Fav Cracker!!

They were the heroes of the amiga-scene, names that appeared in lotsa cracktros .....
What was your personal favourite???

I don't know any crackers. I just know groups, so I can't really vote

[Twistin'Ghost]

I had to add an entry into your poll so I could vote. Although I know of a couple of others that really should be on that list, too (current and past). Think Fairlight, think Action...

I would have added them myself, but I didn't want to overstep my bounds, since this is not my poll; I only added Phil because he was my vote.

[kriz]

heeh i dont remember any crackers from back in the day, only groups

Think this is very common..

[Methanoid]

Even tho I was in QTX, I think for the scene as a whole and for his work rate and A1200 fixes etc it has to be N.O.M.A.D. (with the fullstops!!). Marc also was a nice guy and told me when JBM/FLT was going round grassing people (like me!)

[Codetapper]

Just a few things:

NOMAD was also in Scoopex and Crystal (and probably more!)
Galahad/Fairlight deserves a spot (good guess Twistin'?)
Mok/Prestige deserves a spot too!
Blackhawk/Paradox also deserves a spot!

This poll is a very tough call due to the Amiga having such a dedicated group of, erm, enthusiasts

PS: Is Robin/Qtx the same as Rob/Qtx? I always thought Rob was short for Robert not Robin. Ya learn something everyday!

[Steve]

These are the guys who helped to kill the Amiga off. Many developers would have stayed if their games weren't so heavily pirated on the Amiga and we would have seen games like Syndicate Wars and maybe Magic Carpet. It's the crackers who eventually killed the Amiga market by making these cracked games available to the public through markets and computer clubs. If it wasn't for these guys cracking Amiga games and spreading them like wild fire the Amiga might still be with us today. It bothers me now but didn't seem to when I was a teen. Pirating was just a way of life back then. Now I realise why the Amiga is not with us today. If the cracked games didn't exist I would have bought original games no question. A lot of the original games I bought were because I couldn't get a decent cracked version. As for calling them Heroes. I think villains would be more appropriate. Just my opinion. If you disagree with me then bring it on.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Correctamundo, Codetapper. And that was all I needed to add it to the poll, along with the other obvious choice that I saw as being left out.

[Twistin'Ghost]

That's one way of looking at it, Steve. But when I bought my Amiga, I picked up a handful of games several weeks after getting to know the machine. The disk-based copy protection was ripping my disk drive to shreds with it's erratic track stepping, among other issues (like the inconvenience of having to look up codes on dark burgundy handbills, or spending $50 and ending up with crap like Dragon's Lair, etc.)

I also have some theories about price and demand. Even when I was a hardcore pirate back then, when Software Etc. marked down games to under $20, I bought them. If the price was cheap enough, I would even buy clunkers just to have something new. I have always found game software to be far overpriced. It costs a hell of a lot more money to produce a new CD by a recording artist, yet they sell them for under $20, so how come the software industry never lowered their prices when computers became more common in the home? Live by the sword, die by the sword, I always say.

And the music industry is getting their bite of that now with the mp3 invasion. Record companies charge entirely too much money for music, but they knew they had the market over a barrel. But the consumers got thrown a bone and justice prevailed. People who collect mp3's will still buy CD's if they are reasonably priced. The only market that has adhered to this strategy proper has been the video industry.

In the early 80's when video arrived, tapes were selling for $80US each, so everybody was making copies and buying macrovision decoders. Once the industry got wise and created a sell-through market with reasonably priced videos, the general public started buying videos in record numbers.

Don't you think more people would buy Adobe Photoshop if the price were realistic? Well, it isn't and that is one of the most pirated pieces of software out there. That speaks in volumes.

[Paul]

What:eek you did not mention Microsoft

@Codetapper
Rob Of Quartex is Robin , not Robert!
NOMAD was also in Slipstream and Genesis !!

@steve_b
Not the crackers killed the amige, commodore itself did it.
Without any cracks spread thru England at the beginning of the 90ties in my opinion Commodore would had not survived till 1994. The illegal games made the big boom, for selling so many A500 on the island. But that is not the point, coz if you look at the pece, the game industrie survived. PeCe games were cracked since the first EGA games appeared ( greetinx to the pece freaks like Hardcore & North Wind ).
The amiga pirate scene was very fair to the companies. I can remember, that there were many deals not to crack final releases and just spread beta versions. 1991 FOXY supplied many games to us, and we took them on hold for two weeks , just to raise the sells for the companies.
Your argumentation is totally wrong, look also on the playstation! All games are illegal sold here in germany for 5$ , but there are always many users, that support the software companies. Good games always sells!! Cracking games, spreading them really raised the popularity of software companies. I think without spreading games like Worms , Micro Machines , companies like Team 17 or Codemasters never would have get their status.
The developers stopped making amiga titles , coz the market were just to small and the computer was not up to time any more for all the new titles.

[Codetapper]

Originally posted by steve_b
These are the guys who helped to kill the Amiga off. Many developers would have stayed if their games weren't so heavily pirated on the Amiga and we would have seen games like Syndicate Wars and maybe Magic Carpet. It's the crackers who eventually killed the Amiga market by making these cracked games available to the public through markets and computer clubs. If the cracked games didn't exist I would have bought original games no question. A lot of the original games I bought were because I couldn't get a decent cracked version. As for calling them Heroes. I think villains would be more appropriate.

A few things to ponder:

1. Groups like Quartex always said "If you like this game, buy the original" and I think seemed to see themselves as a way for people to try the game before buying a dud.

2. YOU didn't HAVE to copy these cracked games! A lot of people use the argument that they wouldn't have bothered buying 98% of the stuff they got but since it was free they would try the game out just to take a look at it. Sometimes you see a gem and will buy the original after seeing the crack!

3. Some of these "villains" fixed the game to work on more equipment than the original publishers bothered to. The Bitmap Bros were not at all happy when somebody AGA fixed Speedball 2 and released a patch on Amiga Format as they were most likely fixing the game themselves to flog as a separate AGA version. Hardly fair if you bought the original on your A500 and it no longer works on your A1200. Plus I truely believe the crackers/fixers knew a lot more about how to get buggy software going than the guys that wrote/compiled the disks.

4. Games like Wonderboy in Monsterland call the protection routine every 2 seconds which grinds the disk and means the game takes forever to load. A small patch applied to the game and your disk drive is spared a lot of torture!

5. In an old Amiga Format someone was complaining about Xenon 2 not working on his B2000. After 2 replacements which also didn't work, he simply used the cracked version and stored the original away. Poor memory detection routines killed compatibility for a lot of games. Amiga Format's typical response was "you are breaking the law using the crack, write to the software house in question asking them to fix it". But the point the publisher has finished making the game and want no more to do with it, there is nowhere to turn but the scene guys that do it for the thrill. Plus many companies went bust or left the Amiga anyway so getting support would be impossible.

6. Not being able to backup your original games is a pain, especially when the disks are flakey. Too many protection schemes punish the original owner and not the guy with the copy. eg. Manual protection, uncopyable disk formats etc... If your original game develops a fault then what can you do?

7. I only learnt the art of cracking/AGA fixing in late 1996 (and it's a constant learning process) so I don't think I contributed to the death of the Amiga - in fact by creating patches for WHDLoad with original games I am surely helping the Amiga not killing it!

[MethodGit]

Some impressive facts you brought up there, Codetapper.

[birdy-scc]

This illegal/legal software debate begs the question as to why the software companies didn't make more of an effort to prosecute those people who apparently caused the loss of so much money.

In economics it makes a great deal of sense to allow certain markets to grow without profit, because it brings in new customers for the future - loss-leading. I'm sure there are some companies who wouldn't agree, but I'm prepared to bet that they are the companies who will not survive.

Many of the people who got all that pirated software back in the days are now the people who are happy to part with the cash for a piece of quality software.

If a company makes a crap piece of software and starts complaining that piracy cost them their profit then they are merely whinging.

Good software sells.

[Steve]

Originally posted by birdy
This illegal/legal software debate begs the question as to why the software companies didn't make more of an effort to prosecute those people who apparently caused the loss of so much money.

In economics it makes a great deal of sense to allow certain markets to grow without profit, because it brings in new customers for the future - loss-leading. I'm sure there are some companies who wouldn't agree, but I'm prepared to bet that they are the companies who will not survive.

Many of the people who got all that pirated software back in the days are now the people who are happy to part with the cash for a piece of quality software.

If a company makes a crap piece of software and starts complaining that piracy cost them their profit then they are merely whinging.

Good software sells.

Very True.

[Drake1009]

Birdy : If a company makes a crap piece of software and starts complaining that piracy cost them their profit then they are merely whinging.

In a way you could say that is truem not only for games but also movies and music. They make a piece of crap music/software/moive and blame piracy for their shortcomings.

To take a few examples. Oddworld (Abe's oddyse and exoddus) I bought after having played a copy.

Daikatana I bought without knowing anything but what the company and some magazines had said. The box is now serving well to prevent a table from tipping constantly.

As for movies. There are good movies and there are bad movies. I know this is somewhat away from the topic but people who download movies are likely to buy them afterwards if it's good. In my DVD collection of 15 DVDs I have 8 DVDs I bought after having downloaded the movie and watched it.

Music, now this is really interesting. You're expected to buy a CD which you either don't know any of what's on or maybe you heard a bit of it on the radio first. That means best case you might know 2 of the songs on the CD before buying a new CD. The rest of the CD might as well be pure crap for all you know. There's no way to find out before it's too late. Or at least it's hard to find out, if you find more of the songs on the net you can make up your mind wether it's good or if it's shit you're glad you didn't buy. Oh yeah, watch out for the new copy protection schemes taken into use. Some of them just degrade the quality of the sound leaving the cd player to fix it (too bad if you have an old system). But I read an article about another protection scheme which (again through deliberate flaws I believe) could actually ruin your speakers if you were unlucky. Here again, the old CD players you have might not be capable of reading it right and might hit you with the same thing as the pirates were meant to be hit by.

[Amiga1992]

It's a difficult one. Both contributed to the demise of the platform, and I'd add the console factor if I were to blame others, but I think it mainly was Commodore's fault. Look at the PSX, did it die? No. And it's one of the most pirated platforms I have ever seen in my frigging life.

Back on topic, I dont remember names of particular crackers either, except of a few, like Galahad, Nomad and.. er.r.. ok I dont know any more :P

[Amiga1992]

Originally posted by birdy

Many of the people who got all that pirated software back in the days are now the people who are happy to part with the cash for a piece of quality software.

Heh, this is moi! Shit thing is there were NO originals here , all pirate crap... So I decided to mail order stuff from the UK, which was VERY expensive to me, and I never pooped money. Nevertheless, I still imported a few games, but always wanted MORE.

Now with eBay I am buying all the games I couldnt bu back then. The shame is, the original makers are NOT getting a buck from my buys!

well, Im also buying originals for new machines, so those DO get a buck, but I would have liked to support the coders back then.

[Steve]

Originally posted by Akira


Heh, this is moi! Shit thing is there were NO originals here , all pirate crap... So I decided to mail order stuff from the UK, which was VERY expensive to me, and I never pooped money. Nevertheless, I still imported a few games, but always wanted MORE.

Now with eBay I am buying all the games I couldnt bu back then. The shame is, the original makers are NOT getting a buck from my buys!

well, Im also buying originals for new machines, so those DO get a buck, but I would have liked to support the coders back then.

That's my strategy also.
I've just bought Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master II and Crystal Kingdom Dizzy boxed originals. I'm gonna collect as many as I can get my hands on and then it's ADFing time.

[birdy-scc]

Maybe this sounds stupid, but don't you need to crack the games to use the adf?