Red Sector Inc.

From ExoticA

Red Sector Inc. (RSI, 1985-1990)

GER> Dark (gfx, 02/90), Delta (Florian Schroecker, code gfx, 09/89-
     03/90), Dr.Beat (code, 09/89), Dr.C (Holger Kruse, code gfx, 09/89-
     03/90), Evil (swap, 09/89), Mr.Zeropage (code crack), Romeo Knight
     (music, 09/89-02/90), SCS (music, 09/89), TCC (Darius Moharreg-
     Khiabani, code gfx, 09/89-02/90).
DEN> Caucasian (ex Technobob), Metal Force (ex Technobob), Pendec (ex
     Technobob).
FRA> Doctor Soft (11/88-02/90).
ENG> Hawk (spread, 10/89-02/90).
USA> The Phantom (sysop 'THE PHANTOM GUILDE', 02/90).
???> Chainsaw Hacker (imports fixes, 02/90), Commie Hunter (02/90), Dag (new
     87-02/90), Dennis (02/90), Exec (ger? code crack, 06/88-09/89), General
     Zoff (02/90), John Player (02/90), Marc (02/90), Mr.Cursor (02/90),
     Negative Polarity (02/90), Onyx (ger? code, ex Vision Factory, new
     02/90), PBA (new 87-02/90), Skull (02/90), Target (new ca 07/90), Traxx
     (02/90), Zenith (02/90).

Boards; XEROMAX BBS (usa, 02/90), WESTPOINT (ger, 09/90).

Red Sector was born in the spring of 1985, when Bill Best, Kangol Kid and
Greg decide to join forces under this label. At this time, the group's
members were spread over America and Canada. Towards the end of 1985 Irata
and Mr.Zeropage formed the European section. Irata became the group's main
trader. Red Sector ran the first ever Canadian bulletin board. All this was
on the C64, but when the Amiga 1000 appeared in 1986, PBA, MZP, Bill Best,
Irata and ECA all bought one. The first Red Sector intro on the Amiga was
released in early 1987, and was coded by HQC. Twilight coded the second
RSI intro, with music by the father of SoundTracker, Karsten Obarski.
In 1987, RSI entered into their first cooperation, with Def Jam. It was not
only their first cooperation, but the first ever cooperation on the Amiga!
However, it didn't last too long. The C64 section was officially disbanded
in 1988, and everyone moved over to the Amiga. Years later, it was
restarted by Mr.President, Irata and Mr.Cursor, but that's another story.
1988 was also the year of the first big busts. Irata was, for example,
visited by the police in the morning of the 24th of october, but they found
only five disks. RSI had hard times, and started to look at other venues for
their activities. They recruited TCC as their demo division, and 9 months
later their baby was born: the Red Sector "Megademo" [09/89]! This demo took
them to the undisputable top of the demoscene, and made legends of its
makers.
  1988 - Danish musician S.L.L (87) joined Bamiga Sector One.
  1990 - As a demo group, you can perhaps talk of RSI pre- and post-
"Megademo". 1990 started well, with the successful releases of the mag
"Criminal" [02/90] and the demo "CeBit '90" [03/90]. Onyx left Vision
Factory since he was frustrated with the internal organizing of the group,
and joined in february. Swedish sysop Istvan ('MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE', ex
Empire, 09/90) joined Fairlight. Later in the year they would enter into a
cooperation with Tristar, the result of which we all know. TRSI was born.
Big thanks to an article about TRSI in ROM #4 for massive amounts of source
material for this precise history! Please excuse us if this seems like a
straight rewrite of your article, Mop. If it's too close to the original
text, consider it a tribute rather than a ripoff :) I really couldn't word
it better than you.
  If Dr.C's real name, Holger Kruse, seems familiar it's probably because
he's the author of one of the most-used utilities for Amiga InterNet users
these days, the TCP/IP stack utility "Miami".

German musician Bit Arts (02/90) joined Sanity. He did some of the best
  tunes for RSI's "Megademo" [09/89], and is probably best remembered for
  that.
German Beatmaster joined End of Century 1999.

  Something (ECS Intro).
  code: n/a, gfx: n/a, music: "Mournful" by Chris K.
  review: A rather simple into, but nice nevertheless. It's just a flipping
  logo at the top, and a sinescroller below. The real aim of this intro is
  to announce the new Danish members Pendec, Caucasian and Metal Force.
  It doesn't mention a release date anywhere.
    The intro will start on my machine, with the help of KillAGA, but has
  to this day never exited without taking my machine down. [glenn]
  GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.0. -- Note: See review.

  News On Tour (1989, .08, ECS Filemag).
  review: Now THIS is what an early, primitive diskmag looked like :)
  Despite the English title it's all in German, so I didn't have too much
  reading pleasure here, unfortunately. [glenn]

  Megademo (1989, 09.09, ECS Megademo, 2 disks).
  Winner of the Tristar party demo competition!
  intro          - code: n/a, gfx: Dark/Black Monks, Dr.c, Delta, music:
                   Dr.C (sampling).
  loader         - code: Dr.Beat, Delta (additional), gfx: Rat Sign
                   (eddie), Delta, music: Mark II/Quadlite.
  part 1, heads  - code: Dr.Beat, Delta, gfx: Dr.C (heads), Delta (chars),
                   music: "RSI Rise Up" by Romeo Knight.
  part 2, vector - code: Delta, Dr.Beat (additional), gfx: Delta (chars),
                   music: "RSI-Hard" by Romeo Knight.
  part 3, worm   - code: Delta, gfx: Dr.C (worm), music: Dr.C (sample).
  part 4, firewo - code: Delta, Dr.Beat (additional), gfx: Scum (chars),
                   music: "ba1" by Bit Arts.
  change disk    - code: n/a, gfx: n/a, music: none.
  part 5, circle - code: Delta, gfx: Delta, music: "Disco-Groove" by SCS.
  part 6, vecbal - code: Delta, gfx: Delta, music: "Wasteland" by Bit Arts.
  part 7, credit - mcode: Dr.Beat, Delta, gfx: Dark/Black Monks (chars),
                   Music: "Japanese Rock" by SCS.
  part 8, endprt - code: Dr.Beat, Delta, Gfx: Delta (logo), Music: Bit Arts.
  review: Words cannot describe what the RSI Megademo meant for the scene
  at its time of release. It was a breath of fresh air, a show of force so
  powerful that noone dared deny the fact that it was a modern classic from
  the moment it was released. The design and - not least - the music gave
  it a very special atmosphere that I can safely say is still there when
  viewing it today. I have never been more spellbound by a demo, or watched
  a demo more times than this. An amazing achievement.
    SHD/Mystic made a one file version fixed for HD/AGA. It still had its
  flaws (graphics/music bugs, endpart crash), but at least it made the demo
  available to the new generation Amigas! This review refers to that fix,
  and not the original trackloaded demo. Therefore there is no
  compatibility reference. [glenn]

  Follow Me (1990, early, ECS Demo).
  code: n/a, gfx: n/a, music: Romeo Knight.

  Criminal No.1 (1990, .02, ECS Filemag).
  INT - code: Onyx, music: "Telephone" by n/a (SoundTracker format).
  MAG - code: Zeronine/Quadlite, gfx: Dennis, music: Psygnosis (ripped),
        editors: Irata (main, aka The Editor), John Player, Xymox, Dr.Soft.
  review: The intro preceding Criminal is a classic, and one they've used
  many times before. There's a flipping scroller across the middle of the
  screen, and some different copper-color stuff rolling across the
  background. It's actually nicely done, but probably turned a few more
  heads when it was first shown in 1988, than it did today. Remarkably, it
  ran perfectly on my system, without even the need for KillAGA. And then
  there's that truly classic piece of music, "Telephone"... The intro
  announces Onyx as a new member, and the intro was coded by him back in
  1988 - used here as a kind of nostalgic nod to the past.
    Then we enter the mag itself, which has a quite unique design. It's
  built with a small display at the top of the screen, and the rest of the
  screen displaying the text. It's controlled with the mouse, and clicks of
  the mouse takes you around the pages. Like a lot of the first mags, there
  are just numbered pages, and no chapters or anything like that. The
  display is white text on a grey background, and has an overall nice
  design. Contentwise this issue doesn't really contain a lot, and the joke
  pages in German was totally unnecessary, but... The best thing about
  Criminal though, is the FEELING - the kind of friendship that only
  existed in the oldschool scene, a feeling that these guys actually KNEW
  each other, and were good friends. It's something that unfortunately
  will most likely never reappear.
    The mag was published simultaneously on disk and paper (sortof like
  Jeff Smart's legendary "Illegal" for the c64 scene), and was supposed to
  come out with a new issue every second month from the start.
  Unfortunately, that never happened - this issue was the only one to ever
  be released. When you press the EXIT button, the mag resets, but
  unfortunately does something strange to the memory too... I softkick 3.1
  in my startup, using an application called BlizKick, and after running
  Criminal I was suddenly told that the jumpers on my card were not set
  correctly for me to softkick. I tried a couple of times, but ultimately
  had to turn off and on the machine to make it work... [glenn]
  GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 16mb fast/3.1 -- Note: See review!

  Cebit '90: Revenge of Babbnaasen (1990, .03, ECS File).
  code: Delta, gfx: Dr.C (logo, little font), Dark (titlepic, logo,
  scrollfont), music: "Cream of the Earth" by Romeo Knight.
  Released at the CeBIT '90 exposition.
  review: This old Red Sector classic is a formula demo if ever I saw one.
  You've got your logo on top, your scroller on the bottom, and in the
  middle you've got yer basic vector effects. Ok, as far as these go, CeBit
  isn't the worst you can get. Though hardly worthy the 'classic' title it
  has claimed, it's still worth a honourable mention for reasonable vector
  rutines (for the time) and OK design. The music, though, is fabulous.
    On my machine there were a few minor errors on the vectors, probably
  due to the speed of my machine. Ripping the tune is easy, just depack the
  executable with xfd or Unpack, and rip it. It's a standard MOD. [glenn]
  GLE tested A1200/030-50/2mb chip, 4mb fast/3.0.

Music in the UnExoticA collection

The following demos in the UnExoticA collection were created by Red Sector Inc..