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Covenant / Swedish Cracking Crew
Added on August 18th, 2005 (8347 views)
www.c64.com?type=3&id=175
Tell us something about yourself.
Anders Togerö, age 36, born in Linköping in 1968, currently living in Stockholm working as an IT consultant (finance). Interests are changing over time, currently it's photography.
What handle(s) did you use and how did you come up with it/them?
My name was Covenant. The name comes from a character in the books by Steven Donaldson.
What group(s) were you in?
I was a founding member of the Swedish Cracking Crew. When we moved on to the Amiga, we changed our name to Northern Lights.
What roles have you fulfilled?
I was the coder cracking games and programming demos.
How long were you active for?
I think I was active between 1983 and 1987. It was some time ago, you know.
Tell us about those years and how you got into the scene in the first place.
It all started in 1982 when I and my brother Inferno got a VIC 20 from my uncle. Interest in computers started and I made some programming in BASIC. We bought a second hand C64 the year after and I saw that others managed to remove the copy protection from games and tried that myself with a disassembler. I started by loading the “loader” that starts turbo-loading the rest of the files. I then disassembled this loader and adjusted it so that it saved the files to disk after the files were loaded into the memory. They all ended with a jump to start the application so I made a starting app that did the same. We bought the games ourselves or got them from friends who bought them, some we got sent via mail when someone else had given up (or just wanted the game cracked).
Describe a typical day for you in front of the computer.
After school it was non-stop in front of the computer until bedtime with small TV and dinner breaks in-between. Our parents thought we spent too much time in front of the computer and sometimes they hid the power supply so that we couldn't use it for a day or so. After a while they gave this activity up though.
Did you personally invent any special techniques or tools to make things easier for you?
Not really. Some tools were made to create sprites from fonts made by Inferno and similar tools to help making demos and cracking games.
When you look at what you did back then, what are you most proud of?
I think it was quite cool that the game PSI-5 Trading Company was released on disk using a cracked copy from tape made by us. The distributors apparently didn't know how to put the game on disk so they used our copy and sold it commercially.
Who were your heroes on the scene and why?
Mr. Z was a programming star. I always found his solutions to be really clever.
What, for you, was the coolest thing ever invented on the C64?
Sideborder sprites were the hottest thing during my time.
Did you go to any copy-parties, meetings or tradeshows?
We were on some copy-parties. One in Odense, Denmark was really cool.
In your opinion, what was the scene all about?
In those days it was to create cool demos and crack games as fast as possible. The coolest thing was to crack games that a lot of people had tried to crack before but failed.
What were the particular highlights for you?
As above, Odense was really cool.
Any cool stories to share with us?
No.
Are you still in contact with any old C64 people today?
Not really.
When did you get your C64 and do you still have it lying around somewhere?
I think it was in 1983. We bought a used C64 which we sold a few years later to get a C128. That one was also sold.
Was the C64 really as special as we like to think it was?
It was excellent and amazing back then, now it's just a nostalgic memory.
When can we expect to see some new C64 output from you? :)
Probably never, unless I suddenly get a lot of time over, but with two kids and a house it's not very likely. ;-)
Do you have a message for your old contacts and/or anyone reading this?
Nope. Live long and prosper, that's all.
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