Articles!
FRIENDSHIP - GAME OVER, 0 LIVES LEFT!
Once upon a time a couple of cool and competent guys had great fun cracking, training, coding... lotsa nice stuff! They used to know eachother, visited many parties and drank more beers that you can imagine. No special organization was founded, they used to be like a big family.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you are probably one of those "LET'S BUY COMPUTER & MODEM & CARTRIDGE AND GET REALLY FAMOUS"-dudes of the computerscene from the early 90-ies. Listen to me freaks: That's not the way it was ment to be! If you are saying "Holy Christ!, not another one of those old boys who thinks everything used to be better in the earlier days!", then you're absolutly right and should better stop reading these lines of pain and sadness.
And to the freaks who do know what I am talking about, stop reading for some seconds and remember the times when being a member of the scene was not a question of money. Hell no! Todays spoiled toy-hackers wont believe this, but it is true: No boring up / download ratio was important, but only read FRIENDSHIP and FUN!
Well, I was asked to write something about friendship for a real friend, a dude who knows what I mean, so I skip some years and start to report from the times when groups like Quartex ruled the scene.
We had now come to the point when membertitles like modemspreader and moneysupplier was everyday news. People bought their way into famous groups! I wonder what groups like 1001 crew, UNIT A and all the others would say... "No worry! I pay, yes? And you my BBS# in intro type, yes? Me no lamer no, yes?" The only thing the Italian members do for their group is selling games, often earning more money then the gamecoder himself!
A small group realized that the game soon would be over, if nothing was done. That's the reason why FRIENDSHIP was founded by legends like RSI, SPREADPOINT, Amiga industries and of couse ourselves - SUBWAY! And surprisingly many teams joined us to save the scene!
The basic idea was absolutly great. But after some weeks many "not-so-great" new teams joined us because they thought that it would be an easy way to become famous. It was impossible to communicate and become real friends because of the huge number of members, so FRIENDSHIP was bound to die sooner or later... Nowadays, as you all know, no matter if you are an "oldie" or not, the asses of skid row (they don't deserve CAPITAL LETTERS!), company, quartex and whatever they call themselves, rule the scene. The result: most of the old legends quit and the small active rest tries to drown their boredom with beer (Hi Irata!). Well, that's the end of a very sad story that unfornatly didn't have a happy ending, so REST IN PEACE dear old friend!
And if you still are reading you wont mind me greeting some real oldies who have chosen the one and only way, the way everybody from the good old days choosen: Leaving the boring scene. All my best wishes to those people, who made the scene worth being a member of... Zike! & Conqueror, Ranger (Megaforce/Scoopex), Floyd, SSD, Irata (Red Sector Inc), Duke, The Jungle Command, The Dream Team, Big Al (Freestyle UK), Oracle, RadWar, Axxess, Lars of DNS, Unit A, Spreadpint, Dragons, Copyrighthunter, Herb... and of course all (ex-)SUBWAY members...

    Signing off & dreaming of better days,
                          Yours MARK of SUBWAY