--------------------------------------------- PURE BOLLOCKS REVIEW OF THE SCOTTISH SCENE! --------------------------------------------- by of NETWORK TRASH! Yes, we mean Scottish- repeat after me- SCOTTISH, SCOTTISH, SCOTTISH! None of this 'English' scene with Scottish groups that Amazine keeps going on about! Sorry Mad Vision, but there's more than one country in Britain! In this review we're going to go on about something we know about here. If we don't include you here, then we're sorry- contact us! Quite a lot of the groups here have members elsewhere in Britain. Afterwards, we'll talk a bit about various outlets which deal in their wares, but first, the groups list.... -------------------------------------------- ** CYNIX ** Still one of the best and most active cracking crews in Scotland, but they're calming down, and might be dead within a year, who knows! There's 1 cracker left- the Milky Bar Kid or Absu or whatever he's called now. ** LEMMINGS ** This is a group with members in Scotland (Potsan) and England (Pele). Pele does most of the cracking, but Potsan also does the occasional crack and codes some stuff like his 'Boot Crazy' utility. Potsan has also released a couple of menus with other people. All the cracks are minor league stuff- don't expect Epic cracked by this group. ** THE PIXEL TWINS ** This is currently the main demo crew in Scotland with about 6-7 members. Their stuff is nearly always STE only, and they have converted the Scoopex 'Mental Hangover' demo from the Amiga onto the STE! One of the coders, DML, works as a professional programmer. ** FINGERBOBS ** This is the other main demo crew in Scotland, mainly from Aberdeen Uni. They've done guest screens for Inner Circle's 'Decade Demo', and did a couple of screens for the Ripped Off party demo. ** TOP NOTCH ** This is a new crew composed of STOS coders ACO and Wheee the Fibble. Under their old names they released the 'Cunning Demos' and under Top Notch they released their STOS extension 'Misty' on ST Format, and their 'Misty Demo'. WTF is now the ST Format STOS correspondant. ** DIMENSION ZERO ** This is a mainly STOS coding crew who are also active on the Amiga! The main coder is Michael Lynne. They have done a guest screen for Top Notch's 'Misty Demo' and are working on their demo called 'Evie the Dog' (I think that's what it's called!) ** BLUE HARVEST ** Originally just the name which Red Five released his modules under, they've recently become a slightly less lame demo crew. We know this because one of the coders, Agrajag, turned up at the Ripped Off party in September and spent most of the time trying to get a chessboard effect working on a demo screen! He's also written a couple of articles for Ledgers. There's also another coder in BH, but we don't know his name. Red Five's module got 3rd place at the Ripped Off party module competition. We've heard that they're also overdue with a digi-music demo! ** DIGITECH ** This is a demo crew with only 3 members as far as we know. They are Shift and Data- both coders, and another member we don't know much about. We are told that they have done a guest screen for Dimension Zero's STOS demo- but they're an assembler group, so I assume their guest screen's also in assembler! ** TOUR DE FORCE ** We don't know too much about this group except that they have a coder called Darkman and they are supposed to be writing a guest screen for the Untouchables 'Cheese and Biscuits' demo! ** NETWORK TRASH ** Not an ST crew, but a secret network crew based mainly in Glasgow University. See the features elsewhere in the magazine. I thought I might as well mention them! (Anyway, lots of them have STs as well....) ** HOPELESS LAMERS ** I've seen 3 menus from this lot, and I still don't know if they're serious! They crack ancient games, pack them and stick them on a disk with a ripped intro, and make them look as though the entire disk is ripped off, but they also include a DOC file in a folder telling how the games were cracked! Very strange crew, mainly led by Bip. ** SUB HUMANS IN TURKEY ** Yes, this lot are still going! Three of them turned up at the Ripped Off party so we know! They used to be know mainly because of their frontman EGB doing menus for Automation, and the infamous 'Pissflaps' porno game! They all appear to be in the business of making games now... Maybe expect 'Pissflaps 2'?!?! ** THE FORCE ** This lot do compils menus of all the latest cracks, we don't know if they're still going, but we did meet Skelly and Leasky from the group some time ago! ** G - FORCE ** I've still got a couple of menus from these guys. They were compil menus made up by guys at the Barras in Glasgow for their stall. I think they're quite definately dead now, and are no relation to The Force. ** ST FACTORY ** Talking of stalls compil makers, the infamous ST Factory (As seen in the Daily Record) stall in the Barras did a couple of CDs under their name, with games packed and single-filed and a menu added using utilities off their own catalogue! ** THE NEW GENERATION ** Another games compil maker! I've got 2 menus by this bunch, and they both use the crappy old Medway Boys menus! But they're relatively up-to-date on games. I think they might be dead as well.... ** DARK ANGELS ** A real bunch of lame egomanic compil makers and no mistake. Their first 'menu' wasn't a menu at all but an intro made by the 'Intro Concept' creator!! They must have got Easyrider, because they are now using the same ancient Medway menu as The New Generation! They're always pinching 'Top Tips' jokes from Viz and putting them in their scrolltexts! Here's a top tip for you lot- please fuck off! ** RIPP OFF MERCHANTS ** What makes me think this is a piss-take? Perhaps the fact that the person who does these compils is called 'Dildo'??!?! I've got 3 'CD's from this lot, but they're numbered 567, 581, and 584 !!! They're apparently PD and shareware stuff only as far as I can tell, but it's quite well packed anyway. ** BIRDY ** Oh this is really ancient! Birdy was a lone cracker and was fairly well known and disliked by loads of other crackers. He does nothing now. ** QUARTEX ** And thought it was an all English crew! No, there's a Scottish member in Ruthless' ill-fated group. ** KICK IT IN SOFTWARE ** If you think Ruthless is lame, you should see this - Kick It In Software ('Kick It In' is supposed to be a reference to Simple Minds [the pop group] incidentally....) just take CDs and rip the menus off! The best example of this is their 'CD 6'- they have just ripped the scroller! The graphics are still the same, and say: 'LSD / WAS NOT WAS MENU 10'!!!!! The scrolltext actually gives away what college this lamer goes, and the name of one of his lecturers and one of his tutors! We had our suspicions about who this guy was and we checked with someone studied the same subjects at the college, and we've confirmed his identity, but we won't reveal his name. Let's just say that Kick It In Software CD 6 was very much ripping without imagination! ** IMAGINATION ** But this lot win the lameness award! They just sector edited some cracks to slag off the Dark Angels, and edited their DOC files, then added a desktop file with loads of disk icons saying that they are 'Glasgow's no. 1 demo crew!' Actually we now know the identity of the man behind this lame escapade, and we think you'd be better sticking to running your stall! (If you haven't been bust yet! [Actually, he wasn't, I just found that out!]) ** FAT TULIP ** This appears to be just one person who occasionally releases disks of utilities and not much else, though he did claim to be trying to join Cynix at one point! (And don't you deny it! We have the text file to prove it!) ** PRIESTS OF PLEASURE ** A new Edinburgh based demo crew, and the coder is called -Dodo- !!! They've done an intro for Ledgers disk mag (issue 13), and Dodo appears to code using - get this - TURBO ASSEMBLER!! ** EGB'S SMELLY SOX ** This person along with Rich Tea did the -really amazing- 'Perpetual Dawn' Demo. Not only is he a brilliant coder and really nice person, he is also standing immediately behind me while I type this! Aaaarrrgh! Get off! Aaaaaarrrgggh! ----------------------------------------------- ** PIRATE STUFF ** There are three main outlets for pirate stuff. 1) Mail swappers- groups and group contacts swap all their latest stuff as soon as they get it. Usually the first to get the latest disks. If you have any mail swapper contacts- lucky you! 2) Pirate bbs - We're certainly not going to give any numbers away here, but this is also a fairly up-to-date way of getting stuff, if a little expensive phone-bill-wise. In fact, we know a certain well known group get all their stuff now from some boards! 3) Markets- any big market can be expected to have a pirate stall in it somewhere, though I wouldn't recommend going one in the weeks before or after Christmas, as that's the most likely times when FAST comes round... In Scotland, the Glasgow Barras is the place to be, since there's space for loads of pirate stalls all about the place. We don't know any market in Britain never mind Scotland where this is the case, even after that major bust that happened recently, but if you know better, then tell us about it! ** PD/SHAREWARE STUFF ** You can get PD through mail swappers or bulettin boards as well, and also through various PD Libraries, so we'll give a mention to some PD places in Scotland: FLOPPYSHOP - in Aberdeen. Really big, it's even got it's own bbs! (STatic) CALEDONIAN - in Inverness. It's a bit expensive, but it's got great contacts, in fact it was one of the first in Britain to get the Phaelon Gigademo! STATE 808 - in Carluke. Mainly intrested in music/sample demos. PHOENIX PDL - This is an unsual one. It's not a normal PDL but a PD stall run in the Glasgow Barras on weekends. Given that, it's got the best PD list we've seen- almost as big the the old TLB library! It's also good for a chat and the odd coder or MIDI expert hangs around to see what's new. One of our contacts tells us that the two coders from Digitech, Agrajag from Blue Harvest, Wheee The Fibble, and even occasionally DML from the Pixel Twins appear at the stall! MICRO ZONE - Another Barras PD stall. We've only just heard of it, but it does PD for ST, Amiga and PC formats! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- So we hope you like this look at the Scottish Scene. If you thought there was hardly anything happening north of Carlisle, we hope we've enlighted you a bit! 5/12/92.