Something wonderful has happened. No. 5 is alive…
Every so often, TGI 2.0 features a game and a couple of accompanying images to bring back a smile or a cringe moment from yesteryear, and this time round, it’s a slightly different. In the spotlight is the SCA virus.
The Swiss Cracking Association virus was the first computer virus created for the mighty Commodore Amiga, and the first to gain public notoriety. It originated in 1987 when games like GeeBee Air Rally, Insanity Fight, Little Computer People and Test Drive were some of the games that in the following years would be pirated using X-Copy.
The diskettes (with the copied game title scribbled on the various coloured labels) would be put in Jiffy bags and sent from one postcode to another, handed from friend to friend in school yards and thier dork hangouts – and just maybe when loading up some of the aforementioned games, the SCA virus would strike.
Something wonderful has happened Your AMIGA is alive !!! and, even better…
Some of your disks are infected by a VIRUS !!! Another masterpiece of The Mega-Mighty SCA !!
According to Wikipedia, The Mega-Mighty SCA produced the first Amiga virus checker, which killed the virus. This may well have been in response to estimates that approximately 40% of Amiga users had SCA in their disk collection somewhere, due to rampant piracy – as mentioned above. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Question? If, like me, you owned an Amiga, be it 500, 600 or 1200 – did you ever get something wonderful happening to you. More than likely, awkwardly smiling, knowing you bought a copy of Speedball 2 and IK+ from a friend with paper round money.
Something I never knew. The first line of the message refers to the 1986 film Short Circuit directed by John Badham, of Blue Thunder, War Games and one of my favourite Wesley Snipes films, Drop Zone – yes it’s cheesy, but Gary Busey oozes chaotic rapport, off tangent moment, I know.
Something wonderful has happened… No. 5 is alive.
Sadly, this simple act of coding inspired and opened up a can of infectious worms, those with fewer morals and more skills to go more sinister created havoc with viruses like Lamer Exterminator, Byte Bandit and Saddam.
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