Yep, it was a great time. If you had been there for it, being in the U. S. wasn't quite all that but it was still pretty exciting importing fresh European crack

Yep, it was a great time. If you had been there for it, being in the U. S. wasn't quite all that but it was still pretty exciting importing fresh European cracks and doing NTSC fixing, an arcane art that even only a few North American crackers have mastered (three come to mind, that's about it). We might have had a better scene in Europe, but the States had toll-free local area calling and Blueboxing, something we could only dream about in Europe in the '80's. We made up for that with copy parties, brutal fist fights, lots of alcohol and even more optimized machine code though. Both sides of the pond had their charms when it came to the scene back then. A rare example of how cool it was when both sides came together was a group called North East Crackers (NEC), which later became North East Importers (NEI): their leader was a 1st generation European immigrant so their cracks, imports and intros had that European level of design and quality while coupled with American speed and ruthlessness. It was a well respected group and a great fusion of two different aspects of the scene: http://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=crackers_map&country=usa http://www.atlantis-prophecy.org/recollection/?load=crackers...