Recollection 02 ch03 The Eagle Has Landed - Revision history

Groepaz: fixed formatting of the ascii eagle at the bottom... ftw!

2007-07-28T19:07:18Z

fixed formatting of the ascii eagle at the bottom... <tt></tt> ftw!

Jazzcat at 07:52, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:52:26Z

Jazzcat at 07:50, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:50:11Z

Jazzcat at 07:47, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:47:34Z

Jazzcat at 07:44, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:44:52Z

Jazzcat at 07:41, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:41:33Z

Jazzcat at 07:38, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:38:32Z

Jazzcat at 07:29, 28 July 2007

2007-07-28T07:29:24Z

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-<b><u>ESI members:</b></u>
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-<b><u>ESI affiliated boards:</b></u>
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 Data shack I (Larry)<br/>

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 Between 1986 and 1987 the group really controlled the market, totally dominating the North American scene and forever inscribing their names into memories of people even to this day. In this issue of Recollection I managed to speak with Mitch about those early days...
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 R)<br/>
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 This article was quite an effort from both myself, Mitch and By-tor. I had to check almost every Eagle Soft release, this included cross-referencing, sending many questions to By-tor and Mitch, check war demos and notes and a LOT more. Hopefully it was worth it and people can now be enlightened by the history of one of the most famous groups ever on the Commodore.
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-<b><u>Some interesting Eagle Soft trivia:</b></u>
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 Did you know that Mitch credited his work in different ways other than just Mitch? For example he used the handle 'Eagle Soft'. So as to not cause confusion between Eagle Soft and Eagle Soft, Inc., he'd sometimes write 'Mr. Eagle Soft', 'Mitch' or just 'The Guy'.

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 Between 1986 and 1987 the group really controlled the market, totally dominating the North American scene and forever inscribing their names into memories of people even to this day. In this issue of Recollection I managed to speak with Mitch about those early days...
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+<center><u>Interview with <b><MITCH</b></u></center>
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 R)<br/>

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 Between 1986 and 1987 the group really controlled the market, totally dominating the North American scene and forever inscribing their names into memories of people even to this day. In this issue of Recollection I managed to speak with Mitch about those early days...
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-<u><b>Interview with MITCH</u></b>
+<center>Interview with MITCH</center>
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 R)<br/>

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 <b>The Eagle Has Landed</b><br/>
 <i>researched and edited by Jazzcat</i>
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 During the early years of the group which were 1982 to 1985, a steady amount of group-releases made it to the bulletin boards, piracy was still in its infancy and most of the releases just contained the text "Courtesy of Eagle Soft" or "Broken by Eagle Soft Inc". In late 1985 and early 1986 this changed, with an increased amount of releases and intros. At that point, something of interest to mention is that Eagle Soft had two females who painted graphics for them, Lady Hawk/TSC (Thee Supreme Council) and Scorpio. Lady Hawk (Jane) painted graphics for the first intro showing an eagle that was used in 1986, whilst Scorpio painted the most famous picture, used mostly in the releases between 1987 and 1988.
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 The group really stood out, having their own style, using witty scroll-text in their intros inspired by the Canadian rock group known as Rush. Some of the lyrics used made real good sense in conjunction with ESI as a cracking group, such as <i>"Beneath the noble bird, between the proudest words, behind the beauty, cracks appear!"</i>
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 Epyx were the main company that were targeted and ESI literally snatched and released all their titles. Most of the games released back then were cracked by Mitch and in some cases other crackers in the group such as Kombalar (Chris) and Mutant-X (Tom). Their main supplier during their most active year (1987) was the group SOHO (Suppliers Of Hot Originals) and of this group the supplier was Tinman (Charlie), who later joined ESI in 1988 (a subtle way for ESI to eliminate supply to other groups also).
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 Between 1986 and 1987 the group really controlled the market, totally dominating the North American scene and forever inscribing their names into memories of people even to this day. In this issue of Recollection I managed to speak with Mitch about those early days...
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 One of the biggest wars I remember was ESI versus UCF. That was amazing. I knew JJ the Breaker (he was in Michigan at the time), and he was a good friend. I also started to get friendly with Mitch (ESI) at the end of the war. Basically, what it was all about, was Mitch accused JJ of stealing his cracking routine for EA games (which I later used as the basis for decrypting Kings of the Beach). I don't remember the exact game. It might have been Murder Party, but I'm not 100% sure. JJ basically told me (he let me listen to Mitch's rant on his voice mail) that he looked at the protection routine and couldn't see any other way to do it. Breaking this scheme took Mitch 3 days, I think. Electronic Arts had some nasty protection as they grew as a company. It was basically a FAT TRACK on one of the higher tracks on the disk, which was the actual protection, but the hard part was the loader. It was encrypted like you wouldn't believe, it sat in high memory past $f000, and the drive code itself was encrypted. EA also used UNDOCUMENTED OP-CODES to make it even harder to crack...
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 (Jazzcat)<br/>
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 * Using war-dialers to either annoy the hell out of an individual or to keep a line busy. For example, you have a new game, you know some other group has it too, so while you crack the new game you have your members "auto-dial" or "war-dial" all the groups BBS'es so that the lines were busy, that way even if the other group finished their crack they couldn't upload it because the line was engaged. :) For those who came in a bit later, War-Dialers are just a simple program used in conjunction with your 300/1200/2400 baud modem. The program would give you options such as the number(s) to be dialed, how many times to be dialed, duration of call before disconnection, etc.
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 * The war-dialing and normal prank call was done to not only the sceners involved but also sceners' parents, employers, school teachers and anyone that would cause the "enemy" harm.
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 The war started after I mouthed off to The Head Librarian one time on his voicemail. I had been silent and had absorbed a great deal of abuse and instigation for months but finally blew my stack one time and they immediately responded with a declaration of war. John the Head Librarian was a true warmonger (Pira-Ted was also one and so was Captain Kidd). John loved to harass and pick on other people and always was doing this as long as I knew him. I actually think he enjoyed this much more than collecting or cracking software. He seemed to always want to make himself look better by making other people look bad. I was in his group ABNI for a few months back in 1986. I quit ABNI after a few months because I didn't like some of the things he was doing to other people (always picking fights with innocent people) and I didn't want to be a part of it.
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 Once I quit his group he had a grudge against me and he attacked the next group I was in (Bencor Brothers) partly because I was in it and partly because he was dying to go to war with some of the other members of Bencor Brothers like Heat Miser (Tim). John and Ted were crazy guys and were practically insane. I believe both had serious mental problems and anti-social personality disorders. They seemed to enjoy being cruel to others and harassed others endlessly. The C-64 scene was an unregulated, illegal and anonymous world that attracted some weird adults who enjoyed acting out fantasies of being powerful.
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 As I remember, the leaders of ESI and NEPA were total assholes and jerks. Mitch wasn't really a leader in the sense he was reticent and no one ever heard him say anything publicly. He was known for being an arrogant guy at the time, although it was probably justified considering his contributions. At the time, he let John (The Head Librarian) do whatever he wanted and went along with whatever he did, so John became identified as the true leader of ESI and had no one to restrain his bad behavior. I don't know much about the other members of ESI and NEPA but I suspect they were not as bad as the leaders, and may have been friendlier towards us if the leaders had been friendlier.
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 (Jazzcat)<br/>
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 I know Sauron inspired me, he was a good cracker - the best until Mitch came along. Other than that I mainly got into it due to a guy called THE KEEPER. He had a very, very good BBS and he DENIED me access, so I started getting into the scene to show him I didn't need him. And I remember later on he came begging for access to my OWN BBS. As well as having ESI releases hosted on his BBS.
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 The sound and graphics considering the amount of memory it had, that was AMAZING! But mainly it inspired a new era in computing and a new chapter in my life, as it introduced me to computers and I would never have the job I have now if I hadn't got into it.
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 On the Amiga, Eagle Soft were quite famous, especially considering that quite a few C64 groups and sceners were also on the Amiga. After a few years Mitch lost interest in computers in general and Eagle Soft Amiga was closed down. Mitch moved into the car audio business and after a while this venture didn't go too well. Around this time By-tor got in contact with Mitch and got him interested in computers again - and so Eagle Soft PC was born. Eagle Soft PC lasted between 1997 to 2001 and was started on the dal.net IRC server. On this server they had a big channel for warez.
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 <i>Logo for PC-division by By-tor.</i>