted me to leave Scoopex, for a more quiet life of coding and a bit of music writing for Anarchy. I joined Anarchy whilst sitting upstairs in a Macdonalds in London with a few of the guys having a burger. I was told I could join as long as I didn't do any more cracking and concentrated on my coding, so that was the Death of Electra and the birth of Fusion. On the Scoopex page on the Exotica website, it says nobody knew what happened to the cracker Electra, hehe. I'm quite happy for it to stay that way.

As mentioned above, I can't really remember releasing much for them. I did send a couple of small 1 pixel scrollers off to Judge Drokk for him to compile and use on his next few disks but can't remember seeing them released.

I did though, have a lot of Kreators source disks at the time, including the code to Phantasmagoria, boy how that would have made the majority of coders jealous at the time.

Anyway, soon after I had to go get a job, sold my Amiga, moved out of home, etc etc..... Basically these days I do do a bit of programming still, this time it's Siemens and Allen Bradley PLC's so the Amiga set me in good stead.

Hope i've not bored you all. Greets to all my old friends (saying that brings back memories.)

[Muzkat]

Boring? No way! What a cool history.

Welcome to EAB Electra.

[prowler]

Thanks for that glimpse into the Amiga demo coding scene, Electra!

I guess that successfully completes your EAB initiation process!

[deicidal]

Thats weird I came accross some of Kreators old source the other day when i was working my way through my collection to still whats still works.http://bitworld.bitfellas.org/demo.php?id=6114

[Electra]

Glad you posted that link, I was trying to think who it was with Judge Drokk who used to call me a couple of times a week, it was Mr Big too. Those pair were the joint leaders of Anarchy when I was a member. Will have to check out that source at some point.

[deicidal]

Its ok, glad you mentioned that quarterback was called Vince, its been bugging me for months as i couldnt remember for the life of me. Did you know he reformed the northern Slipstream at one point?

[Electra]

No I didn't know that. I lost touch with those guys when I joined Anarchy. I got the idea that Vince wanted to do less disk swapping etc, because he passed most of his contacts on to me, hence how I initially met Judge Drokk and Mr Big.

Wish I could remember a few more of my old contacts.

[deicidal]

Right as far as my memory goes and i'm sure you will know some of this. Quarterback told me basically two groups where formed called slipstream when the groups discovered that there where two slipstreams but no one new who had started releasing stuff first, they decided to join forces that been the birmingham and dorset bunch. As you said the northern lot went tits up and later one of the dorset bunch admitted to quarteback that they had in fact started using the name first. Time passes quarterback has a group called foul critters and decides to take the name slipstream back, I think at the time the southern bunch had died or at least rumoured to be and it turned out not to be the case I cant remember (old age).

[Electra]

Thats pretty much how I remember it. The name was based on an old Sci-fi movie, think i've still got it on DVD. Dan as i'm sure you know, went to Anarchy. There was a bit of a hoohar at the time, people accused Dan of stealing Andi's code. I'm sure everyone did a bit of that but it take a lot to put it to use and i'm quite sure Dan knew what he was doing. I once went to stay with Kris from Anarchy, this was when the first gulf war was on. We'd even digitized some pics of Sadam for a Demo but nothing really ever came of it.

Amazing how things come back to you, as people keep prompting you.

Does anyone remember what the name of the UK scoopex board was, I remember it was ran by a guy called Karl but can't remember his nick. Used to go visit him on a saturday.

[deicidal]

I didn't know him but Dan seemed to have a hard time with people questioning his skills but never with anything to back it (at least from what I saw). Personally I was pleased when he did the madness demos as it was nice to see a product like that from the UK.

[Electra]

Dan was a nice guy and his coding was certainly better than mine at the time.

Hi Electra,

It's Dan. Thanks for the compliment!

Anyway, I remember coming up to Birmingham and staying at Vince's one weekend. We all piled into Brum, picked up the latest games, and went back so Marc could crack them and upload to the BBS's. You might have been there that weekend ?

[amigakit.com]

Welcome!

[Djay]

Unlike most posters in this thread... i wasnt a cracker!

but i did enjoy the fruits of your labour.... thanks to you, i actually got to play games, as a young teen i had next to no money and traded disks with people at school

i used watch the demos and read the disks (Grapevine)... i felt apart on the scene but never pretended that i contributed

anyway... i hope you guys continue to post at EAB... welcome

ps... i had an action play III for my A500... never thought to use it for cracking though