Editorial: Ten Cracker Commandments

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Hello SCENE+ readers. Do you already know the Ten Cracker Commandments? If not, you should read them right away, print them out, frame them, and hang them somewhere where you can always see them while cracking. If you follow all these commandments, you are a good cracker; but whoever violates even one of them is not a cracker, but a program destroyer!

The Ten Cracker Commandments

1. Thou shalt not execute RANDOMIZE USR jumps to a fixed address in a REM line unless it is the very first line in a listing.
2. Do not fake numbers in listings or make them illegible.
3. Games that crash on Level X or Screen X, or show graphical glitches, do not count as cracked.
4. If levels are to be loaded from tape, use only CALL 1366.
5. Whoever disables or strips 128K music and bank contents, may the devil take him.
6. If part of the screen was destroyed and the game does not restore it, that is a deadly sin which could easily have been avoided.
7. Changing a game's title without improving anything in the program is reason enough to banish the cracker from the scene forever or stone him.
8. One of the worst sins is "cracking" with a Multiface; even worse is when someone writes in the loader of such a ruined game who is responsible for it. Consider this a warning against such "crackers"!
9. Thou shalt not remove loading screens or modify them in any way ("Cracked by X" and crap like that).
10. Don't you dare translate a game from English into another language!

Besides that, I believe every cracker should write at least one game to see how much effort goes into it—effort that is robbed of its reward through their tampering. Understood? Splendid.

Speaking of the cracking scene: there is apparently more than one Mortal Kombat game. I received a (finished) version for the Pentagon that differs in all essential aspects from last month's demo: there is no scrolling, the sprites are smaller but more smoothly animated, and there is vastly more blood. Unfortunately, I could not transfer the Beta Disk version to +D because it uses an alien format (why do coders always have to show off with such gimmicks?), so it cannot even be read on +D. Theoretically, I could copy the disk with X-Copy on the Amiga, but unfortunately, I don't have a 5.25" drive hooked up to it.

Other things I received from Russia include plenty of demos that make my eyes hurt (whoa, theoretically that's not even possible on a Spectrum! Maybe on a Pentagon, but not on a Spectrum!), as well as game news such as UFO I, UFO II, Sexonix, Double Xonix, and The Hundred, to name just a few...

I was also promised that next time I'll receive a Pentagon schematic diagram; if so, FRED and P. C. R. will each get a copy right away. I hate making promises that might fall through, but the anticipation was just too great. While on the topic: Zhenya is now offering Pentagon motherboards for just $90 USD, and as I learned, he bought mine from someone else, meaning it's unlikely anyone ordering one will end up with a Plexiglas Pentagon!

Yours,
L. C. D.

NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SPECTRUM

General Sound, a new sound interface, is being manufactured in Russia and is already supported by games (M. Kombat).

Alchemist Research has acquired the rights to LERM Spectrum Software. For those who don't know what that is: LERM Tape Utility is used, for example, to crack Speedlock, Alcatraz loader, or Firebird protections (what did you think I used to crack Cholo or Starfox?).

If new software keeps coming out of the East at this rate, I'll be increasingly confident about Speccy's future. The latest title is a puzzle game called ROBB by Zhenya.