__NOTOC__ A crack intro, also known as a cracktro, loader, or just intro, is a small introduction sequence added to

cracked software Software cracking (known as "breaking" mostly in the 1980s) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software (software cracker), especially copy protection featur ...

. It aims to inform the user which "cracking crew" or individual cracker removed the software's

copy protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...

and distributed the crack. They first appeared on

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...

computer in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and then on

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

, Commodore 64 and

Amstrad CPC The Amstrad CPC (short for ''Colour Personal Computer'') is a series of 8-bit home computers produced by Amstrad between 1984 and 1990. It was designed to compete in the mid-1980s home computer market dominated by the Commodore 64 and the S ...

games that were distributed around the world via

Bulletin Board System A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such ...

s (BBSes) and

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

copying. By 1985, when reviewing the commercially available

ISEPIC The ISEPIC from Starpoint Software in USA is an extension cartridge which was introduced in June 1985 for the Commodore 64. It offers the capability to memory dump software regardless of the implementation scheme or storage medium. The resulting s ...

cartridge which adds a custom crack intro to

memory dump In computing, a core dump, memory dump, crash dump, storage dump, system dump, or ABEND dump consists of the recorded state of the working memory of a computer program at a specific time, generally when the program has crashed or otherwise terminat ...

s of Commodore 64 software, ''

Ahoy! ''Ahoy!'' was a computer magazine published between January 1984 and January 1989 in the US, focusing on all Commodore color computers, but especially the Commodore 64 and Amiga. History The first issue of ''Ahoy!'' was published in January 1 ...

'' wrote that such intros were "in the tradition of the true hacker". Early crack intros resemble

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

in many ways, although they invaded the

private sphere The private sphere is the complement or opposite to the public sphere. The private sphere is a certain sector of societal life in which an individual enjoys a degree of authority, unhampered by interventions from governmental or other institutions. ...

and not the public space. As time went on, crack intros became a medium to demonstrate the purported superiority of a cracking group. Such intros grew very complex, sometimes exceeding the size and complexity of the software itself. Crack intros only became more sophisticated on more advanced systems such as the

Commodore Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved grap ...

, Atari ST, and some

IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a tea ...

clone systems with sound cards. These intros feature big, colourful

effects Effect may refer to: * A result or change of something ** List of effects ** Cause and effect, an idiom describing causality Pharmacy and pharmacology * Drug effect, a change resulting from the administration of a drug ** Therapeutic effect, a b ...

music Music is generally defined as the The arts, art of arranging sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Exact definition of music, definitions of mu ...

, and scrollers. Cracking groups would use the intros not just to gain credit for cracking, but to advertise their BBSes, greet friends, and gain themselves recognition. Messages were frequently of a vulgar nature, and on some occasions made threats of violence against software companies or the members of some rival crack-group. Crack-intro programming eventually became an art form in its own right, and people started coding intros without attaching them to a crack just to show off how well they could program. This practice evolved into the

demoscene The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visua ...

. Crack intros and other small software created by software crackers such as

keygens A key generator (key-gen) is a computer program that generates a product licensing key, such as a serial number, necessary to activate for use of a software application. Keygens may be legitimately distributed by software manufacturers for lice ...

and patches that remove protection from commercial applications often use chiptunes in the form of background music. These chiptunes are now still accessible as downloadable '' musicdisks'' or ''musicpacks''.

References

External links

World of C64 Crackintros
– A large collection of C64 cracktros in native "prg" file format (supported by most C64 emulators)
Defacto2
– Hundreds of cracktros, loaders and installers for the PC
Amiga Music Preservation
– Thousands of cracktros in all tracker formats.
Chiptune.com
– A chiptune dedicated website containing thousands of chiptunes from Amiga and other formats. The website itself emulates the Amiga Workbench 1.3.
THE AMIGA CRACKTRO MARATHRON
– A large back-to-back collection of Amiga cracktros.
Docsnyderspage.com
– Hundreds of C64 crack intros re-coded for the web. Demo effects Copyright infringement Software cracking de:Demoszene#Ursprünge in den Heimcomputern der 1980er

See also

References

Further reading

External links