Illegal
The cracking scene's own press
Illegal was a Commodore 64 diskmag by Jeff Smart and Triad — the cracking scene's news, charts, and gossip, carrying the debates a crack intro never could.
A crack intro could announce a group, but it couldn’t hold a conversation. Illegal did. Produced for the Commodore 64 by Jeff Smart in association with Triad, it was a diskmag — a magazine that booted on the machine itself — and one of the cracking scene’s most important. Where the intro was a one-way broadcast, Illegal was the scene’s debating chamber: news, rumours, interviews, charts, and the running argument over who was the best.
That argument had teeth. The magazine’s final issue, #38, famously voted Ikari the world’s best cracking group — the kind of verdict that carried real weight in a community where reputation was the whole currency.
Fast facts
- Platform: Commodore 64 (diskmag).
- By: Jeff Smart, in association with Triad.
- Role: The cracking scene’s news and charts.
- Famous for: Its final issue (#38) crowning Ikari the world’s best.
Why it mattered
Diskmags like Illegal (alongside Sex’n’Crime and Zine) are how the cracking scene argued, organised, and remembered itself. They preserve the texture of a community that otherwise communicated in scrolltexts — and for historians, they are some of the richest surviving records of what the scene thought at the time.