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CHAPTER ONE - ( 1989 ) - TWIN EAGLES GROUP IN COMMODORE 64
All begins in 1989, somewhere in Lima, Peru. Overmind and
Mister Byte are chatting at 2 am with their Commodore 64 and
modem of 300/1200 bauds, one more time analyzing and criticizing
the Peruvian computer scene while comparing it with the European
one, full with vitality. Then Mister Byte, who has lived in
Italy until half '80 and knows part of the European scene,
has an idea. - Why not to form in our country a programming
group with a similar ideology to the ones in the Commodore
64 European scene? - A group dedicated to the coding of
intros and demos, spreading own releases and latest warez,
as also investigating every technic related to videogame development.
- A group with a work methodology completely different to
the accustomed one in Peru! - But this idea is not new. One
year before there was a similar attempt with Anubi,
a small coding group by Spy*Share and Mister Byte, but they
had failed. Overmind and Mister Byte know that to establish
a coding group in a poor scene like ours would be very beneficial
for the whole local community. And at dawn, they choose the
name of the group, they establish the rules of operation,
and the first members are selected. And in this way begins
our history, and the history of a computer scene in
our country, Peru!
In
March 1989, Twin Eagles Group (TEG) begin its activity
with four members: Easy Rider (swapper), Overmind
(swapper), TMB 1996 (6510 coder) and Mister Byte
(6510 coder, sysop, leader). The bulletin board system operated
by Mister Byte since 1988, Commodore Knights BBS, is
declared as modem TEG headquarters (1200 bauds, 24 hours at
day).
We
have our first release that same year, a challenge that *
Satan! * proposes us, author of a new copy protection applied
to Operation Wolf (Taito). According to his own words,
he has dedicated so much time coding it that considers his
copy protection as his "daughter"! But days later,
our group proudly announces the unprotection of the game by
our first cracker, TMB 1996, and it is so quick that Mister
Byte doesn't have time to code an intro for the special occasion
and we release the game with a simple intro (TEG drawn in
petscii characters). This is our first presentation to the
Peruvian scene and circulate unforgettable and funny comments
like "the daughter of Satan! was raped!" and "the
Robin Hood of Commodore 64" (we unprotect games that
some local pirates illegally re-protect to sell more copies
in an exclusive way).
In
our first two years of activity we dissassemble and take a
look into many videogames on Commodore 64, we add trainers,
we code intros and demos, we establish contacts with foreign
groups (like Grand Praire Boys/USA, All Fucked Up/USA, F4CG/Italia...),
we import warez for C=64 and Amiga, and we recruit new members:
Spunk!, Centurion and Halter (coders), Mistress Byte (graphics,
the first woman in the group), and we have the collaboration
of some informants to know every gossip in the local scene.
But we have also the first drops in the group: Centurion and
Halter are kicked because they distribute warez and our coding
tools. Then in 1990 a new TEG - Amiga section opens with 4
members: Road Handler (swapper), Sync, The Garbage Kid and
Mister Byte (all of them investigating the AmigaOS and 680x0),
but after half year it closes due to the lack of technical
information on the Amiga. Many users remember 1990 as a year
of great activity in the Peruvian scene... but the best things
should even come!
In
January of 1991 we release our disc-magazine Smiling Panda,
the first one to be published in Latin America! The first
issue is spreaded only in Lima but the next ones are distributed
to other scenes like Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, etc. And then the Peruvian scene is divided in two:
those that Hate us to death, and those that Support us. This
happens because Smiling Panda is the source of gossips
on our scene and many users, especially sellers of pirate-software
and lamers, are mistreated and criticized by the staff of
Smiling Panda. Some people, affectionately, renamed it as
The Little Killer Panda! By the way, Mister Byte is
the coder and graphician of Smiling Panda, Mistress Byte is
the editor and graphician, and the rest of the members collaborate
with articles and other stuff. The good news is that gradually
increases the number of Peruvian users that investigate about
6510 coding, surely wanting to show (to us?) that they are
not just parasites. New members join the group: Skysurfer
(original supplier), Delta and Minotauro (graphicians), Sir
Arthur (support).
The
year ends with something more ambitious: the first copyparty
in Peru! It is the first time in the local computer history
that is carried out a meeting of this class. The event takes
place the 28 and 29 of December of 1991, near 60 users attend
and there are 15 Commodore 64 well equipped provided by the
same participants. The copyparty last 48 hours, several users
remain in the local the whole dawn chatting, playing, programming
and copying warez. Last day of the party, one of the participants,
Camilot Warrior, joins TEG as graphician.
Twin
Eagles Group rules the Peruvian scene during 1992 with imported
warez for C64 and Amiga, new intros, game cracks (Hostages,
Project Firestart, etc.), several game fixes from PAL to NTSC
(the most important of all them, R-Type), trainers, music
demos from well-known games, new issues of Smiling Panda,
and a growing list of good friendships with other latin groups
and legendary ones of the European scene. But the maximum
consecration happens with Smiling Panda #05 (November
1992) publishing the results of the first survey and ranking
of the best graphician, musicians, crackers and coders of
the whole Latin American scene! (a difficult work considering
that all communication is sustained by normal mail or telephone
calls because internet is still not available widely). The
results demonstrate the growing integration among the latin
scenes, but significant for us it is the fact that our 4 year-old
work has motivated some Peruvian users into programming and
understanding concepts like VBI, rasters, FLI graphics, level-packers,
sprite multiplexing, etc. and other basic techniques to create
intros, demos, all the basis to develop videogames. Smiling
Panda #05 has a worldwide circulation spreading in Holland,
Italy, Israel, Pakistan, United States, Germany, Belgium,
... as also lartin countries.
Parallelly,
a recent member of TEG, known as Gato ("cat"), very
expert in electronic, plans an interesting project to improve
our TEG-HQ Commodore Knights BBS: a custom network of 8 computers
Commodore 64 connected to a PC 286 with hard disk. The system
would be capable of receive 8 simultaneous calls and to allow
multichat. But previous to this mega project, he develop three
interesting programs: C64 Virus Maker, Speed-Up 2 and International
CopyChart. On the other hand, Omega (coder), a new member
of TEG, create new intros, a demo (TEG MusicDisk 01) and TEG-Dictionary
(english/spanish). And AMTV (coder) programs the TEG-Coder,
useful to code our productions. Meanwhile in the Amiga section,
in a night of boredom, Mister Byte cracks another game, F-15
Strike Eagle 2.
At
the beginning of 1993, while Smiling Panda #05 spreads in
many countries of the world, we receive offers of well-known
groups to establish a cooperation to develop software together.
But in particular there is one located in Israel who proposes
us the creation of videogames (we doing the code, they the
graphics and audio). It is the opportunity that we waited
to be devoted exclusively to the creation of videogames. The
members of TEG meet to converse on the new situation of the
group and future projects.... but something bad happens in
our scene, and everywhere. We are in front of a new generation
and ideological change of the users, and unfortunately not
for better.
Europe is the cradle of the programming of demos and
videogames, the best groups of coders, musicians, graphicians,
crackers, etc. and it has an impressive variety of different
computer systems. The best techniques at the moment used in
video games were developed originally by European coders,
a great percentage of the users has interest in the programming
of most classic systems (Megadrive, Commodore 64, Amiga, SuperNintendo,
Amstrad, etc.), and the scorn toward PCs and M$ Windows is
massive and radical. On the contrary, the weak North
American scene is mostly full of warez spreading groups and,
unfortunately, the very few coding groups are displaced to
a second plane. The North American community prefers PCs and
people are buying in the last two years a PC or SNES just
to play Doom and Street Fighter 2 compulsively, leaving the
investigation. To beginnings of 1994, due to this idiotic
process, the interesting but fragile C64 Peruvian scene
collapses remaining alone 5 or 6 guys with the knowledge
to develop videogames at professional level. TEG suddendly
loses all its members, some of them because of the already
mentioned reasons, and others that give up to family's
pressures relatives to work or to study careers that are
not of they interest. Then, Mister Byte decides to leave out
the C64 scene and to continue in Amiga, the system of more
acceptance in Europe due to its versatility and hardware specialized
in the handling of audio and video, and this means good programming
and videogames.
CHAPTER
TWO - ( 1995 ) - TWIN EAGLES GROUP STRIKES BACK IN AMIGA
1994
and half of 1995 are the worst years for TEG. In fact, it
even can't be called "group" since it has a single
member, Mister Byte, the founder, who continues with the hope
of rescuing in our scene some people interested in graphics,
music and programming of videogames. But it is in vain. By
the middle of 1995 the situation improves lightly when AMTV,
ex-member of TEG C64, begins to program in Amiga. Now TEG
has 2 programmers, but without graphic artist neither musician
is impossible to develop some games, so Mister Byte and AMTV
are devoted temporarily to do utilities for Workbench (AmigaOS).
On the other hand, Amiga's situation continues uncertain since
April of 1994 when the owner company Commodore Business Machine
(CBM) and all its divisions (including Commodore-Amiga) was
out of business due to its president and vice-president faults.
Definitively a bad time, until in an unexpected way a German
PC-manufacturer company, Escom AG, unexpectedly acquires the
rights on Amiga!
In
October of 1995, Mister Byte attended the event Computer
'95, in Germany, which has the attendance of thousands
of Amiga users, all celebrating the come-back to the market.
To his return to Lima-Peru, February 1996, with a lot of motivation
Mister Byte organizes the Frontline Amiga Party # 7
(FAP), the days 1, 2 and 3 of March 1996. Something similar
to the first TEG-Copyparty in 1991, the FAP parties has as
purpose to promote the activity of the Amiga community in
our country. Beside computing, In the dawns there is projections
of anime videos and hentai (japanese cartoons), music, etc.
In the party, Mister Byte agrees with Daxam, ex-member of
The TigerForce (TTF) (an already death C64 local coding
group), to program together a videogame (well, although TEG
has not yet graphicians neither musician, we need to stay
in form). It is Varidiam ED-109, a porting to Amiga
of the well-known game Gundam F-91 for SNES. The development
begins in April of 1996, Daxam programming the strategy section
and chess-like artificial intelligence, and Mister Byte, the
project leader, programming the theater-action, cinema-displays
and artificial intelligence during the space combat, as also
graphics, sounds and music. But before the end of year, Daxam
quit TEG to move to USA to continue its studies. To beginnings
of 1997, Mister Byte completes the first playable demo of
the game and receives hundreds of e-mails in few days (finally
he has internet account). But in spite of the good feedback,
he decides to abandon the project because of the impossibility
to finish it alone.
In middle of 1997, the group decays having again as only member
to its founder. In spite of the hard situation, Mister Byte
decides to create and to publish a videogame all alone. At
the end of 1997 he complete a demo of AmiBee (shareware,
us$10, Amiga), a cute vertical shooter with japanese graphics.
In January of 1998 AmiBee is selected by the international
magazine Amiga Format as "the game of the month"
and is included in its cover-disk (Amiga Format nr.106), becoming
in this way the first shareware game made in Peru to be widely
known. Among the hundreds of registration fees that arrive
from all the world, he receives two important letters: a contract
from Crystal Software and from APC&TCP, both well-known
European software publisher wanting to get the rights of the
game in itsr final version. Mister Byte signs the contract
with APC&TCP and he is ready to complete the game (yet
to do 3 levels, many graphics, sounds, and to improve the
gameplay). In the final stage of development, he get in contact
with Harlock (Lima) to draw the cinema-display graphics and
level bosses, and with Joe of Fullspeed Development (Germany)
for some additional music, both as external support. GUNBEE
F-99 is born, the first commercial videogame made in
Peru is put on sale in Europe and other countries at the
end of 1998 - early 1999, receiving good reviews by all Amiga
magazines. In spite of this important achievement, it is evident
the difficulty to continue developing new projects without
a constant support of members (it took 10 months of work to
develop Gunbee F-99). And there is another problem, even worst:
the Amiga market is about to collapse again due to bad marketing
of the new company, Amiga Technologies Gmbh (Escom AG). Like
a prostitute, the poor computer changes owner every year,
generating great uncertainty in the market. The development
in Amiga is everyday more unstable.
CHAPTER
THREE - ( 2000 ) - TWIN EAGLES GROUP AND THE NEW PC SCENE
With
not more alternatives, in March of 1999 Mister Byte begins
alone to linvestigate the PC Windows 9x system, while programming
the GMB GameSystem (a library to make easy the creation of
arcades) and Kuntur (a vertical shooter for PC). Being Kuntur
a commercial project to be published in the European market,
it is evident the urgently necessity of new musician and graphicians.
One year later, in March of the 2000, hje begins the convocation
of new members for the developing of videogames, at the begin
just freewares and sharewares, then commercial releases. Along
the year 2000 and 2001 there are many new members in TEG (programmers,
graphicians, support, musician, gametester) and we also released
the first freewares (La Tercera Vuelta, El Gato Volador,
The King Of Peru 2001). Other projects (Ketris and
El Gato Volador 2) are already completed but waiting
for some local firm to sponsor their release. The wide popularity
of The King Of Peru 2001 gives us reasons to work in a commercial
project, KOP2.
Months
later, in Dic.2001 - January 2002, The King Of Peru 2 -
The Final Mecha! (PC CD-ROM), a classic fighting videogame
with characters of the Peruvian politic scene, is released
for sale in many bookstores, supermarkets, newsstands, etc.
This is not only our second commercial release, The King
Of Peru 2 (KOP2) is the first PC videogame made and published
in Peru! Once again TEG establishes a new mark, just not
for our benefit, but for the whole peruvian computing scene.
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