Not to be confused with ESI (Ethanol Software Inc), the Polish ZX Spectrum demo group.
For many American Commodore 64 owners in the late 1980s, a copied game began with an eagle. Eagle Soft Incorporated put a painted eagle at the front of its cracked games, with a scrolling message that often quoted lyrics by the Canadian rock band Rush. The scene historian Jazzcat calls the intro “somewhat of an icon in the scene”. In 1988 the West German fanzine Illegal, whose readers voted on the cracking groups every month, placed ESI second in its summer chart.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1982 in Canada, according to CSDb and Recollection; American-led from the mid-1980s.
- Leading cracker: Mitch, from the USA.
- Platform: Commodore 64.
- Known for: the eagle crack intro; early cracks of Epyx games.
- Motto: “The Few – The Proud – The Best”, as CSDb records it.
From Canada to the USA
The group began with three people in Canada: Dan, Jason and a cracker who signed himself Mr.ESI. The name came from a poster of an eagle above Dan’s bed, and the “Inc.” was there because it sounded professional. Mr.ESI told Recollection that he started cracking when games became hard to copy, “starting with Stellar Seven”, and that a good contact in a big computer store gave him new games as soon as they came out. The Canadians kept the group small.
Around 1984 they took in Mitch, an American who had been cracking alone. “I joined them, shortly taking it over completely,” Mitch said, and the founders dropped away; by Mr.ESI’s account he left in 1986 and the other two stopped soon after. Under Mitch, and By-tor, who ran much of the organisation, ESI became an American group. Mitch cracked from disk, not tape: “Tape wasn’t big here in the states.” He said his originals came from a shop that rented out software, which let him have titles before they were rented, and from “inside sources at magazines and a store in the mall”. Epyx games were a favourite target, and CSDb notes that ESI had the first releases of almost all of Epyx’s major games. Its crack of California Games, for one, is dated 15 July 1987.
Among the tools Mitch named was RapiDOS, a fast disk system for the C64 and 1541 drive. An advertisement for RapiDOS that ran in the American magazine Ahoy! from June 1988 carried an endorsement signed “Mitch S. (Eaglesoft Inc.)”: “Very fast, very reliable, and very compatible. I love it!”
The eagle intro
According to Recollection, most of ESI’s early releases carried no intro, only a line such as “Courtesy of Eagle Soft”. Intros arrived in late 1985 and 1986. Two artists painted the eagles: Ladyhawk drew the first, used in 1986, and Scorpio the best-known one, used mostly in 1987 and 1988. Mitch wrote the code: “I did all the code for all the intros.” Asked whether the intro explained the group’s fame, he said: “Yes… and it allowed people to remember, you see intro, you know it.”
The scroll texts drew on Rush, a nod to Mitch’s fascination with Canada: “Rush and hockey,” he said. One borrowed line fitted a cracking group closely: “Beneath the noble bird, between the proudest words, behind the beauty, cracks appear!”
Rivals and rankings
ESI’s standing shows in the charts Illegal printed. In March 1988 the fanzine’s readers placed ESI eighth among the cracking groups. By the summer it had climbed to second, behind S.C.G., and in November it stood sixth. Recollection also describes a long feud, from March 1987, with another American group, the Untouchable Cracking Force. Asked how it began, Mitch put it down to “a bit of jealousy”.
Later
Mitch moved on to the Amiga, and later to the PC. Speaking to Recollection in the 2000s, he said that he had worked in car audio and then programmed control systems for audio and video equipment. CSDb lists occasional ESI-labelled releases into the 1990s, and a separate “fake rebuild” group under the same name.
Sources
- Jazzcat, “The Eagle Has Landed”, Recollection issue 1 (web, secondary): the Canadian founding and the name; Mr.ESI’s account; Mitch’s interview (joining and taking over, tape, sources of originals, RapiDOS, the intro code, Rush, the UCF feud, his later work); Ladyhawk and Scorpio; the Rush lyric. http://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=online_issues&issue=1&sub=article&id=2
- CSDb, group entry for Eagle Soft Incorporated (web, secondary): founders, base country, motto, members, the note on Epyx and the list of releases. https://csdb.dk/group/?id=696
- Codetapper, “California Games C64 Copy Protection” (web, secondary): the Eagle Soft crack dated 15 July 1987. https://codetapper.com/c64/rants/california-games-c64-copy-protection/
- Chip Level Designs, RapiDOS advertisement, Ahoy! issue 54, June 1988, and later issues to January 1989: the endorsement from “Mitch S. (Eaglesoft Inc.)”.
- Illegal issue 26, 7 March 1988: ESI eighth in the cracker chart for February.
- Illegal issue 30, summer 1988, groups chart, reprinted in Lotek64 issue 7, September 2003: ESI second, up from seventh.
- Illegal issue 32, November 1988, C64 cracker chart, reprinted in Lotek64 issue 8, December 2003: ESI sixth, down from third.