two first interviews have very innapropriate racist humor
I'd call it a better time when people did indeed make offensive jokes and they were generally received as jokes, even the generally more appreciated kind of personal freedoms were better, the First and Second World were in a long running rivalry which greatly promoted the development of science and technology ("In 1969, with the processing power equivalent to two Commodore 64s, NASA put multiple men on the moon with the not so implicit side goal of promoting capitalism - in 2019, due to capitalism, NASA doesn't fly people to the moon anymore"), but I digress...
Outside of this, it seems it was competitive between teams, or the author of this magazine was more competitive. I feel that today, it seems more collaborative and inclusive in general..!
Back to "the scene", a few years ago I did read somewhere a nice article explaining it, maybe some random combination of words like "scene ftp bbs topsites underground usenet supplier warez nuke" will find it or something comparable (no, I haven't tried, just some related keywords I could come up with), but here's the gist:
While I'm sure it started for practical purposes, "the scene" could be called piracy as a pure sport, as an international mafia, or both simultaneously - groups form, and race (with the help of their members and external affiliates) to be the first to leak software (originally as in "computer program", but now including entertainment media too) while following the "rules" (self-imposed standards agreed with competing groups I linked in my previous post), if they don't conform the release can be nuked (retracted and void).
They usually contain an NFO file which (before micros0ft used it for windows system information) is just a text file with the group's logo and slogan, some dry technical facts, lore about the release...
In other words, if you
stole Acquired a GBA/DS ROM while they were current you're probably familiar with names like "0002 - Pokemon Dash & Knuckles (USA) (Xenom).nds", featuring a release number and the group's name;
"Leak" is however relative, the scene is a quite private circle, if you've ever downloaded something from IRC/Usenet/P2P/some rom site/whatever/modern "repackers" it's technically not the scene even though it may have originated from it and/or have scene-like properties like being in a split RAR file (which of course dates to years of much worse internet speeds even for well-off hardcore users)
Compare to ROM organizers and the various sources for their databases like No-Intro, Redump, MAME, GoodTools - you can easily find almost complete romsets that conform to those lists, but are not officially related to said groups beyond that (with said groups usually taking a [more or less wink wink nudge nudge] anti-piracy stance)...
Also comparably to said databases but not really the same, many tangentially related entities compile lists of scene releases (
example, click on any of the "more info" links ). At the same time the scene does not really have a central authority and it holds together a bit like time trial rankings on Mario Kart Wii, which is the reason sequential numbers are not that universal depending on who you ask...
Anyway! Intros and trainers (so that we can tie back to what you read
) - an extension of the showing off, before clean dumps were widely recognized as best (and indeed were generally unusable on contemporary floppy-based inaccurate "flashcards"*) it was common to add to the actual pirated product some credits for the group - and sometimes enhancements (ie cheats and/or highscore saving).
While generally considered an annoyance even back then (
otherwise said: No-Intro, one of the forerunners of the clean dump revolution - but that came later - has that name for a reason), they really were their pride (with some very dedicated artists), indeed this is chicken and egg (and overlapping) with "the demoscene" which could be summarized as "do the most impressive AV presentation with the least storage"
Does that mean cracktros are just digital graffiti?
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The opposite of "the scene" is generally called "P2P" or "Independent" (IND) depending on the context: the DS Lite version of NTRAging (the factory test utility), which was first discovered on this website and posted directly to the general internet by direct contacts of its discoverer (
how would I know this) is a good example, or for a more mainstream one also from GBATemp, the kongsnutz scandal...
