History of the group

When searching for Abyss-Connection (AC) on the web or CSDb, you will soon find out that AC has not been founded in 1991 but a few years before.

Losing contact to the founders of AC makes it impossible to research any earlier than 1991. Well, in 1991 The Mysterious Art (TMA) and Mr. Curly (MRC) joined AC. TMA started with some demos and supported the code and gfx for the AC diskmag called Bitmania. MRC continued as swapper and created the famous digi-sound series Der Motzer and some other minor releases plus a few cracks.

It was a great time with Cruise, Per and Serge. The story was interrupted after releasing Bitmania 12 in 1992 when most members of AC decided to quit unfortunately. But MRC and TMA did not. The two boys continued the history of AC a few years longer until that last release of the 90s Der Motzer 4.

MRC and TMA first met in 1990 when a mutual friend called Wesi brought TMA to MRC's house to swap some new stuff. The C64 scene was at its peak at that time, and every day new games and demos were released.

But there was another way to get the newest stuff around Europe. Actually, it was in the town called Venlo in the Netherlands.

Those were really great times. Loading anything new we got into the car of a father of one of us and going hundreds of kilometers to the big place where all the big sceners were present. Sometimes the hall was overcrowded, so the organisers had a hard job to keep out any more visitors. The local bus stop and even the train station was scribbled over and over with tags and signs of every group which had been there. Those parties took place till 1993 before they closed doors forever. Sad but true: the C64 sceners lost an important forum to share stuff and knowledge.

But Venlo was not the only party place which was located in the Netherlands. Other towns which held Commodore parties every month were Nijmegen and Den Haag. When we got to Nijmegen first in January 1994, we soon had to recognize that the real Venlo feeling somehow could not be recovered. Many PC and mostly Super Nintendo users took part in these parties. From then on, TMA brought his Amiga 1200 and MRC bought a SNES with a Copy Station and almost moved over to the SNES scene. This hardware made it possible to copy the SNES cartridges right to regular 3.5" disks!

But those times did not last very long. In the meantime, the C64 scene seemed to be dead already: no more new games, no more magazines in bookstores. The last issue of the German magazine ASM (Aktueller Software Markt), which was very popular among the C64 scene, was published in 1994. 9 years of home computer glory ended on that sad day.

After 1995 the C64 scene seemed to be dead for TMA and MRC, but living in the same hometown and being friends for many years kept them together for other free-time activities outside the scene as well - until 1999!

At the end of 1999 MRC got his first private internet access at home and while searching the web for Commodore 64 related topics an article of the X-Party 1998 was discovered before long! Totally excited that the C64 scene still was alive, MRC and TMA reactivated the hardware and software they still owned. Getting to know that there would be another X-Party in 2000 TMA and MRC prepared to take part and even release a demo at that event! The X-2000 Demo wrote history as it invented SID-dancing on demo parties which is essential today. The scene vibes caught TMA and MRC at once, and they met the boys of VOZ and RAIDERS at X-2000 as well.

Totally flashed after X-2000, there was no doubt for the duo to get really active again. New friends were made on Mekka-Symposium, Breakpoint, Primary Star, Evoke and Nordlicht demo parties. the friendship to Bert/Raiders (who has been the only one left in Raiders as Kamp left in 2006) and fieser Wolf got stronger over all those years visiting most demo parties together, having a coop-demo on the C64 in 2003, sharing knowledge and, first of all, always having a good time!

After his group broke up in 2012 the way to join AC was short for fieser Wolf. He became a full member at Revision 2014 and Bert followed at Evoke 2015! So, that is where we were in 2016 - looking back at 25 Years of Abyss-Connection History - grown up from schoolboys to men, got girlfriends, got married, got children and all that kind of mature stuff. Soon after, Background (2017) and Henne (2018) made the crew complete.

Background is a highly dedicated C64 coder and a former fellow student of fieser Wolf. We first met him in the year 2015 as we held a small AC meeting at a vault cellar of a pub in Osnabrück. He was quite busy with programming a brand new game, but due to lack of time and missing tech support from other coders, the release was delayed year after year. This rapidly changed when he joined AC and we are very happy to have him with us now.

Henne is in the demo scene since 2001 and started making SID music in 2004. One year later, he joined The Dreams and has been at demo parties every year since. That's where we met him many times. Being a more or less active SID musician for several years, his C64 coding activiy increased in the years 2017/2018. In summer 2018 he finally joined AC and is happy to be part of a highly active C64 group.

The Commodore 64 was always with us over all the years - and it is here to stay! We are looking forward to partying in the next 25 years very much - because WE ARE LIVING FOR THE CURSOR!