The year is 1989 and the teenage demo culture is a few years old. At the moment, a coder is a real man if he knows everything about border timing, splits and DYSPs. A new talent is about to rise from a small Swedish town called Falköping.

A couple of local hackers in that town team up to form the group ACIDE. They make a couple of demos, and spice up their spread-discs with the occasional music rips and cracks as most people do. They get a few swapping contacts, including a young Unifier, then known as Beastian of ELTRONIC. In May or June 1989 Kilobyte, Sharp & Flame leaves ACIDE to join a pretty bad group called REDLINE 2000. After just a couple of weeks, some of the members leave the group. Kilobyte changes his handle to Zodiac, and together with Mr. Chain he starts up FLASH INCORPORATED. The first members are Flame, Gryzor, Guts, Mr. Chain, Sharp and Zodiac.




Without the knowledge of a previous group named FLASH CRACKING GROUP, active a couple of years earlier, the boys start working very hard to get a good position in the C64 demo scene. They release three demos ("Summer Code I" sees the daylight on the 26th of June 1989, "Summer Code II" on the 10th of July 1989 and "Summer Code III" on the 23rd of August the same year), a couple of notemakers and music rips in two months. All of the demos are under normal standard and hardly anyone shows interest in the group. But things are about to change... On October 4th, the group releases "Quartz". Morpheus and Epsilon of ZONE 45 sees it and gets mighty impressed. Epsilon makes contact with the guy responsible for the best parts in the demo, Zodiac, asking him to join the new group Epsilon and Morpheus are about to start. But he doesn't want to leave his friends behind so he offers Eps and Morph to join FLASH instead, without really knowing what they could do. Together with Moon from PHENOMENA the guys do so, taking care of the first task to kick the lazy and less talented members from the group. The founder, Mr. Chain, must leave the group aswell after it's revealed that he instead of coding, rips his demoparts from other groups, giving FLASH a bad reputation.




Released at the Halloween party hosted by LIGHT and TRIAD in November 1989, third price winning demo "Attraction" is FLASH's first party release and also the first demo where the group takes a giant step forward in the demoscene, spotting success in the third eye. At this point consisting of a much stronger force. "Attraction", as well as the other three demos in this serie, is hardcoded and technical, with lots of DYSP's, rastersplits, sprites, DYCP's, border stuff, DXYCP's etc.

The follow-up demo, "Fatal Attraction" is released on the 15th of January 1990, giving Zodiac the reputation of being a fast and technical coder, but leaving the guys wondering why the chart-lists still were ignoring their work.

"Attraction III" sees the day only one month later. This is the period where Epsilon leaves the group to join PARAGON after a dispute with Zodiac about some parts Zodiac are doing for the next demo, built on Epsilon's coding ideas. All according to Eps himself. By now, FLASH INC and Zodiac are beginning to climb the demo group and single coder charts.




The story of Hotshot starts when mags are quite new in the scene. A few German mags are released and sure you remember Sex 'n' Crime which was the biggest one around. Sharp, Zodiac and Morpheus are talking about starting a mag, but Morph thinks there are too many already! Later he recieves a call from Zodiac, who says that he and Sharp have done a mag-outfit with the name Hotshot. Zodiac tells Morpheus: "It's so easy to draw the mag logo, because Sharp only has to draw SHOT and then copy HOT from it and put it infront of SHOT". The first issue is released on the 28th of March 1990 and within a few months, Hotshot becomes a well-known and well-recieved magazine.




It's Easter time 1990, and the 2nd HORIZON party is about to start. FLASH has been working on their follow-up demo since a couple of weeks back, making Zodiac spend most of his days infront of the computer. Epsilon is back in the group after talking over the whole situation with the rest of the guys, contributing with only a turn over part for the new demo. "Party Attraction" is released, marking the end of the Attraction serie. It finishes at third place, right after competition winning ORIGO, who shocks the world with "Eldorado" including an interlaced AFLI part, and LIGHT, who shows their capability of doing vectors. In one of the parts of "Party Attraction" there are 100 DYCP scrollers, and FLASH offer a diploma to anyone who reads them all. So far, Zyron is the only one known who has overcome the horrible beast of boring text. He got his well-deserved diploma in August 1996.




Somewhere around this time, the FLASHers team up with Redstar to form a new game company called THE OCTABITS. They produce three games, two of them are published as originals: "Psychic Kaos" for Double Density and "Pair of Memory" for CP Verlag. The third game, "Funball", is released by some crackers and it's not known if it's ever been on sale.

THE OCTABITS members: Moon, Morpheus, Redstar, Unifier, Zodiac.

Crept also builds up a game label some year later together with Rune, Smiley & Parody of HOAXERS called ORACLE DEVELOPMENTS. They make contact with OMG/Antichrist who says he will sell the games through AMOK ENTERTAINMENT, but instead he releases their first game "Skidz" as a crack for his group GENESIS*PROJECT. The whole project is blown off and as far as the boys know, no game has been released as an original.




It's the summer of 1990 and Danish member Kwon releases "Return of the Mega-Dildo". It takes the 2nd place in the demo competition at the DANIAX party in Middelfart/Denmark.

In "Summer Code IV", the group shows some new exciting ideas (FLI scroller, filled vectors) and some stunning graphics by new member Crept. The demo ends up at 2nd place in the demo compo at the FULL FORCE / PANORAMIC / SCIENCE 451 / MEGASTYLE INC party in Bergen/Norway, 29th of June to the 1st of July 1990. It gives the boys something to talk about on their way home, as well as letting FLASH show off with two second price-winning demos in a short period of time.

Another Swedish super group CENSOR DESIGN kicks out their member Unifier because he doesn't scream and destroy as much as the rest of the group. He decides to join FLASH INC because he really likes "Summer Code IV". "Uxorious" is his first demo for FHI, featuring the first ever sideborder zoomer. This makes Unifier finally reunited with old group fellows Morpheus and Epsilon (all three of them were earlier in ELTRONIC/SHINE and ZONE 45). Wisch releases "No IQ", which includes one part only, featuring some plots and bouncing line nets originally programmed for "Summer Code IV".




At the promised CENSOR DESIGN party in Gothenburg, November 1990, FLASH wins the demo competition with "Channel 64", mainly because of Zodiac's way-cool all border vector plotter. VISION and CENSOR accuses FLASH of voting for their own demo, which was not true. CENSOR has to pay the prize money out of their own pockets because the amount of people showing up was not as many as expected.

At around the same time, Blaster releases his only demo parts ever for FLASH in a small technical demo called "Weird Bytes". Unifier makes another solo demo called "Uxorious II - The Cunning Plan" with one of the first real-time calculated fractals on the 64.




Sodapop joins FLASH with his popular BBS "Paradize", which is one of Sweden's biggest at one point. He manages to fix a support BBS in the states called "Digital Fantasy", run by US group LONGSHOT who also picks up the job to import and NTSC-fix all FLASH releases. In 1990 and 1991, Unifier calls the boards a lot with his new modem. He has earlier been the co-sysop for CENSOR's board "Attraction", and he is now happy to be a co-sysop for Exalt of ANTIC's BBS "Warez Station". Jordan of ANTIC also has a board, called "The Subway", which supports ANTIC and FLASH INC. In 1995, Morpheus becomes the co-sysop for FAIRLIGHT's BBS "Future Zone". Unfortunately, the sysop Spirou gets lazy and so the board is down within a couple of months.




At the last HORIZON party in the spring of 1991, FLASH competes with a party demo called "The Legacy". By now, Morpheus' and Unifier's old pal The Spy has teamed up with the group after his time in ALPHA FLIGHT. Despite the problems with some Norwegian groups, the demo gets a great response and ends up as number two in the competition. This demo has features like raster vector, 3D scroll objects and border vector balls. The competition itself is surrounded by hate, 'cause when the FLASH demo is shown, the norwegians are screaming loadsa nasty things. And vice versa. It's with this demo FLASH INC, Hotshot and several of the members gets to the top three positions in the mag-charts. There are also a couple of interviews made with the members in various mags.




In the summer of 1991, Morpheus and The Spy are hungry for adventure so they go out on a trip all over Europe to visit their closest contacts on a more social level. One of the highlights being when the boys enter the hall where the in-famous Venlo meeting is held. In August, they do a coop demo called "Avenza Demo" with their Italian friends Zagor & Zoris of THE FORCE (later in FLASH).

When they come home, all their stories are told in a well-designed demo called "Tour De Europe".




It's now October 1991 and time for the second Falköping meeting, with some heavy demo making going on. Zodiac, Morpheus and Unifier teams up to finish "Legacy part II - In Search For Fame and Fortune" - one of the groups' most respected demos. It has more graphics (including a picture by new member Creeper) and design than ever before, and the code includes action fields, texture mapped vectors, more all-border vector plotters, star balls, vector globes and some AFLI things.




Creeper now makes a cooperation demo with his friend Tron from FAIRLIGHT. It's called "Sumpan Kixx" and it uses the famous FLT-intro, making FLASH really proud. Also, FLASH has the chance to make a coop with PRETZEL LOGIC, but something goes wrong along the way. Another coop demo that only reaches the planning stadium, is the one to be released by Crept & Bjorn Rostoen of PANORAMIC. Today, you can still see the guys tearing their hair and showing grin faces because the demos never were released.

At the yearly party "The Party" in Denmark, December 1991, FLASH releases "We Love Olav", a result of the "war" with PANORAMIC and some other Norwegian groups. Dense of HYSTERIC thinks this demo is great, so the guys plan to make a sequel called "We Love II - Dense in Egypt", but the coder (remains unnamed) gets lazy, so it's never finished.




"Prometheus Unbound" is released in October 1992 and it's probably one of the best demos ever released on the C64. In this demo, the boys celebrate Sweden and the Swedish Ice-hockey team after the victory in the World Championship. Who can forget all those Swedish flags, appearing in every second part!? But all the hard work leaves the group tired of producing demos, mainly because of the big time they have sacrificed.

By now, the group has quite a backlog of good demos that not everyone have seen. Therefore, the two disc side demo compilation "FHI Classics" is produced by The Spy, featuring parts from "Summer Code II" to "Legacy part II - In Search For Fame and Fortune". Creeper now also releases a graphics collection called "Creep-show", with a whole discside of FLI and Koala pictures.




After this, Creeper and Unifier leaves the group within one month of each other. Creeper joins ANTIC and Unifier joins SPIRIT. The other guys are bored with the scene and do other things than producing demos for a couple of years. Only The Spy keeps up some small scale swapping.




Then in the summer of 1995, the comeback demo "Still Crusin'" is released. It's a small demo, with a lot of text by Morpheus and The Spy about their thoughts, ideas and career - both in the scene and in real life.

A month or two after the release, Warp 8 (ex-REFLEX) makes contact with the boys after reading in the note tagged along with the demo, that FLASH was looking for new members. He joins the group just a few weeks after that.

With the initiative of Unifier, FLASH sets up a web page on the ABC server in late November 1996. Later on, Morpheus gets his new account which includes 10MB free space for a homepage. Big plans are set for this new page, while discussing it in a local arcade hall.




A new member joins the group. Almost two years after the rendez-vous between Morpheus and Rambones (THE SUPPLY TEAM) at the Party V, Rambones joins FLASH and makes the promise of returning to the C64 to compose some music for up-coming releases.

The group situation is still the same - too many things to do besides computing. But fear not, there will be releases in the future.



The guys wants to remind you: See you in Domus and don't be late!