Who's Cascade...

Foundation:
Cascade was founded in April 1988 by Bruce, Bongo (both ex-Starlight) and Axis (ex-The Remix Crew). Most members of the group soon moved from C64 to Amiga (eventually already in summer of 1988) and became quite successful as cracking and (primarily) demo group, also running a number of well-known boards.
Additional note about the foundation: The "AFL Cracker Journal" issue 21 offers an interview with Bruce & Bongo, where they dated the birth of Cascade to spring 1987, which is most probably just a typo. An interview of "Scandinavian News" issue 4 confirms the date of April 1988.

First generation:
Though being a Germany based group, during it's early years Cascade had divisions in several other countries like: Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland, France, Belgium, Canada and the USA. Most divisions had been active on Amiga only. Nevertheless the group did obviuosly not completley migrate to Amiga. There are some C64 activities in 1988 and even more in 1989 when four sceners from France (Stephane, JM, Ken and Tao) where overtaking the C64 section of Cascade (April 1989). They were running the section for aprx. half a year, pulling out a bunch of releases before all members migrated to the Amiga section or joinded other groups. From 1990 on it seems, Cascade was solely active on Amiga furthermore, releasing lots of demos, intros and packdisks. In 1991 the group was finally set inactive, when the group leaders (Bruce & Bongo) joined the Tarkus Team. After that most of the remaining members joined other groups or left the scene. Probably some danish and dutch members eventually continued for a while in 1991, but the Cascade story seemed to be over...

Second generation:
In 1995 two C64 sceners, Mr.Lee and Zeldin (that's me, who is just writing this), were forming a new group. We decided for 'Cascade' to be the name of this new group, after doing some page hopping in some dictionary (sounds familiar to many of you, eh). Never really being active scenewise on Amiga, both Mr.Lee and me were unaware, that Cascade was an already existing Amiga group (though inactive for several years).

We are family:
Somewhen in 1998 Phazor from the former Swedish Amiga Section of Cascade got in contact with me, after he stumbled upon the Cascade Homepage. Curiosly he asked me, if this group has some relation with his old group. It was the first time I was aware that a scene group named Cascade had already existed before. After having some thoughts about everything (and exchanging several mails with Phazor and other former members I got hold of), we came over that it always has been just one group. Cascade had never been dissolved, anyway. Old or new line-up, wtf? We are family, ayeah!

Meanwhile there was also contact with the original founders of Cascade and in arrangement between Bruce & Bongo, Axis and me the group's unity is official and retroactive... Oh, and by the way, realizing that one of the Cascade founders originates near Frankfurt like myself (and furthermore Ray, Monte Carlos and Fulgore), makes Cascade somehow a Hessian group (at least a bit)... in that manner: "Schoppe in de Kopp!" :-)

Age: 51 (born in Bad Homburg / Hessen / Germany)
Scene Job: Cascade World HQ, Graphician, Webmaster
C64 since: Dec. 1986

• First appearance 1987 (with some Cracks)...
• 1988 - 1989 in the group 'Inner City'...
• 1989 - 1995 in the group 'V-Lucid'...
• 1989 - 1990 also a member of the Amigagroup called 'Frankfort Masters'...
• May 1995 Re-Foundation of CASCADE C64 Section together with Mr.Lee...

As graphician, I pixel the things I can't code! How about a painted chessboard-animation ;-)

Age: 46 (born in Frankfurt / Hessen / Germany)
Scene Job: Coder, Musician
C64 since: Dec. 1991

• First Appearance 1995, when he joined Hardcore...
• 1995 also a member of APS...
• 1996 he coded the Demo 'Fire' under the APS-Lable for the Symposium '96...
• 1996 he teamed up with Onslaught
• since May 1997 a member of CASCADE...

1. Malma, Zeldin... ("Paint it, Zeldin..." .ed)
2. Jemand, der sagt etwas sei unmöglich, sollte wenigstens so kooperativ sein, denjenigen der es gerade tut nicht am arbeiten zu hindern!
   ("Someone who sais that something is impossible, should at least be so cooperative, not to disturb those who are doing it!" .ed)

Age: 52 (born in Stockholm / Sweden)
Scene Job: Coder
Amiga since: 1989

• joined CASCADE in 1990...
• took a computer break in the early 90s
• 1998 got in contact with Zeldin and Cascade 64 / Amiga joined forces
• 2017 produced the Archeology demo

In the mid 80s my father bought a MSX64 because it was cheaper than a C64, I think. Well, me and my brother (Lester) was early faced with that the cool stuff and games was on the C64. I remember a computer nerd at school that asked me if I could hack on my computer. Of course not - I tried to touch the back ports and connectors with a screwdriver and see what would happened - thankfully the computer didn't crash. Well, we moved to the south of Sweden. Got to know Skimmer - a great musician. He had an Amiga and I was intrigued. The summer of 1989 I got a summer job at a retirement home and earned about 8500 kronor. I took all that money and ordered an Amiga 500. Unboxing the computer at home was a great happening with Skimmers helping hand and my family looking at the Amiga 500 with awe. Early on I wanted to code assembler. Astaroth lived in the same town and was and is a great coder (he ended up working with a big computer games company in the USA). I borrowed the big Hardware Reference Manual from him. He was a great friend and mentor back then when getting to know the assembler language. After coding some bobs and scrolls I started to learn about vectors and got invited to join Cascade. Went to a Hacker Party with Skimmer - a great experience. In the early 90s I left computers for work and other stuff. In the mid 90s Internet in Sweden started to get tension and I did not want to miss it. I called some computer suppliers and asked about Amiga computers, but the response was fade and talking to others I concluded that it was not a option back then. Instead I bought a PC with 64MB of memory and got a 32K Internet modem. A friend was chatting on the IRC with Americans late at night so I joined him in the late hours. I always was tired during the days and had to wait until about 23 hours at night before the Americans got online - fun period in the early days of Internet. My friend went to the USA and married a girl from one of the IRC channels and now works with computer over there. During 1998 I stumbled upon this site and contacted Zeldin. He and other members reached to the decision that Cascade 64 / Amiga is the same group after all. Great decision!

1. To all coders: coding on the Amiga you were forced to be efficient concerning 2 things: processor cycles and memory footprint. This has formed me as a coder and how I choose tools and programs.
2. Special greetings goes to all existing and former members of the Swedish Division of Cascade 1733 and all former and active members of Cascade in the world. Please get in touch!
3. Thanks Zeldin for a great site - connecting to the past and going for the future!