In June 1988 Commodore User told its readers about “Germany’s TRIAD group”, publisher of a cracking-scene fanzine called It’s Illegal. A few pages later it reported that “German hackers TRIAD” were spreading copies of an unreleased game. Triad was in fact Swedish. The magazine’s mistake is easy to trace. The fanzine’s editor, Jeff Smart, lived in West Germany and was a Triad member that year, and when he wrote to Commodore User in October he signed off “Jeff Smart, TRIAD, West Germany”.
The mix-up shows how the group looked from outside: a name on disks, in swapping ads and on a magazine’s map of the European piracy network, with members spread across more than one country. From inside, Triad was a Commodore 64 crew that cracked games, made intros and demos, and kept releasing work for decades afterwards.
Fast facts
- Founded: 28 July 1986, in Sweden, by seven members of smaller Swedish groups.
- Platform: Commodore 64, with some Amiga work.
- Known for: Cracks in the 1980s; demos such as Red October, Justice, Red Storm and Lickpipe in the early 1990s.
- Status: Still releasing work in the 2010s.
Founding
Scene databases date Triad to 28 July 1986 and name seven founders: Ixion, Skydive, The Arrow, Fred, Lucifer, Mr. Z and RND. They came from three smaller Swedish crews, and a scene message from a few days earlier announced the merger as “the golden Triangle of SWEDEN”. Demozoo explains the name the same way: the three groups made a triangle on the map of Sweden. These dates and names come from scene sources, not from the period press.
Like other cracking groups, Triad removed the copy protection from commercial games and passed them round the swapping network with its own intro attached. One of its first releases, dated October 1986 in the Commodore 64 scene database CSDb, was a crack of Epyx’s World Games. The same database now credits the group with more than 2,600 releases of all kinds.
Seen from Britain
British readers could spot the name well before Commodore User’s feature. In the classified “Microsell” pages of Computer and Video Games, swappers sent greetings to other crews: an April 1987 ad greeted “SC9 Triad Gamebusters and Omega Man”, and one from Denmark in September signed off “Hi: Triad New Bencor FP Alliance TTI”.
Commodore User’s June 1988 piracy feature, by Mike Pattenden, put Triad on its map of “the European hacking circuit” alongside Fairlight, Fusion and others. Its chart of the top five European demos placed F.A.M.E., credited to F.A.M.E. and Triad, at number two. It also named Triad in a story that embarrassed the software industry. A demo of Katakis, a shoot-’em-up that Rainbow Arts had not yet released, was going round the network: “We’re not even supposed to know of its existence, but German hackers TRIAD are pouring out disks!” The feature used the case to show how much pre-release software leaked from inside the industry. See the cracking scene for the rest of the report.
Illegal
Triad’s link with Illegal lasted less than a year. CSDb lists Jeff Smart, the fanzine’s editor, as a Triad member from January to October 1988, and credits issues from that spring to “Jeff Smart and Triad”. Commodore User described the April 1988 issue as carrying “news, interviews with hackers, a report on the Venlo copy party, a review of Rolling Thunder, a debate on the relative merits of 64 and Amiga, classified ads, news of the latest cracked games and charts”. Illegal’s own chart for February 1988, in a later transcription of issue 26, placed Triad third among cracking groups, behind Fusion and Fairlight.
Smart’s letter in Commodore User‘s October 1988 issue opened by expecting the editors’ reaction: “Damn it. Yet another stupid pirate going on my nerves!” The magazine printed only those opening lines and his signature, then added: “Too late.”
Demos
By the early 1990s the British magazines were writing about Triad as demo makers. Commodore Format’s August 1992 guide to the demo scene listed Triad among the groups whose early demos on Compunet, the Commodore online service, “still hold up well”, and picked out Red October, which “uses striking images and music, in pop video style”.
In November 1992 ZZAP!64’s public domain column recommended Justice, a Triad demo protesting against the police assault on Rodney King in Los Angeles. Before the demo proper, the viewer paged through text about the incident; then images and text flashed on screen in time with the music. The reviewer admitted it was not “a big demo, or a very good one”, but said “it has a meaning, a message”, and wanted to see more like it. In August 1994 Commodore Format singled out the “colourful cones and spheres” of Triad’s Lickpipe on a compilation tape of classic demos.
Still releasing
Triad did not stop when the Commodore 64 left the shops. According to C64-Wiki, the group announced on its 25th anniversary, 28 July 2011, that it had released something in every year of its existence, and Demozoo records a 30th-anniversary celebration at the Gubbdata party in 2016.
Sources
- Mike Pattenden, “Piracy: hacking at the industry’s roots”, Commodore User, June 1988, pp. 93–95: “Germany’s TRIAD group” and It’s Illegal, the April issue’s contents, the top five European demos, Katakis, the map of the European circuit.
- Commodore User, October 1988, letters page: “Cracking Up”, signed “Jeff Smart, TRIAD, West Germany”.
- Computer and Video Games, Microsell supplement, issue 66, April 1987, and Computer and Video Games issue 71, September 1987, classified ads: greetings to Triad.
- Simon Collis, demo scene feature, Commodore Format issue 23, August 1992, pp. 52–54: Triad among the early Compunet demo makers; Red October.
- ZZAP!64 issue 90, November 1992, p. 25, public domain column: Justice.
- Commodore Format issue 47, August 1994, p. 14, “PD Format”: Lickpipe.
- CSDb, the Commodore 64 Scene Database (web, secondary): group entry for Triad (founders, founding date, the “golden Triangle” message, release count, Jeff Smart’s membership dates), https://csdb.dk/group/?id=132; World Games crack, 11 October 1986, https://csdb.dk/release/?id=19052; Illegal #28, 21 May 1988, https://csdb.dk/release/?id=6302
- Illegal issue 26, 7 March 1988, as transcribed from paper by a Triad member (web, secondary): the February 1988 “Cracker of the Month” chart. https://www.exploit-db.com/ezines/kr5hou2zh4qtebqk.onion/ILEGAL/ILEGAL26.TXT
- Demozoo, group entry for Triad (web, secondary): Swedish base, merger of three groups, the 2016 anniversary. https://demozoo.org/groups/827/
- C64-Wiki, “Triad” (web, secondary): the 2011 anniversary announcement. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Triad