Interview

    I know it looks really bad including oneself, implying
    that I should be a legend, but then again I have never
    had any problems with being egocentric ;-)
    No, seriously, I would never have included myself, had I
    not gotten so many requests. Here we go...
    (Zike! interviewing himself (Hmm..))

Handle: Zike! (Homepage under construction)
How did you come up with your alias ?
Actually I have had two handles. Back when I was playing around with my C64 I was known (?) as "Mawda". I wanted something different. Not very many people had "W" in their aliases, so I decided I should. Then I just can up with the "MA" beginning and the "DA" ending. Don't ask me how or why. Anyway, I wanted a 5 letter word, because you could squeeze that into the disk header (remember the LOAD"$",8?).
Later, when moving up (down?) to the Amiga, I didn't want to be associated with that "lame" dude, so I became "Zike!". This time I wanted another "unusual" letter. I had a friend who used to spray his name all over the city, and he suggested the ending "ike!", because it was easily painted. He later made me some really neat air-brushed "Zike!" T-shirts.
Other names I was considering at that time was "Ramirez" (remember Sean Connery in the excellent movie Highlander I ?) and "Spirill".
City / Country:
During my active years: Eskilstuna, but now I live in Uppsala (Sweden)
Born year:
12 Aug 1972 (I like gifts...)
What was your first computer, and when did you get it?
Well, I started out with a Philips G7000 videogame, which actually had a keyboard. I used to love the games on that one! (nowadays I can't see why)
Then the C64 came... In the beginning my parents thought that we should RENT (!) the machine, in order to see if my interest persisted. It did. I'm not really sure when I got it, but I do remember that it cost 6500 SEK ($965). For a year I only had a tape recorder, then I treated myself on a 1541! (disks were 40 SEK ($6) each! So I bought one or two at the time!) Since then I have had C128, C128 D, A500, A2000 and now a PC. I don't remember when I switched to the Amiga, but my guess is 1987.
How did you get into the scene and what groups have you been a member of ?
I, like everybody else at that time, thought it would be neat to be in a group, so together with one of my classmates I started Crazy Cracking Crew. We knew NOTHING about cracking, but that didn't stop us! We made games in BASIC and had great fun.
After awhile REAL games seamed more appealing. As we weren't able to make any good ones ourselves we started swapping games with our local friends / contacts. This expanded and one day, after having put an ad in a computermagazine, Snookie (the younger brother of Mr. Pinge) called me up. We started swapping and in the process became such good friends that we decided to form a group of our own; Swedish Future Crackers (again, we never cracked anything, but the name was great!). I expanded my network of contacts to other countries, much thanks to the hot stuff Snookie sent me. We also released some lame "Picture-music-scroll"-demos, but it gave us a lot of response. SFC grew and we managed to talk some other people into joining.
Things were going great, being greeted by West Coast Crackers was a real "turn on". I tried to get another of my local contacts (Benny Hill aka LL Cool J aka Jedi) to join, but he wouldn't unless we started from scratch. This we did and XL CRACKERS was born! Some more members were added and we had great fun.
I liked the work of a group called "Pet Shop Boys" (with members like Animal and some other, now working for Digital Illusion, people) so I tried to have them join us as well. I went to London on a language summer school course and when I came back a month later XL Crackers had changed name to THE SILENTS and now included the old members of "Pet shop boys". So, as The Silents actually grew out from SFC I consider myself one of the founders of The Silents.
My hormones told me to spend more time with girls and less with computers, so I lost interest in the scene for a while. I didn't do anything for The Silents anymore and was logically dumped. After having had my share of romance, I again wanted to be a part of the wonderful computer scene. I bought myself an Amiga and started fresh with a new handle, Zike!
I was always on the phone with Atom, the leader of North Star, and he agreed to let me join. This was right after the release of their first megademo. I was in ecstasy, because NorthStar was considered one of the very best groups at that time. Friendship was stressed in North Star, so we had many get-togethers. It was quite expensive as I lived about 450 Km away from the others (Helsingborg was the HQ). Anyway, I got to know a lot of nice members during these gatherings. And we had great fun (Rastan-bandet!) We also visited many copy-parties. I made more and more contacts and then one day (actually I think it was the Ikari-Dominators-Zargon party '89) I, Celebrandil and Dagger (a graphic artist) decided to leave NorthStar. We didn't know what group to join, we were thinking about Trilogy, but in the end we choice FairLight.
More stuff was happening in FairLight, it seemed more fresh. I put up my board, The Pleasure Dome, and to make a long story short, started getting to know Conqueror. We became good friends and decided to work together. One funny thing was that we were members of two groups, FairLight and DefJam, who were in directly rivalry. This didn't stop us. In the beginning we put out a lot of trainer-patches. This was a quite new thing at the time, and it was an easy way to be successful, without having originals. I was constantly begging Conqueror to join FairLight. I guess he couldn't take my beseeching, because after some months (a year?) he finally joined. We kept releasing stuff, but now with our own originals. We had great fun, and made some really good friends. We were really social and visited many of our contacts. (I especially remember going to Kiel to visit Vision Factory, not because we had any projects with them, but because we wanted to have a good time. And believe me, we did!)
Partly because our egos grew bigger, and partly because Strider wanted to have more control over us (I don't blame him) we left FairLight for Miracle. Miracle was a group consisting of some Phenomena and some Ipec Elite people. Some amiga first releases were put out, but things were slow. After that we joined/did work for many groups... AGILE, MAD, DRAGONS, ANGLES, PARADOX, QUARTEX (can't really remember them all).
What was the proudest moment in your career ?
I felt very proud being a computer teacher at the age of 15 (taught 15 to 25 year olds basic and assembler (not very sophisticated programming techiniques, but still. Stopped after 3.5 years))
Also, putting up the FIRST 9600 baud "pirate only" BBS in Scandinavia (The Baron says it was in 1988, I can't remember.). The Pleasure Dome had ONE node, a 9600 modem (at that time I, Strider, Black Shadow, Gehenna and Excalibor were the only pirates in Sweden with that kind of lightening speed! I remember paying about 6500 SEK ($965) for it!), a 105 GVP QUAMTUM HD (It too was a bargain! Only 16000 SEK ($2376) and 1 MB of RAM! Heavy stuff!!
I was very proud of having people from ALL OVER THE WORLD calling me, from Australia to USA to Saudi Arabia. Usually had between 100-120 callers every day! I recall putting stress on my demo corner, because I remember that back then people started losing interest in these nice little creations. And I tried to do something about it. I had many WORLD RELEASES on my board, not only from the group we at the time were working for, but also from Quartex, DefJam, Crystal etc. That was a good time!
For what specific reason(s) do you think that you are remembered ?
All the C&Z releases, for organizing some very successful computer parties (especially Eskilstuna Computer Entertainment Show in June of 1991. A lot of people came, but not the most famous ones, but still. (I don't blame them, Eskilstuna isn't exactly in the center of the world) In the invitations that were sent out we submitted a full-color map of the city, many tourist brochures. We had in addition to this also organized many discounts (pizza & at a waterpalace etc), we had 2 vans picking up people from the trainstation. But the coolest part, and I think we are the only ones who have done this, was having our own PARTY-FLAG. It was a lot of work, but looking back on it, it was worth it.
...and finally, the release of In Medias Res issue #1, which, among other cool stuff, featured as far as I know the first scene cross-word. (It was put out on paper, and released at the Easter parties 1992 held by Light (in Gothenburg/Sweden) and The Gathering (In Oslo/Norway).
What would you like to be remembered for ?
For my personal scrolltexts. Never just wrote "Greetings to all our friends and contacts".
What made you stop the scene activity ? (and do you remember when?)
The scene started to suck. Everything was about speed and money, so I lost interest in it and stopped in the beginning of 1991.
Thinking back on the good old days, is there anything you regret?
Group hopping, and having lost contact with many great friends since I quit.
And all those huge phonebills...
What was your favorite
GAME(S)
C64: M.U.L.E., Stix, Snookie, Loco, Jumpman + Jumpman JR, Dig dug, The early Karate games, Dallas (my first text adventure I solved), Forbidden Forest, Le mans, Bomb Jack (!!), Aztec Challenge...
Amiga: Hardly ever played any Amiga games. The only ones I can think of are "Super Frog" (is that the right title? Was made by team 17, I think), Turrican & Nuclear Wars.
DEMO(S)
C64: Amazing, Escos (1001 Crew), Sodan's all demos, Think twice (The Judges)
Amiga: (in no specific order) Mental Hangover (remember getting a sneak preview of it by a drunk Slayer and Reward), Red Sector megademo & the "follow me"-demo, Mahoney & Kaktus' musicdisk(s), Celebrandil's Karlstad demo with some really neat early vectors & "My room", Eniz Ekiz by Mr. Gurk, Sauron's Denmark demo for FairLight, Threat's (?) "Ottifanten", Ian & Mic's "Move your body", Relax's Sam Fox demo, Exolon's "Kom nästan i Expressen"-demo, Ted and Divine's Snurkel-scroller, some Silents ones...and of course PHS and Il Scuros' C64 play-sid music disks.
INTRO(S)
On the amiga: The converted FLT intro with the Druid music. The amiga version was about 4 kb including everything! Spike made the Druid song in 700-800 bytes, including replay routine!
Another really good one was that boot-intro by Galactus with a neat FLT-vector logo!
PROGRAMMER(S) (OR PROGRAMMING TEAM(S))
C64: Sodan, 1001 Crew, The Judges, Horizon, Mr.Z, Mario van Zeist, FairLight.
Amiga: Ted, Conqueror, Mr.Gurk, Celebrandil, Il Scuro, PHS, Mr.Perfect, Dexion, Martin Pedersen (The coder of for example Battle Squadron -we had a great time at that disco!)
CRACKER(S) (OR CRACKING GROUP(S))
C64: Janitor, Mr. Z, Mr. ZeroPage, Antitrack, The FairLighters, Censor... Amiga: Conqueror, Gaston, Ringo Star, Onyx, Ted, Sauron, PHS, Il Scuro...
OVERALL GROUPS :
C64: West Coast Crackers, Relax, Fairlight, Triad, 1001 Crew, Dynamic Duo, Hotline, Cosmos, Horizon, Judges...
Amiga: FairLight, DefJam, Phenomena, Dexion, Horizon, Silents (esp Kyd & Balle), DigiTech, Rebels, "Denmark UK"...
COMPOSER(S)
C64: Galway, Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, Huelsbeck, JCH, TMC, The Vibranters, Red/The Judges (Jeroen Kimmel), Fred Gray, Ben Daglish, Danko, Mike Alsop...
Amiga: Moby, Ziphoid, Titan (aka Uncle Tom), Blaizer, SLL, Mark II, Romeo Knight, Firefox, Gluemaster, Marillion...
BEST COMPOSED TRACK(S)
Green Beret & Rambo Loaders, Cybernoid I & II, Warhawk, Lightforce, "Visselsång" (by Danko), Druid II, Shades, Think Twice III, Fairlight...
BEST GRAPHICS
C64: Goblin, Dragon...
Amiga: Static, Havok, Conquerors big brother, Balle, Terminator (TRSI), Uno, Lorien (Is that how you spell it? DefJam. Rest in peace!)...
EVENT(S) (E.G. COPYPARTY)
The Danish parties (x-mas week: 89-90). Red Sector summer party 1990. Karlstad/Sweden. Trollhättan/Sweden. London summer of 1988.
Nowadays you aren't allowed to enter a party if you have had more then one beer, but then again, they are not called parties anymore... Also, it's all about money. Winning the demo competition means tousands of kronors, sometimes even dollars. In the old days people did it for fun. For the honor... But I guess it's a way of attracting good programmers and keeping them from doing something more serious, like games or what ever...
MEMORY(S)
One of the more amusing times was when being a member of two groups at the same time (the official well known group had no idea ofcause). In order to do this we had to release the cracks under another name. Maybe you remember us? "Leaders In Crime" of MAD. Of course we sent special greetings to ourselves first saying something like "Conqueror and Zike! you are the greatest and we are honored to be your friends!" People started wondering who L.I.C. were, and we were amongst the only ones who knew! Also, I went on Interrail with an Austrian Subway member, George, in 1990. That was great fun. I visited (and often spent the night by) well known sceners like Irata, Delta, Mark, Mathew & Tilt / Subway, Moby (we ate snails on your birthday, remember?), Corsair, Mr.Video Fox & Megablast / Dragons. Did the same thing with Ted / DefJam the following year, only this time we went to the states and instead of trains we travelled by air.
Oops...almost forgot, I think nothing can beat the feeling when I, in the very beginning of my Amiga "career" got do write the whole scroller for one of Celebrandil's demos! (this demo later won a competition -must have been because of me ;-))
Being put on the "Pirate world map" as "Conqueror & Zike!" in the biggest computermagazine in Scandinavia was also one of those nice memories (Thanks Spike!).
Also, I used to know Janitor, even before he took on that handle. We swapped and he tried to teach me some programming. I really liked his work and told Snookie to recomend his brother (Mr.Pinge) that Janitor should join West Coast Crackers. This he did. So, I feel responsible for unleashing one of the greatest crackers of all time. (I'm sure he would have succeeded some way or another on his own, but anyway...)
Finally, placing the first call for free (CCCS ruled!) and all those phone conferences!
DRINK ?
Anything with alcohol, but if I want to impress a girl I'd go with this:
4 cl of Malibu
2 cl of Cream
6 cl of Pineapple juice
1 cup of ice
Shake very well or use a blender
This paired with some Tango music will do the trick! It can't do wrong! Trust me!
What are you doing nowadays ?
Studying to become a psychologist. It's a 5 year program (and 1 year of internship) and I'll be done in January 2000.
What are you doing on your spare time?
Ju-jutsu and dancing tango!
Is there anything you'd like to say to the public (read: admires)
Thanx to all of you who made my scene years something special!
Be good now (If you can't be good, be good at it!)
What is the meaning of life?
Tango! (You see it includes both having fun and romance. You should try it!)