Very emblematic use of technical possibilities

Brainstorm is a Swiss-based demo group, that has existed in two distinct periods; their formation as an Amiga demo group in the period between 1989 and 1993, and their reformation as a mainly pc demo group in 2006 until present day. They were originally formed a short while before may 1989 by graphician Chester and coder Majestic, and their first release was Lazer Roll. During the summer they recruited more members (like Orlando), and at the end of the summer vacation they were joined by the entire group Axxis (Bird, ...). This group had both a Swiss and German section, but the German section was found to be substandard and was forced to leave after a while. Another member, swapper Joker, left the scene soon after. They had by now started planning what would become the diskmagazine Zine. It was originally conceptuated as a cooperation between Brainstorm and another Swiss group at the time, Setrox, but the latter eventually decided against being part of the project. Due to this, Setrox coder The Accused left to join Brainstorm. Zine 1 was released in october. They were now a totally Swiss group again, except for two German members - Shadow and Yankee.

Advert in Cracker Journal 18 (january 1990), looking for members. Cracker Journal 19 (march 1990) reported, "Angel Dust joined Brainstorm and his name is now Six Pack." Sometime between Zine 3 (february 1990) and Zine 4 (april 1990) they decided to kick their German writer Yankee because he wasn't productive enough. He was a freelance writer for D.I.S.C. for a while before finally joining Addonic. Zine 5 was released at the Alcatraz Pentcost Party 1990 at the beginning of june. It was to be Orlando's last issue as editor, as The Accused had returned from his army service.

Metamorphosis (august 1991) mentioned their bbs Cheese-Line as 'new', and listed Accused, Axel, Bird, Chesney, Chester, Droid, ESA, Fly, Grubi, Luke, Macho, Majestic, Odie, Oli, Orlando, Patsy, Peace, Scattergold and Truxton as active members. Danish megaswapper The Pride joined the group in late september, and was sent a new packmenu for creating a new series of packs (see Superpack 1) - which would become the Obsession packseries, starting in october. All this was also reported in R.A.W 1 (november 1991).

R.A.W 2 (february 1992) reported that The Pride moved on from the group to join Sanity, and that a Finnish section had been opened by Phazer, Extabulator, Hoover, Mac, Top Azz and Voyager.

January 1993 saw the release of Axel's musicdisk Musicland, featuring among other songs his 8th-placed Technology from The Party 1992 the month before.

Die Digitalisierung ist ein schwieriger Transformationsprozess, der seit 40 Jahren andauert und gegen den sich grosse Teile der Gesellschaft lange Jahre (zum Teil zu Recht) gewehrt haben. Letztlich geht es um die tiefgreifende Ablösung der auf Menschen-prozessierten-Medien zu auf Computern-prozessierten-Medien, die dann wiederum vom Menschen bedient, genutzt werden. Und selbstverständlich viele neue Anwendungen möglich machen. Die Corona-Pandemie hat nun die letzten Zweifler* zumindest zu Nutzern* gemacht.

…

Die Digitalisierung ist letztlich die Digitalisierung des Menschen zur Turing Maschine / Universalmaschine, einem einfachen Buchhalter mit Stift und Papier. Es ist die Kybernetik der 30 Jahre in der Realität, unserer Realität. Es geht um automatisch prozessierte Regelsysteme, die das erst möglich machen. Die Ausstellung zeigt in ihrem Ausgestellten ethnologisch und ethnografisch, was die Digitalisierung so erfolgreich gemacht hat, die Technologie dahinter ist anscheinend verschwunden. Sie ist im Hintergrund, im Handy, im Server (Server?) und ist damit handhabbar geworden. Nun ist sie durchsetzbar, weil sie niedlich und nett ist, was sie nie war. Die Digitalisierung wird zum Oberflächenphänomen und eine Ausstellung zum digitalen Planet schafft es, daran kleben zu bleiben. Ihr fehlt das digitale Herz! Sie ist letztlich nur GUI (Was die Computertechnologie ab 1985 sehr erfolgreich machte und mit dem WWW explodieren liess).

Diese digitale Welt ist nur möglich, weil millionenfach Programme warten, endlos warten auf Eingaben oder weil sie endlos vor sich hinrechnen. Selbst ein banales Programm wie Excel wartet bis der da draussen – genannte – User* etwas tut. Computer, Computerprogramme sind unsere kleinen je eigenen Sklaven, Maschinchen mit weissen Handschuhen.

The arcade was a place to play games, meeting point. In the german part of switzerland there were almost only males (you could also gambel). They were dark in the most of cases.

In the ‘westschweiz’ there were a lot more women in also in the arcades and younger people (for example in Lausanne). 

In the arcades there were always different types of arcades (older and the latest), than ‘table football’, flippers and so on. 

The CFA was founded in 1987 in Basel, Switzerland, when 3-letter names were still in fashion. CFA stood for “Computer Freaks Association”. In the first months the CFA was a group of C64 fans and gaming tournaments were held in regular intervals. They organised a gaming room at a local School-Party of the RG in Basel.

The CFA started with pure Demo-Making and Software-Swapping. The first international contact was the Norwegian group The Sinister Realm 2013 Stavanger. One of the early meeting places was the Dial-Club, a local Computer-Center in Basel.
At this time a regular Exchange-Ring of Software between the members was built up.

The first Copy-Party visited by CFA members was Crazy & ZSS Party 1988 in Pratteln/Switzerland. In 1989 Members of the group was busted by police on a German Copy-Party, but thanks to slow Swiss legislation, no CFA member had any troubles at all after returning to Switzerland.
The CFA took part in Demo-Contests of other Swiss copy parties: Crazy & RCS Party 1989, Crazy Stardom Copy-Party 1989 and Fresh Party 1990. 

In the early days, our strategy was: focus on Switzerland. This changed with the first member expansion outside of Basel: 
German members: Snief and The Cure.
Liechtenstein members: Sandman.

War against another Swiss group Fresh, which led to a funny anti demo Fresh on Top. The war was officially ended at the Swiss Pirates Reunion 2002. (nowadays there are many friendship boundaries between the former 2 opponents).

The CFA has in the meantime started importing and cracking games: access to the major US BBS, latest wares and cards agogo. 

1990-1991 Cooperation with Italian Cracking Service from Italy.

11/1989-07/1993 reknown Disk Mag “Immortal Flash” an e-zine that become quite popular in the scene (later released by Atlantis).

In 02/1991 the CFA died and the remaining members built up Atlantis. More info in Joker Note.

OLIVER It all started for me at a Christmas party at Starbyte Software. It was a remarkable event. I never met so many talented people at one place before. The developers showed the games they were developing including the Amiga version of Rolling Ronny. We got the offer for converting the game and if I remember correctly, we agreed almost instantly. Previous projects of Bones Park were economic simulations, which was… how to describe… rather static stuff. I usually call those games Excel-pushers. A jump-and-run is way more interesting and it is action we wanted to create.

MARIO Back then, in the C64 era, most games took only a few weeks or a couple of months to develop. So we had to keep a constant flow of new contacts and projects. One project we did in late 1991, Trans World, for German publisher Starbyte, went pretty smooth and even became our first #1 in German sales charts, so we were invited and offered to work on other titles. One concrete offering was the C64 conversion of Rolling Ronny. Even though most of the first games I programmed were simulations, I still had spent a lot of time on developing action and real-time oriented games. So it was a perfect moment to put all the learnings into a concrete game – and that would have been Rolling Ronny.

Very big club with 600 (?) members. There are all paying money.  A lot of people found here other persons with the same ideas and interests.

It seems that the name ist also Statement. In german spoken as KAK means shit.

where it successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe.

Areas like the demoscene or electronic games existed only rudimentarily as analog systems (pinball etc) In this sense they were new and updated the system.

Other areas changed or replaced existing areas: 
- Data collection and analysis (punch cards, etc.)
- word processing

> From media running on humans to media running on computers

einfacherer regeltransfer

- Verstehen der Hardware und Anforderungen
- Tutorials lesen
- einen eigenen funktionierenden Source entwickeln, wo alles drin ist:
  Sound, Graphik und IO. 
- danach Spiele entwickeln

German: System Analyse Ansatz von Recipient (Spieler), Produkt (Spiel), Technische Möglichkeiten und Entwickler/Designerperspektive. 

Fantasy computers are computer that are ‘inspired’ by real computers. Means their name sound like ZX81 > Tic80 but of course they are fast, programmable with lua and in the most of the cases have all integrated: spriteeditor, tile/background-editor, soundeffects editor and music editor. So they are really the dream of an 8bit-coder* with assembler, low memory, low graphics, no tools. 

a lot of pirated software was uploaded on bbs, afterwareds on ftp-servers in companies or universities. the most crackergroup had warez servers. often the name of the folders were appz / warez / gamez.

There is a large base of videogame fans and developers working on emulating old games to ever new platforms. While this guarantees the transfer of knowledge and accessibility for games, there is nothing comparable for electronic literature. The community is too small, does not include many tech-experts, and even browser-based projects of five years are no longer working. A steady in- crease in interactive, collaborative and dynamic elements in new projects of electronic literature is at the core of the problems of archiving. This article discusses the impacts of digital writing on creative works and assesses the situation for German electronic literature and e-poetry in terms of its problems, possibilities and perspectives of archivability. It sorts the projects in easily represent- able works, works that need adapting or emulating and projects that are very difficult to archive in their original form. In doing so it outlines the necessary steps to make electronic literature from past and present accessible for future users. __________________________________

Several demos are behind the mechanic of the ‘puzzler’

Coding gives you power.
Everybody can have its own slave (LCP)!

Hardware
- C64 consolen basis, erinnert mehr an eine Console als an einen Computer (Sprite, Hardwarescrolling, Music).
- SID wirklich witzig

VisualDisplay
Unmöglich viele Modis: High res. Multicolor > Programmierung schwierig. Positiv: Kombinierbar
- Beschränkte 16 Farben > Schwierig etwa eigenes zu machen. 
- Strahlende Farben fehlen.

Music
- Music Coding
- SID wirklich interessante Stücke. 

Tools
- Damals Paintingprogramme? > Öfter bessere Computer genutzt wie Amiga/PC (Compiling)

Coding
- Schwierig reinzukommen, sogar schwieriger als Atari2600
- Entwicklung über Jahre
- Basic embedded .-(
- Woher kam das Wissen? Die Software? (Magazine?)
- Öfter bessere Computer genutzt wie Amiga/PC (Compiling)
Gamecoding
- Ohne Tricks (Sprite Multplexer 8 Sprites viele Spiele nicht denkbar) ähnlich wie beim Atari 2600. Tricks

Beschränkung
- Beschränkung bei Shootemups am Schwierigsten bei allen anderen Genres eher möglich mit 8 Sprite durchzukommen.

Community
- Identitätsstiftend aber warum? Einfach übers gemeinsame Spielen?
- Bis heute ungebrochen. Aber mehrheitlich Spieler? Demoszener? 

Heute

Gesamte Entwicklung auf einmal da, keine allmähliche Steigerung/Entwicklung über 10 Jahre
Selbst heute, einige Tutorials aber kein Gametemplate. Viel bis heute unterschiedliche Nutzung: Vorallem game und demoscene. 
> Anwendersoftware fast nicht dokumentiert. 
> Neue Games, demos > Anwendersoftware?

Devs with Beer and and 
Star wars intro (influenced)
Beer as protagonist
Shop - 1:1 - Get money for buying extras?
Song “MIr sind mit dä fürwehr dooo ” (Swiss german)
Sidewings / extraweapons 
“Görpsen” 
Feldschlösschen is shooting
Shoot vs Feldschlösschen! (Feldschlösschen as Train)
Other beer brands
Visual influences of Jeff Minter
PacMan 
Vs JAck Daniels 
vs Soft Drinks
vs Apple 
vs Bourbon
vs Windows (Money)
vs Java Cups?
vs Brains? BRain is fighting against beer?
“No hero this time” - Eichhorn best
 

Fresh was founded April 22, 1989 on the Crazy & RCS Party 1989 by Iceman/ISI Soft, Graphics-Boy, Project B, Shake (subgroup) and Welfare Software Boys (subgroup). 2 months later Krush joined in as main cracker. The first Fresh Intro gained a lot of attaention in the Swiss scene: it was coded Mat and the music was exclusively composed by Tim of Modern Arts, one of the most progressive demo groups back then.

After the Crazy Stardom Copy-Party 1989 (August) in Le Locle the 2 Swiss demogroups Future Vision Switzerland and Trap joined Fresh. 

Mainly in 1990, a war with Computer Freaks Association was ongoing. Both groups were competing for being Switzerland's #1. Computer Freaks Association released a small anti-demo called Fresh on Top. The war was officially ended at the Swiss Pirates Reunion 2002 (nowadays there are many friendship boundaries between the former 2 opponents).

Was in co-op with Century for short while in February/March 90. The co-op was stopped due to a lack of Century cracks.

After the Fresh Party 1990 (April) Krush, Ogygene and Mirage left to built up a new Swiss group together with The Sexton/G*P called Abstract, which later then joined forces with the ashes from the Swiss demogroup Future Concepts and renamed into Crusade.

Also in April 1990 a small but neat Austrian section was built by Awesome & Beast. They have produced some one file demos and due to the good connections to Lotus, Awesome has supplied a couple of hot originals. 

In May 1990 some Fresh members have been working on a project to join forces with The Ancient Temple. Both group got to know eachother at the Fresh Party 1990. Project names were SAPPHIRE or LIFE IS A BEACH. There was no agreement on the name, so the project never was realised. 

In June/July 1990 a German section in Cologne was built around Spy, Trax & Scoundrel. After their lame release Lost in Time , they have been kicked out.

Was in co-op with Holocaust from August 1990 to October 1990. The coop started with Fresh's first release of Back to the Future II 5. The co-op later was stopped due to a lack of Fresh cracks in that period (main cracker Graphics Boy had left the group to join Crazy).

Fresh died in late 1990 when Freestyle and Dave joined Talent.

OLIVER Being a pixel guy – the tools were remarkable. We did not have devkit like the Katakis tools or something specified for creating game graphics. I used the editor that came with the Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit for sprites, which turned out extremely practical. The Ronny-sprite was created with an C64 editor called Mob-Profi, which provided overlayed hires and multicolour-sprites. The pictures in the intro and end sequence were pixeled in Koala Painter with a joystick, but everything else was more like hacking. I edited the charset with a font editor. The level backgrounds were tile-based maps, so a friend of mine coded one tool for combining 2×2 chars to tiles including the colour – and a second tool for assembling the levelmap like a puzzle game. As setup I had a C128 and Amiga 500 side by side. By the way – there was a TV and a monitor connected to the C128 at the same time, because of the the different video quality and I wanted to be sure that the graphics  looked right on both display types. With our modern mouse or stylus driven tools and those workflow-trimmed programs it is hard to believe that we got things done at all back in the day when we were even lacking fundamentals such as UNDO functionality. However, I have to say that you had full control over the technical specs of the graphics and as a graphic designer you started to think like a coder.

Otherwise, I hardly remember details of the project. At least for the first month, Mario and I were working alongside each other. The intro and the end sequence were finished first. Then it was very intense and determined by crunchtime, the process was sort of first-in-first-out. The progress in code was tied to incoming graphics. Markus composed the new tunes at home far away and we had some issues with the delivery. Nevertheless the whole soundtrack reached us in time and its implementation went smoothly. Still there was no free time at all. In the final weeks weeks it became a kind of competition – like, who needs the least sleep! I also remember that the editing of the levels was pretty chaotic. Three of us worked in shifts and it took much longer than planned.

Oh I almost forgot about the  communication with Virgin. That was the horror for me because I hardly spoke any English back then. David Bishop and I talked English and German mixed, which worked surprisingly well.

Computerclubs were a very important institution. 

0. Is a place and a community in the same and also a public in the same
1. Networking people in a non internet time.
2. Bringing KnowhHow to people (Courses)
3. Showing, Selling Hardware (Internally)
4. Own public magazines
5. Part of Creating Groups/interested people
6. Only available in bigger towns 

A lot of works in the area of electromechanic/optic calculation in games.

Pinballs are really computing hells. 

Where people met, talked about computers, learnt about computers. Played games, designed games.

Yes also pirate software and games was part of this world. 

Culture towards technology changed massively in the last 50 years. 

The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player (German: Schachtürke, lit. 'chess Turk'; Hungarian: A Török), was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.[1]Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once.

Italian part:
French part:
German part: Spielsalon

Die Wellen der Wiederaneignung - von der Demoscene/Homebrew zu Retro und zu den Indiespielen Betrachtet man die weitere Entwicklung der Games und ihre Aktualisierung wird klar: Mit der Plattform Atari ST/Amiga starb auch die Unterstützung der Games. Denn nichts ist bekanntlich älter, als das Game von gestern und noch auf einer Hardware, die nicht mehr kaufbar ist. Die Vertriebskanäle wie BBSen kamen auch aus der Mode beziehungsweise wurden vom Internet verdrängt (FTP und WW) So wundert es auch nicht, dass die Spiele nicht in dieser Zeit dokumentiert wurden. Die meisten Spielkonzepte überlebten auch nicht die aufsteigenden 3D-Welten und wurden entsprechend auch nicht portiert. Erst später - mit mehr Rechenpower - entstanden die Emulatoren zu diesen Homecomputers und durch das WWW wurde Dokumentation auch möglich. [Recherche der ersten Emulatoren]

How people connect each other. Which places were important and why? Which media was important and why? Most of this places (Clubs, Supermarkets,  Arcades/Spielsalon, Computershops).
What happened with people from the country side? 

(money laundering?)

 

Es gibt eine Menge ineinandergreifender, komplexer Faktoren. Da ist zum einen die Professionalisierung dieser Disziplin. In den Anfängen haben es Frauen viel leichter, sich durchzusetzen und einen Platz in Disziplinen und Bereichen zu finden, in denen es keinen etablierten Präzedenzfall, keinen Kanon, keine Institution und keine Ausbildungsanforderungen gibt. Informatik war neu, es gab keine Handbücher, keine Institutionen, keine Berufsverbände. Man wurde Programmierer, weil man ein Händchen dafür hatte. Man war gut im Eignungstest, hat sich Schachrätsel angesehen, war gut in Mathe, war Sekretärin oder Stenografin – das war es. Und es gab einen großen Bedarf an Programmiertalenten. Als die Branche in den Fünfziger- und Sechzigerjahren explodierte, war es für eine Frau relativ einfach, dort einzusteigen. Als das Programmieren von den Sechziger- bis zu den Achtzigerjahren immer mehr zu einer professionellen Disziplin wurde, kamen bestimmte Ausbildungsanforderungen hinzu, die es für Frauen in diesem Bereich schwieriger machten. Es war nicht so einfach, einen Hochschulabschluss in Informatik zu erlangen, wenn die Frauen Familie hatten

In den Anfängen haben es Frauen viel leichter, sich durchzusetzen und einen Platz in Disziplinen und Bereichen zu finden, in denen es keinen etablierten Präzedenzfall, keinen Kanon, keine Institution und keine Ausbildungsanforderungen gibt. Informatik war neu, es gab keine Handbücher, keine Institutionen, keine Berufsverbände. Man wurde Programmierer, weil man ein Händchen dafür hatte. 

there are two aspects came together in the universal computer. 
1. computing (sorting)
2. control (cases, if then, input)
before this were seperated functions in analoge maschines.