Arny’s Letters

Today, we are happy to present to you the first batch of a new letter collection that was provided to us by C64 scener Arny from Austria, active in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a graphics artist in the group Cosmos as well as its game development spin-off Cosmos Designs. We begin with the letters from the time when he was member of the Austrian group The Softkiller-Crew (TSK) back in 1988. With these scans, we are happy to welcome Anna Baumann, student research assistant at the Department of History, University of Zurich, into our project. Thanks to her, the paper materials are going to be digitised much quicker.

Following letters are included into today’s batch:

• Amiga Boy/UNIC (Belgium) to Arny, 1980s [scan&metadata]
• Apollo-1/TAT (Austria) to Arny, 20 June 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Apollo-1/TAT (Austria) to Arny, 26 June 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Flash/Taxi (The Netherlands) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Gambler/VGG (Germany) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]
• OLS/TGC (?) to Arny, 1980s [scan&metadata]
• Storm & Atron (Austria) to Arny, 13 July 1988 [scan&metadata]
• T.C./TWP (Austria) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]
• TSH/ICS (Austria?) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Umberto (Italy) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Waltsi/TNI (Austria) to Arny, 24 July 1988 [scan&metadata]
• Waltsi/TNI (Austria) to Arny, 1988 [scan&metadata]

Ancient Atari Group Stickers

Thanks to the efforts of Lotek Style, we were able to receive materials that are among the oldest we have. Old German Atari cracker Arthur Dent from the group Copy Service Stuttgart (founded in 1983-84!) has kept these five stickers for over 30 years. They show that as early as in the mid-1980s, cracking groups were into clever “culture jamming” and appropriated well-known trademarks with a pinch of humour.

• Copy Service Stuttgart sticker, between 1983 and 1989 [scan&metadata]
• different Copy Service Stuttgart sticker, between 1983 and 1989 [scan&metadata]
• German Cracking Artists sticker (blue version), mid-1980s [scan&metadata]
• German Cracking Artists sticker (yellow version), mid-1980s [scan&metadata]
• Section 8 sticker, between 1983 and 1986 [scan&metadata]

Honey/1001 Collection Pt. 4 – Letters from Mr. Z

We’re back from a long hiatus – with some spectacular material! In another instalment of scans from the archive of legendary Dutch C64 coder Honey of the 1001 Crew, we present you with letters that were written to him by a equally legendary scene protagonist: Mr. Z, the founder of the famous Swedish C64 cracking group Triad. Written throughout the year of 1987, these eight long letters are a treasure trove in various aspects. If you are a veteran cracker yourself, or simply someone who is interested in copy protection, you will enjoy reading a top cracker discussing protection methods and their circumvention – especially since in one of the later letters, Mr. Z offers to write the copy protection for Honey’s first commercial game. And this is another aspect of interest for those who are into home computing and scene history: Here, we can observe a generation of elite sceners making their first steps from the subculture into the industry – while still being basically schoolkids, discussing sophisticated code and their first business deals alongside the latest pranks and scene gossip. Finally, the letters document Mr. Z’s pullout from Triad and from the scene altogether – with school and “real life” taking hold over someone whose group was adored by tens of thousands computer kids worldwide.

Read these fascinating letters in the gallery below, or download the high quality scans complete with metadata sheets (which also document the scavenger hunt we had to undertake to provide date estimates for these almost completely undated documents) under the following links: April 1987 // April 1987 (2) // late May 1987 // late June 1987 // 30 July 1987 // August 1987 // September-October 1987 // November-December 1987

1980s Mail-Swapping Envelopes

We’re back with some materials that remind you of the materiality of “warez trading” in the 1980s. In these envelopes from The Movers‘ collection, floppy disks with the newest C64 and Amiga cracks and demos travelled around Europe between 1986 and 1988. Most people reused them and ultimately threw them away, but luckily these guys didn’t. There’s a whole box of them in our office now, and here’s just a small selection – featuring sendings from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and Switzerland. As usual, you can download the high quality scans and metadata from the archive, or view the pictures in the gallery below.