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I'll take the risk and say... The scene died in 1991. :)

Here we go with stickers, badges and tickets from two Central European demoparty series – Árok in Hungary and Forever in Slovakia, provided by CapaC. Both party series, running since over 15 years, have 8-bit computer sceners as the target group, which is reflected by the nice retro designs.

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Well-known Polish Amiga scener Azzaro shared with us a large number of scans from his collections, accumulated through years of swapping and demoparty visits in the 1990s and 2000s. Today, we start with three papermags: Influence (2000), a paper-only add-on for an Amiga diskmag, featuring some party reports and general articles; Rave #1 (1995), a tiny two-page Amiga/C64 zine with rather meagre content; and, finally Factor Zyn #1, presumably from the 1990s, an ingeniously drawn comic strip mocking a well-known religious-conservative Polish media figure. More scans from Azzaro’s collection are coming soon.

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As another update from the vast collection of Goat/Laxity, we present you today with a bunch of C64 papermags, namely the German mags Brainfart and Milestone. These issues are already available on the net, but the new scans are of better quality.

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At last year’s Radwar Party, a cozy get-together of old C64 and Amiga sceners, AVH/Radwar mentioned that he might have some old paper stuff somewhere. And indeed, a few months later he provided us with an excellent collection of 1980s papermags, many of which were previously considered lost.

Today, we present the first two gems – both produce by legendary German C64 scener and papermag editor Jeff Smart. First, there is issue #20 of Illegal, one of the first cracking scene magazines (see our old post here). This issue, published around September 1987, was one of the last German-only numbers before Illegal turned into the international C64 zine. In this issue, one can still feel the original intention behind Illegal – to review games, but one can also find random scene news and gossip inside, as well as a brief report on the Danish Gold Copyparty 1987, a crucial event for the history of the C64 scene.

The second scan is a papermag which has been surrounded by mystery for years and is a top item on our partner site mags.c64.org‘s “wanted list”. Paradise Island was a papermag produced by Jeff Smart somewhen between May 1989, when he was busted by the police, and 1991, when he released the final issue of Illegal. When I asked Jeff Smart about Paradise Island last year, he vaguely remembered having done something like that (and naming the mag after a t-shirt he wore back then), but could recall neither when it was released nor what was inside. Indeed, the contents are not particularly memorable – apart from the great cover by Hobbit/Fairlight, who later pursued a career as a professional comic artist.

Enjoy these two rarities, and keep in mind that it’s just about 1/10 of AVH’s collection.

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I scanned some old disk labels over a year ago but nobody was impressed. Quite the opposite actually. :)

Vousti: What kind of disk labels? Scene related? If so, please do a 300DPI scan for us!

After the first instalment of The Movers‘ swap letter collection caused such a tremendous interest, we finally bring you the next batch. Once again, it’s a treasure trove, full of forgotten voices from the dawn of the C64 and Amiga scene. We learn about the hardships of switching computer platforms, about transatlantic software trade and crackers worrying about being “greeted” in intro scrolltexts, we read Strider/Fairlight complaining about “communist Sweden”, SCA sending out custom-made anti-virus software to protect their friends from their own SCA Virus (the infamous, first ever Amiga virus), and so on. A particularly emotional document is the letter by Dennis a.k.a. Turtle/Danish Gold, whom many of our readers knew and met at demoparties, and who sadly passed away in 2006. Here, we read his lines back in 1987, when he just got himself an IBM PC and was looking forward to the Danish Gold copyparty…

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dipswitch: Yeah, swap disks...

Here is the second portion of letters received and scanned by Swiss C64 scener Dr. Science/Atlantis. Stemming from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, these letters mostly deal with internal group affairs and provide an insight into how demoscene groups conducted teamwork before the age of digital communication. Of course, there is also a small “scene drama” included: see the two letters of Culture, an Norwegian Atlantis member who boldly announced to quit the group after receiving no sendings from the Swiss headquarters, and then bitterly regretted the overhasty move after receiving a letter only a few days after his first announcement…

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Fascinating! I was struck by Culture's second letter, four letters between Norway and Switzerland per week? That's quite intensive, and must've cost a pretty penny as well...

Yes, yes.. I'm sure it must've.. ;)

Here we go with another contribution by Hedning/G*P: several C64 disk sleeves from the early to mid-1990s, plus a quite peculiar bonus – a chocolate wrapper produced by two C64 demo groups.

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so 300DPI scans are okay?
i might gain control over a scanner next week to scan some of the material i mentioned.
one question: i found WoC (World of Commodore) tickets and belonging info material from 1991 on.. is this interesting also, or just pure scene stuff?

@ДаɎяԹર્મેΞΞ - very cool! yes please, 300DPI and full colour (even with b/w stuff). also, please don't crop the scans - the whole artifact has to be visible. and yes, WoC stuff would be great, too, since it was such an important even for sceners! please write a msg through http://gotpapers.untergrund.net/?page_id=15 and we'll take it from there!

Here is a mixed bag of demoscene objects, provided by Ile/Aardbei and iks/Titan. There is some unusual and remarkable stuff among these, such as a whole pile of Scene Event 2001 organiser badges, or the actual disk of a PC musicdisk. Enjoy!

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The launch of The Movers’ letter collection turned out to be a sort of honey pot for old sceners. Several 1980s veterans got in touch and promised to scan their old letters, too. The most amazing contribution so far came from Joost Honig a.k.a. Honey of 1001 Crew, who sent us over 1 GB worth of scans from his personal archive. Honey, active on the C64 since 1983, is a scene legend, and 1001 Crew (also known as “1001 & The Cracking Crew”) stood at the very roots of the demoscene. 1001 was not just about cracking games: Together with his groupmates, Honey was responsible for some of the crucial technical breakthroughs in C64 programming, such as sideborder and no-border sprites as early as 1986 – achievements recognised in contemporary commercial computer press as well as in recent literature -, and the famous 1001 Card Cruncher in 1987. A detailed recent interview with Honey can be found here. The letters shed light onto a lesser-known realm of 1001 Crew’s activity – namely their transnational communication networks. Through their archive, one can slowly see 1001 moving from cracking games to making intros, demos and eventually (ironically) games.

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After a break, we are back with mixed 1990s demoparty materials, provided by Goat, Cupid, and leZone. More to come soon.

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Geez... If I had hands of mine on these mags and stuff about 20+yrs and so ago...
Great job Dip!!

I used to have some badges, party vote-sheets and Amiga painted discs (some demo exclusive) as well as C64 disk covers from the late 80s (commy) and early 90 (amiga)... Once I have a possibility to be back to my ol' place, and once found I will support your work...

Catch ya l8r.

UZH Magazin, the research magazine of the University of Zurich, just published a detailed report about the research project behind Got Papers?. This is a good opportunity to end the hiatus and to bring you the third instalment of the New Balance Bochum / The Movers letter collection, supplied by Skylab & General Zoff. Once again, here are some intriguing scene letters from a fascinating time, when sceners began to move from C64 to Amiga, struggling with the new machine’s specifications; when teenage crackers doubled as game developers; when teenage magazine editors doubled as suppliers; when not only disks, but all sorts of objects, including complete computers, were exchanged through the scene’s postal networks; when contacts and friendships were forged on a phone conference and immediately continued on paper; in short, when the social network known as “the scene” was new and messy, being held together by communication channels both “old” and “new”. Enjoy the letters, and expect more soon.

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very nice stuffs again, thanks to all contributors! and thanks to dip ofcoz!

Today, we bring you something very, very special from Skylab/The Movers’ treasure chest. These two scans testify to an astonishing and unique symbiosis between 1980s’ crackers and software companies. It was by no means unusual that computer kids assumed double roles as crackers and game developers, or that suppliers leaked stuff out of game dev studios. It was also not unheard of that game publishers leaked (broken) versions of games to cracking groups in order to mess with them. The case here, however, is totally different: A game company shares their product with the C64 elite in order to pacify it and to gain some time in order to raise sales figures.

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great great great

<3

In the mid-1990s, the C64 market was basically dead, yet there were enough enthusiastic users left who were coding demos and software, and were interested in exchange. With all big commercial magazine being defunct, some of these enthusiasts tried to set up their own C64 periodicals – like Eagleware International from the Netherlands, a small C64 PD company. Their photocopied paper magazine, Commodore Tribune, sold for 10 guilders and featured the latest news on the shrinking C64 software market as well as about the demoscene on the beloved hardware platform, alongside with a cover disk. Very little is known about the magazine which left almost no traces on the internet. Thanks to Goat (who also rescued the coverdisks and uploaded them to CSDb), we are able to present you with scans of the first (and only?) two issues from late 1996 and early 1997. The first issue features, among other things, a report on the C64 scene in Yugoslavia!

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