Genesis Project is a Commodore 64 cracking group and multiplatform demo group. It also branched out to the Amiga and PC warez scene for a while in the 90s. The group was formed in late 1985 or early 1986 on the C64 by The Nauseating Timelord (TNT), later Antichrist. This history of the group was adapted from Antichrist's article A (Not So) Brief History, first published in the diskmagazine Recollection 1. The material is partly reproduced and adapted for Demozoo with the permission of Antichrist. Thanks to Hedning for help and facilitation.
Antichrist started his scene career under the handle Tron, as a swapper. After a couple of months of this, he changed his handle to The Nauseating Timelord (TNT) and formed Genesis Project. The name was inspired by Star Trek, where the Project Genesis was the name of the device that created Earth-like conditions on previously uninhabitable planets. The first two recruitments were The Nasty Ounk and Catman Cracker, both classmates of Antichrist in their hometown of Aachen, Germany. The first member from outside the school was Scrap, who was already a coder and cracker, and who commenced teaching Antichrist the ropes. Eventually Ounk and Catman grew tired of the group, and pursued other interests. A swapper called Freddy was recruited, and the hard core of G*P became Antichrist, Scrap and Freddy.
By the end of 1986, GP had started recruiting outside their home town, and got their first members from the city of Cologne - Dr. J and one other guy joined as crackers and programmers. Their stay was short though, and they were soon dismissed from the group. The next recruits were two Danes, Alf and Spike, who created the first Genesis Project demos. The group's next recruit was a cracker called Snacky from the group Exact. Due to Snacky's cracking prowess and flair, the group invented a new label for them, calling them "jewel versions" - a term later adopted by other groups for their special versions of games. Snacky also invented a method for packing multiple small files into one large one, called IFFL, or Interactive Flexible File Linking.
In october of 1988, Snacky helped organize the Thrust, Madonna Cracking Group (MCG) and Genesis Project (G P) Party 1988 in Nuernberg. Alf and Spike came from Denmark and, travelled to the party with Antichrist and Freddy. Antichrist recruited two members from swiss group Boonfire during 1988; Goblin (crack) and FGTH (code). Atomic News #2 (june 1989) wrote; "GOBLIN OF BOONFIRE JOINED GP+FE"
By 1989 GP had grown into an international cracking group with members in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Sweden, Finland and the USA. More and more of the business of spreading releases went onto American boards. For a while in 1989 GP teamed up with a dutch group called Fire Eagle. Both groups used intros that featured both names in front of cracks. After a few months GP broke the cooperation, since they felt they were doing all the work. Shortly after, Fire Eagle split up. Mamba 1 (october 1989) reported Henry left WWE for Genesis Project.
Typhoon left Future Technologies for Genesis Projects in december of 1990.
The may 1991 diskmagazine Shock 1 reported that Zorlac joined from CFA, Tyger joined from Paramount and that Fire-Fox joined. The bbs Mystic Caverns (run by The Sorceress) became the group's HQ this year. The board had previously been the hq for Contex, and continued to be the hq for both groups for while, before most of Contex (The Sorceress, Rockstar, Drake, Janec) was absorbed into GP. Meanwhile Snacky switched over to the PC. In 1991, at a small GP C64 computer party in Cologne, Germany, Snacky met a few guys of a new PC group called Supremacy. After a lot of fun & boozing together, Snacky joined Supremacy, and Supremacy was renamed into Genesis Project. The founding members of GP on the PC were: Snacky (GP/C64), Olga (Supremacy/PC), Widdy (Supremacy/PC), and M-Bob (Supremacy/PC & Legacy/C64). The first two people to join GP/PC were Axiom (Beastie Boys/C64) and Weasel (Crazy/C64). GP's first PC intro from 1991 was by the exceptional coder Olga, featuring the world's first raster timer/split on a PC (will not correctly work on newer machines). But as everyone grew older and real life tasks, like finding a job, began to demand more and more time, GP on the PC developed from an active cracking group to a social club.
In 1992 Antichrist left the c64 scene and moved to the USA. He and The Sorceress were married in 1993.
Lacking their previous leader, L.A. Style and Newscopy tried to keep the group together, and recruited some more people to that end. However, the c64 was starting to close in on its final years as a valid platform, and the games supply was drying up. Even if the C64 activities slowed down, there was still activity, and members like The Ministry and L.A. Style kept delivering C64 cracks to the world until 1995. Swedish members like Jucke and Sixx kept GP alive into the 21st century, together with the PC branch of GP that really never died (Members Weasel, Snacky and Widdy held the flag).
In 2009, Sixx officially rebooted the group on the C64, dragged back the never died off PC branch of GP to the main tree, but also spread the activity to other platforms. GP helped out organizing bigger parties like Datastorm 2010 and 2011, and smaller events like Isterparty 2011.
In april of 2012, the group arranged the small party Gubbdata 0.9 in Lund, Sweden. On may 26th, the group announced on their Facebook page that they had pulled Nova out of retirement, and that he was a new member of the group. The june 2012 diskmagazine Vandalism News 59 reported in their news section Stinsen and WertStahl were both new recruits in april of this year, and that Itch had rejoined Triad after a short stay in GP. The article concluded with a a current memberstatus, listing Bob, Brandon Walsh, H Macaroni, Hedning, HJE, Illm, L.A. Style, MagerValp, Mermaid, Mr. Death, Nova, Redcrab, Sangre, Shadow, Sixx, Stinsen, Uka, WertStahl, X-Jammer and Zyron. On august 21st, 2012 it was announced on the Genesis Projects facebook page that Fix had joined the group as a coder. Razorback released a new Genesis Project wallpaper in early october, and was mentioned as a full member on the FaceBook page.
On january 14th 2013, Celticdesign joined the group. Genesis Project coarranged Datastorm 2013 in February.
2015 GP started to release some cracks together with Triad, and in 2019 with Atlantis. Rhythm made a scene comeback in 2016 and strengthened the GP cracking department. In 2018 G*P joined Triad in making the Attitude diskmag, which incorporated the Propaganda First Release List.
In 2018 legendary UK GP coder Raistlin made a comeback with Delirious 11. 2018 was also the year GP strengthened up their demo section, releasing two bigger demos: Delirious 11 and X Marks the Spot. Graphician Facet, coder Ksubi, and musician psych858o joined as well. In 2019 G*P was part of the coop demo Rivalry, as well as releasing their The Dive shortly after. Coder Pad joined shortly after Gubbdata 2019.
in 2020 musicians acrouzet, Chromag joined, as well as Sparta, JonEgg, Merlin, and spkr, strenthening the demo section, and adding Sparta's loader Sparkle and Sparta's coding abilities to the mix, ultimately ending up with the very well recieved demo Memento Mori. GP also continued the coop with Triad handing out the diskmag Attitude, see Attitude #20 for example. GP also made smaller coops with Atlantis, like in Arena of Death +3.
In 2021 Paladin and Elder0010 joined the group, and most Americans in GP quit, forming Army of Darkness instead. 2021 saw a lot of high quality cracks made together with Triad, but the biggest thing was probably the return of the diskmag Propaganda, see Propaganda #30, completely recoded and redesigned from scratch by Sparta, Raistlin and Ksubi.
The biggest happening in 2022 was probably the mega coop demo All Hallows' Eve, but 2022 was a bit slower than we are used to, even if almost 80 releases were released all in all (compared to 100 releases in 2021). Coops with Triad continued, and focus went from quantity to top of the line finds and quality cracks like Scramble Infinity V1.2 +4D, Journalist Preview &D, McMurphy's Mansion &DSMap, and Miner 2019er +5D. Old timer GP member Scrap retured to GP, and also Mr. Mouse joined. In December 2022 old members Sixx and L.A.Style left G*P, and with L.A.Style The Hidden BBS was dropped in favour of the new WHQ OPTiCAL iLLUSiON. The 10th, massively successful and last Gubbdata demo party, Gubbdata 2022 was also organized.
In 2023 the group lost Ksubi, who quit the scene. The big release of the year was the demo No Bounds, released at X. It ended up as #4 in a very fierce competition. The demo was dedicated to long time member and multi platform genius Shadow, who passed away in a tragic accident in the spring of 2023. A huge loss for GP, and for the scene as a whole. His last production on the C64, which he made together with Mermaid, was North of the Wall. GP organized Fjälldata 2023, Pågadata 2023, Mysdata 2023.
Current (2022) GP WHQ: OPTiCAL iLLUSiON, EHQ: Frozen Floppy BBS, and USHQ: The Valley. GP also had
The Mystic Cavern, The Hidden, Wild Warez, Warez Castle, Tunnel of Wares, Menace to Society, Dream Park, The Disk Shoppe and Paradize as HQs.
G*P were the organizer of successful parties such as Genesis Project Copy Party 1992, Tribute 1994, Datastorm 2012, Gubbdata 2015, Fjälldata 2020 and Gubbdata 2019.
Genesis Project's low budget label is Bad Taste.
The group coarranged Gubbdata 2016 in Lund, Sweden in july, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the group at the same time.
Voted;
10th cracking group in Nitro #1 (13 december 1991).