My personal project to archive all of my old C64 diskettes into D64 disk images continues, slowly. It’s taking forever for the same reason it takes me forever to clean a room. “I’m off to clean the garage!” I’ll declare, with every intention of doing so. Ten minutes later when Susan sticks her head out to see if I need any help, I’m liable to be playing with old Star Wars toys, performing a puppet show, dancing around with a clown wig on my head, or sadly, some combination of the above. As I dig through my old computer disks, curiosity gets the better of me and I find myself rummaging through digital treats twenty years old.
One such nugget I found is a digital letter from a guy named “Metallica”, written to me (“Jack Flack”), talking about a third fellow named “Evil Dead”. Right now you probably don’t think that’s funny at all. After reading this entire post, if you make it, maybe you will.
Just to get everybody up to speed — prior to the Internet as we know it, some of us “early adopters” talked to each other online using modems and traditional phone lines connected to Bulletin Board Systems, or BBSes. Through these BBSes we talked, played online games, and swapped software — mostly games. Most of these games were copyrighted and therefore illegal, but we swapped them anyway. For expedientcy’s sake, let’s say it was the “P2P” of our day. (The technology involved was actually nothing like P2P, but the concept is close enough for this particular story’s sake.)
These programs and games were called warez — short for software, and pronounced the same (“where’s”, not “where-Ez” or “Juarez”) — and there was a huge warez “scene”. Back in my Commodore days, I was a founding member of the OK Krackers and participated in the local warez scene. Now, there were many hierarchies in the warez scene. Big national (and international) groups like Fairlight and EagleSoft Incorporated (ESI) often got games the day they were released in stores, “cracked” them (removeed any copy protection schemes) and released them. Some of these groups had connections so good and worked so quickly that they often released cracked versions of games the same day they arrived in stores (or occasionally, even before they hit store shelves!).
The OK Krackers were not a national cracking group.
Now, due to the technology of the day — analog phone lines — all these warez got moved across the country at blindingly-SLOW speeds. Eventually the C64 got modems running at 2400 baud, but in the early days people were calling each other and transferring files at 300 and 1200 baud. Even though games were only a fraction of the size they are today, it could still take multiple hours to transfer a single game over the phone lines. This created a logistical problem for couriers (people who moved games from one BBS to the next; think of them as the “drug mules” of the warez world) — long distance phone bills. Some people paid them, others found ways around paying them. Couriers volunteered their hardware, money and time in exchange to be the first to get copies of programs and to be part of the warez scene.
The OK Krackers were not couriers, either.
Then there were also trainers (people who added “cheat functionality” to games) and video fixers (people who reprogrammed PAL/European games to work on US/NTSC computers and vice versa). The OK Krackers did neither of those things.
Way, way down at the bottom of the pond were bottom feeders like the OK Krackers. We weren’t part of the official scene and we didn’t do a lot of our own cracking. Mostly what we did was download other people’s cracked games and spread them to BBSes in our own area code, adding our names in the process. Keep in mind that each of those previously mentioned group that “touched” a ware added an intro to it. If ESI cracked a game, you can bet a huge colorful eagle would appear before you ran the game, announcing that the game had been cracked by ESI. The courier who moved the game from place to place might add his own screen, too. By the time the game had been trained it might have three or even four intros appended to the front of it. Our way of thinking was, if we were spending our own time and money to bring all these games to our area code, we should get the credit for it too.
In hindsight, this is a fairly immature stance to hold. Essentially it’s as if Robin Hood robbed a bank, handed a bag of money to someone else to run to town and distribute it to the poor, receiving the bag from that person and writing “BROUGHT TO YOU TO THE OK KRACKERS” on the side before handing out the cash. Although we did actually break the copy protection on a few games, by and large what we did was wait for other people to do the hard work and then slap our name on the front of the package. Pretty lame.
Now even though we were young and immature and stupid, we all realized that slapping our real names on all of this illegal software might not be the brightest thing in the world to do — so, we chose aliases, which is kind of funny because we were already using aliases, so actually we chose alternate aliases! I was already well known locally by the moniker “Jack Flack”, so when my friend Klatu and I formed the OK Krackers we decided to use “fake aliases” so that our real aliases (and our real names!) would not be associated with the group in any way. In the OK Krackers, Klatu became Paladin and I, Jack Flack, became Metallica.
Teenagers (despite what they think) aren’t all that bright. I am sure there were people right off the bat who knew that I was also Metallica, and so (at least online) I began living this double-life of sorts. On each BBS I called I would register two accounts, one for Jack Flack and one for Metallica. Occasionally I would have conversations with myself to propel this goofy secret identity.
At one point in time, we wanted OK Krackers to appear larger than it really was, so I created another fake user — Evil Dead — to grow our numbers. I don’t remember doing a lot of posting as Evil Dead, but occasionally when we would release an OKK graphic or slap our name on something, we would either greet Evil Dead or have him say a few words. Again, the amount of time and energy put into all of this was both dizzying and, in retrospect, sad.
After hearing people whisper that perhaps Jack Flack and Metallica were the same person, I came up with a plan to throw people off the track. I wrote several letters from “Metallica” to Jack Flack, talking about upcoming OKK plans. I then left these letters lying around on disks and, when I would go to people’s houses to trade games, would make sure these letters were on those disks. My plan was that people would find the letters and think that I had accidentally left them on the disks. That way, the word would get out that I/we were not the same people, even though in reality we were. Are. Whatever.
So anyway, that’s what I found last night — a long letter, written from Metallica (me) to Jack Flack (me) discussing whether or not we should let Evil Dead (me) into the OK Krackers. When people ask me, “What do you mean you didn’t date much in mid-high?”, now you know what I was doing — sitting around on my computer, writing fake letters to myself to perpetuate the myth that the OK Krackers had more members than it really did.
Sheesh.
You should have seen the way Nick Danger and Jessi Stults used to squabble.
Oh, right, you did.
“sadly, some combination of the above”
PHOTO PLEASE!
You should post the letter! Now I’m curious!
Unfortunately, the letter was written using one of those cheesy letter-writing programs that made executables out of text files. Hey, it was the Commodore — how else were you going to get scrolling colors and background music in a text file!? I may have to manually transcribe it to text, but it’s all pretty silly. One part said, “Yo d00d, Metallica here — whatz up my radical friend!” You can tell I wrote it — no one else would ever call me radical.
So this could apply to real life. Write emails to yourself @work, spend all day writing yourself back and forth…that’d drive me nuts!
Great story which really shows the mindset from back then! (maybe something for the revised and improved Commodork 2.0 ;-). Thanks for sharing. And thanks for sharing the feeling of “I did *what* back then?”
I remember school holidays back when BBSes were still popular programming BBS utils. Getting up around 07:30, breakfast, program, program, lunch, program, program, dinner, program, program, maybe some TV in the background, program, some conversations with BBS users, program, time for bed around 23:00. Maybe all my concentration was used back then and that is the reason I now get distracted so easy.
Here are the two letters:
(LETTER.1/OKK)
HEY FLACK!
WHAT’S UP D00D? I HAVEN’T GOT A CHANCE TO TALK TO U LATELY, SO I WROTE YOU THIS LETTER AND SENTT IT TO YOUR BOX. HOW IS OKIE FANOKIE, OOPS, I MEAN OKLAHOMA? IT IS F’ING HOT IN MICHIGAN RIGHT NOW! IT WAS LIKE 102 YESTERDAY! GOOD TIME 2 STAY INDOORS AND CRACK SOME WAREZ! OH YEAH, THAT REMINDS ME, I’M RENDIN’ YA CCGMS 8.1++/OKK ON THE NEXT DISK, IT’S A GREAT TERM, ALL THE HACKS ARE USING IT UP HERE. UM, I ALSO SENT YOU CARRD SHARKS, OH WAIT, I SENT THAT ONE TO PALADIN, NEVERMIND. TELL HIM THAT ON THAT ONE THING IN CARD SHARKS, THAT IF YOU CHANGE THOSE BYTES 7-12 INN 0C00 FROM AT SIGNS TO ONES, THE POKER GAME SHOULD GIVE YOU INFINITE MONEY, BUT I’M STILL WORKING ON THIS ONE. I JUST GOT DEPROTECTING BAD DUDES SO I’LL SEND YA A COPY IN A FEW DAZE. IT’S ONE OF THOSE ARCADE TRANSLATIONS THAT BASICALLY SUCK. OH WELL, SUCH IS LIFE. LET ME SEE WHAT SOME OF MY NEW STUFF IS HERE … WASTELANDS 2 IS STILL ON THE WAY, LOOKS LIKE IT COULD STILL BE A WEEK OR TWO. WAR IN MIDDLE EARTH IS OKAY, KINDA LONG FOR A MODEM, BUT I’LL SEND A COPY TO YA. THE GRAFIX ARE A LET DOWN, BUT THE GAME PLAY RULEZ. OH WELL I HAD BETTER LET THIS ONE GO, AND I’LL EITHER SEND YOU SOME MORE DISKS OR SOME MORE MAIL, BUT COUNT ON ONE OF THE OTHER PRETTY SOON. SLATEZ. – METALLICA
———-
(LETTER.2/OKK)
HEY FLACKY BABY:
WHAT’S UP HOSER? HAHA, JUST KIDDING. WELL, THIS IS THE LATEST LETTER (TILL I WRITE YOU ANOTHER ONE). IN CASE YOU DIDN’T LOOK AT THE ENVELOPE, IT’S 8/8/89. KINDA COOL FOR A CRACKOING DATE, NO? WELL, LET ME FILL YOU IN ON LAST WEEK: ESI WENT TOTALLY AMIGA, THEY CRACK AMIGA STUFF, AND THEY SAID THAT THEY ONLY KNOW OF 1000 DISKS TOTAL ON THE AMIGA. BUMMER. OH YEAH, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE 2 NEW MEMBERS, HOBBIT AND MAVERICK. THEY ARE BOTH AWESOME ML PROGRAMMERS, THEY BLOW MY F’ING MIND. ALSO, DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD LET IN EVIL DEAD? HE SEEMS REALLY AWESOME AND HAS A BUNCH OF NEW WAREZ MAN! OH WELL, THEY ARE WORKING ON SOME NEW INTROS AND STUFF. UM, OH YEAH, ON THE LATEST BATCH OF STUFF I SENT YA SHADOWFIRE/OKK, IT JUST GOT RELEASED UP HERE AGAIN, AND I DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU OKIES HAD IT OR NOT. IF NOT THEN UPLOAD IT AND STUFF. IF SO, THEN JUST KEEP IT. ALSO CHECK OUT PANDORA, IT’S A REALLY GOOD SPACE GAME. I DON’T CARE IF YOU GIVE IT OUT, SO, DON’T LIKE HIDE IT FROM YOUR FRIENDS OR ANYTHING. BUT KEEP IT UNDER WRAPS AND STUFF. IT’S A 8/8 RELEASE TOO, I WAS BUSY TODAY. I HOPE YOU LIKED THAT HILLSFAR EDITOR, WE WROTE MOST OF THE CODE AND THEN THE MONKS PUT IT ALL TOGETHER. OH WELL, TELL PALADIN THAT I SAID HI AND THAT I’LL CALL HIM LATER IN THE WEEK. OH WELL, I’LL SEND SOME MORE STUFF LATER. OH YEAH, THANKS FOR MAVERICK PARMS 6, I HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR THEM FOR ALMOST A WEEK (GAG).
STAY RADICAL MAN … – METALLICA
———-
To add to the authenticity, also on this disk is the Hillsfar Character Editor that I mentioned (to myself) in Letter 2. Here is the OKK Intro on the front of the program. Notice the date of August of 1989.
When you hit space, you are taken to the real into screen. The program was originally released by someone else in April of 1989, four months earlier.
Pitiful.
Wow through back to the days of trash 80’s and manual modems LOL
Then FF to the ibm pc’s and WWIV andY modem, Z modem and leech Z modem.
Tradewars! and one where you had fiefs and jousted and could become king.
Modems were full length cards with real handsets that plugged in and those cool acousitc couplers that came in handy for phone booths.
We used to have phone lines on reals so you could reach the phone jack in odd places shall we say LOL no wifi around!
Intro by: RAD MAN.
I imagine there’s a good chance that’s the same RaD MaN that you presented with at DC15.
Wow. I just get a headache reading through those letters and remembering the language we all used back then. I am surprised that any of us from that era ever made it through English in school with terms like “radical,” “slatez,” “daze,” and “d00d.”
Probably by far the best post I have ever read on your blog Rob. Really and truly brings back memories of warez and trying to get the latest and greatest. We had a much smaller warez scene in Amarillo, and we had BBSs like Pookie’s Palace run locally that we got most of our stuff from. I am very happy that I no longer have to worry about dialing into BBSs anymore, though there are days I wish some of them I use to frequent still existed. It was always a pain when you would set up your pc to download something later in the evening and then your Mom or Dad would pick up the phone to make a phone call.
Believe it or not, I have a degree in English — you’d never know it from those old letters!
I miss BBSes too — not the technology as much as the general camaraderie. I have always enjoyed “putting faces with names”, something that doesn’t happen nearly enough with my Internet friends.
My parents got tired of me tying up the main phone line so my sister and I ended up getting our own line. We had to divide it up by the hour — I think I got even hours and she got the odd ones — and then of course I’d tie it up all night long after bedtime downloading stuff. My problem wasn’t with people picking up the phone — it was with call waiting. Sure enough, every time I’d forget to disable it I’d be in the middle of a post when I would sudde@#$#1$@a@# NO CARRIER.
Wow. All of that brings back some memories of growing up in 314, which we were always told was the lamest area code in the country. Well, at least that’s what the handful of guys from Chicago who would occasionally grace us with their presence always told us.
I came very close to buying an SX-64 with a dresser drawer full of disks, 99% of them copies, today. Setting that up brought back some memories. But there was another guy there who clearly wanted it more than I did. The stuff would most likely sit for years before I’d get around to doing anything with it; might as well let someone who’d enjoy them this afternoon have at it. I wondered all the while whether I knew the guy who owned that SX 20 years ago. Any time I find a 64 at a garage or (sadly) estate sale these days, I wonder.