Groups

A Dutch Commodore 64 cracking and demo group of the mid-1980s, founded by Honey (Joost Honig). Its coder TSI is credited with the first opened side borders on the C64, in the demo Border Letter I in April 1986, and ZZAP!64 showed the group's full-screen pictures in December 1986.

A Norwegian Amiga demo group active from 1990. Its demo D.O.S. came second at The Gathering in 1992, and Nexus 7, made for the AGA Amigas, won the Amiga demo competition at The Party 1994 with more than twice the runner-up's points. The group returned in 2007 with PC demos and was still releasing Amiga productions in the 2020s.

A Swedish Commodore 64 demo group founded in 1991. It came second at The Computer Crossroads in 1993, won at X, Mekka & Symposium and Floppy in the 1990s and 2000s, and in 2008 won X with Edge of Disgrace. Its coder HCL also wrote the ByteBoozer cruncher. The group was still releasing demos in 2026.

A Swedish Commodore 64 group founded in 1989 that cracked games, published disk magazines and made demos, above all the Wonderland series. Wonderland X won at The Computer Crossroads in 1993. After a long quiet spell the group came back in the 2010s, won X'2014 with Oxyron and Comaland, and was still releasing demos and running a party in the 2020s.

A German Commodore 64 demo and cracking group founded in July 1988 by Crossbow and Goldrush. Crossbow and the artist DeeKay are credited with a run of new C64 picture modes, from UFLI in 1996 to NUFLI in 2009, and Crest released editors for them. With Oxyron, Crest made Deus Ex Machina, which won the C64 demo competition at Mekka & Symposium 2000.

A Danish Amiga demo group active from 1989 to early 1992. It began with music disks, grew into a full demo team, and ended with Hardwired, made with The Silents, which came second at The Party 1991. Several of its members went on to the game developer Zyrinx.

Eagle Soft Incorporated (ESI) was a Commodore 64 cracking group started in Canada in the early 1980s and taken over by the American cracker Mitch, who made it a US group. Its crack intros had a painted eagle and scroll texts that borrowed lines from the band Rush, and in the summer of 1988 the West German fanzine Illegal ranked it second among the cracking groups.

Kathleen McNulty, Jean Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Frances Bilas and Ruth Lichterman turned calculations into ENIAC configurations. Their accounts explain the work before the 1946 demonstration and the different careers that followed.

ESI (Ethanol Software Inc) was a Polish demo group from Toruń whose ZX Spectrum megademo The Lyra II went out on a Sinclair User covertape in December 1991. The group followed it with Shock in 1992, moved to the SAM Coupé, and still releases occasional productions.

A Swedish cracking and demo group founded in 1987. It was one of the best-known Commodore 64 crews by 1988, moved on to the Amiga, the Super Nintendo and the PC, made demos from Megademo 3 to Agenda Circling Forth, and was among the groups targeted by the 2004 police operation Fastlink. It was still releasing work in 2026.

A German PC demo group founded in early 2000. Its 64K intro fr-08 won at The Party 2000; its offshoot .theprodukkt fitted a first-person shooter, .kkrieger, into 96K in 2004; and its 177K demo debris. won Breakpoint 2007. The trick behind all three was a tool that stores the steps an artist took rather than the finished textures and models. In 2012 the group published a decade of its tools' source code.

A Finnish demo group founded on the Commodore 64 in 1986 that moved to the PC. It won the PC demo competitions at the first two Assembly parties with Unreal and Second Reality, wrote the Scream Tracker music editor, and helped to run Assembly. Its members went on to found or join Remedy Entertainment, Bitboys, Futuremark and Bugbear.

A Commodore 64 cracking, demo and disk-magazine group founded in West Germany in 1986, which grew sections across Europe. It broke up in 1995, was restarted in 2009, and was still releasing cracks, demos and music in 2026.

An English Commodore 64 cracking group founded in July 1987. It topped the cracking charts of the fanzine Illegal in 1988 and 1989, cracked games with the Danish group Talent from 1989 to 1991, and stopped in August 1991. In December 1991 a poll in Illegal's final issue voted it the best cracking group in history.

A Danish Amiga demo group, formed in 1987 as The Starlight Project and renamed Kefrens in 1988. Its megademos were public-domain favourites, its Desert Dream won The Gathering in 1993, and a raster effect of stacked vertical bars is still called Kefrens bars.

A demo group that began in Denmark around 1991 as the demo and intro arm of the cracking group Crystal, co-hosted the first Party, and became known for cartoon-style, design-led Amiga demos. Some members left to make the platform game Naughty Ones; later members came from France and Norway, and the group was releasing Amiga demos again in the 2020s.

A German demo group formed in December 1991, best known for the Coma Light series of Commodore 64 demos: twelve numbered parts between 1991 and 1994, then Coma Light 13, which won the C64 demo competition at X'2012. Oxyron also made Amiga demos in the 1990s and worked with Crest on Deus Ex Machina, winner at Mekka & Symposium 2000.

A Danish and French cracking group formed in late 1989 to crack Amiga games. It stopped in 1991, was restarted in 1993, and moved on to the Super Nintendo, the PC and above all the PlayStation, where its crack of Spyro: Year of the Dragon in 2000 answered Insomniac's anti-piracy code. It was still releasing work in the late 2000s.

A Swedish Amiga demo group founded around 1987. Between 1989 and 1991 it won demo competitions in Sweden and Denmark, ending with Enigma at Easter 1991, which British public-domain reviewers rated among the best demos available. Its members also wrote the module packer NoisePacker and helped run Swedish demo parties.

An Amiga cracking group formed in the summer of 1988. By 1990 a German magazine counted it among the three groups that released most cracked games, and Italian readers knew its name as a pirate's tag. It also made demos, including Substance (1991), and its members went on to groups such as Nemesis and Melon Dezign. Releases under the name continued on handheld consoles in the 2000s.

A cracking and demo group founded in Norway in 1985. It cracked Commodore 64 games, made Amiga demos such as Voyage, became one of the best-known names in PC game piracy, and was the target of a US investigation that sent one of its leaders to prison in 2004. Its demo section was still releasing work in 2026.

A cracking and demo group that began on the Commodore 64 in 1985 and moved its base to West Germany. On the Amiga it made the 1989 Megademo, which British public-domain libraries were still selling years later, and the Red Sector Demomaker, a kit for building demos without writing code. In June 1990 it joined with the German group Tristar to form Tristar & Red Sector Inc., TRSI, which was still active in 2026.

A Spanish PC demo group active from 2001 to 2009. It won competitions at Spanish parties with demos and 64K intros, then made its name with iq's 4K intros and images, from Kindernoiser to Ixaleno, and with Elevated, made with TBC, which won the PC 4K intro competition at Breakpoint 2009. Shadertoy began as an rgba tool in 2009.

A German Amiga demo group formed in 1990. Its demo for the World of Commodore show topped a British public-domain chart in 1993, and at The Party that December it took third place in the demo competition with Arte and won both the music and graphics competitions. Its coder Chaos later co-founded farbrausch.

An Amiga cracking and demo group founded in Austria in 1988 by Ranger and Shark the Master, with sections in Britain, Sweden, Finland and France. Its Finnish and Swedish members made Mental Hangover, winner at Gothenburg at Easter 1990 and remembered by the group as the first trackmo. Scoopex won The Party's Amiga demo and intro competitions in 1997 and 1998, and it is still releasing Amiga productions.

An Amiga cracking group formed in the summer of 1990, with its core in Germany. It raced rivals such as Crystal to crack new games on release day, put its intros on cracked copies of games from Lemmings to Robocod, and topped the scene's charts in 1992 before its members split into new groups. A PC group that later used the name claims descent from it.

A Norwegian Amiga demo group from Halden, named after Mel Brooks' film. It won The Gathering in 1992 with Wayfarer and The Party in 1992 with State of the Art, whose dancers were traced from videotape, and it was still winning Amiga competitions in the 2010s and 2020s.

A Swedish-based demo group formed in 1989 and known as TBL. It won the Amiga demo competition at The Gathering in 1996 and 1997, won again at Mekka & Symposium, Breakpoint and Revision in the 2000s and 2010s, and in 2006 its Amiga demo Starstruck won the main demo competition at Assembly, ahead of PC demos. It also released on the PC, the Atari Falcon, the PlayStation 2 and the PSP.

A Swedish demo group formed in 1987 that grew divisions in Denmark, France, Norway, Britain and Germany. It co-hosted The Party in Denmark, shared Hardwired with Crionics in 1991, came second at Assembly '93 with the PC demo Optic Nerve, and four of its Swedish members founded Digital Illusions, later DICE.

A Swedish Commodore 64 cracking and demo group founded in July 1986. By 1988 British magazines knew its name from swapping ads, a map of the piracy network and the fanzine Illegal, edited in West Germany by a Triad member. It went on to make demos such as Red October and Justice, and was still releasing work in the 2010s.

A Swedish PC demo group formed in the winter of 1991–92. Its Crystal Dream came second at the first Assembly party, Crystal Dream 2 won at The Computer Crossroads in 1993, and its coders Mr. H and Vogue wrote the Fasttracker music programs. After a failed game deal with the American publisher Scavenger, Triton became Starbreeze Studios.