How it all began

The birth of Powerzone Designs lies back in 1988 in a town called Karben in the Wetteraukreis in Hessen/Germany....

At that time a teenage 15 year old named André moved to Karben and looked for like-minded people at his school who also owned a C64. In the neighborhood he met two brothers, Hans-Jürgen (called Hansi) and Dirk, who knew other C64 owners from the village. Together with them they founded the group "Elite Cracking Service" (based on the name of their favorite game ELITE) with the intention to get into the scene of that time and to code cool intros, as they knew it from the exchanged games. The only problem was: There were no originals (none of the kids could afford to buy them) and no one who could code well enough to make it happen.
But at school André (Macs) got to know someone who could code: Andreas (Gobo) was a gifted coder and his brother Markus (Maggo) conjured up pretty logos with various graphics tools. The two had already founded their own little group called "Powerzone" and programmed some tools. André was able to convince them to become members of ECS with Powerzone. During this time the first demos of ECS were created and Andi tinkered an ECS-Intromaker to have a fast tool for upcoming cracks.
But we soon realized that cracking was not interesting at all, but the demo scene was much more fascinating. So the first small demos were created, in which many technical things were tried out. Also the contacts in the scene grew constantly and one got more supply of cool demos. In the meantime, the number of members at ECS grew rapidly, as André accepted everyone from the surrounding area who wanted to join and was somehow active on the C64 (or Amiga) as a member. In the end ECS had 12 members, including Andi and Markus.

1989

In the beginning of 1989 the decision was made to let ECS die and to leave the cracker scene. From now on they only wanted to produce demos and concentrate on legal projects. Most members of ECS didn't go this way and did their own thing (or nothing at all), while ex-ECS member Thomas dropped his cracker handle (Jason) and joined Powerzone as Sid. Having sold his C64 the year before to buy an Amiga 500, he now acquired another C64 with floppy to be able to join again. So we were ready to go in the middle of 1989 and were busy coding the first "real" Powerzone demos. In the same year André met with a local swapper at that time to get to know him. Martin Frech was already a mega-swapper in the demoscene at that time with hundreds of contacts worldwide and sent countless disks all over the world every week. We liked each other right away and Martin decided to become a member of Powerzone as Spook. So we were complete in August 1989 and released our first "real" demos right away.

In this year, however, things changed again in the private area; André moved after the end of the middle school from Karben to Bruchköbel, which made the otherwise frequent meetings very difficult, because nobody had a driver's license or a car yet. But they continued to meet and code cool demos. Through a letter to Dieter Mückter of the then well-known developer Digital Marketing and a motivating answer, they got the opportunity to offer the tool "Final Designer". DM was enthusiastic and invited us to the RADWAR Party 4 in January 1990 in Heinsberg. Still without an own car the parents had to help out and take over the driving service. There many contacts were made and we got the order from Dieter to produce the designer. In June our first commercial product could be finished.
During the cooperation with Digital Marketing we got to know many well-known people from the professional software development, among them Markus Wiederstein, Chris Hülsbeck, Peter Thierolf or Edwin van Santen.
The Final Designer was also tested in the then hottest game magazine Aktueller Software Markt / ASM.

André finally had made his driving license in 1990 and had a car at his disposal, which made future meetings and party visits easier. So we visited more parties like the RADWAR Party 5 or the News-Party in the Black Forest, where we could reach the 4th place with our demo entry "A Cry in the Night". In addition we released more demos and the popular tool "Crazy Page Writer".

At the end of the year 1990 the last demo of Powerzone called Progen was released, in which they wanted to give a "sign of life". But despite some small tools in the years after, the air was somehow out and the members of Powerzone all did their own thing. André had found new activities in fantasy roleplaying, LARP and medieval markets, Martin had founded "Ability" and Thomas, Andi and Markus became more and more inactive. So the group drifted away without ever having disbanded.
So Powerzone Designs slowly fell asleep between 1992 and 1993 and should awake again only years later.
Privately, all members had always kept in touch, even when Martin moved to the US to start a family and work a cool job. André also founded a company, worked in the media sector, co-developed well-known computer games and ran into some well-known people from the scene at that time again and again.

Revival 2013

One fine day in 2013, Martin contacted the others to say that he was spending the Christmas holidays with his parents, who lived nearby, and was therefore traveling from the USA. He suggested that we get together again. No sooner said than done. So we all got together again after many years and found that the old fever is still there. We talked about old times, watched old demos and played the old games. And we arranged for December the following year to hold another revival when Martin was back in the country.
So, since 2013, we have consistently met again in December of each following year to relive the old times.

Who knows, maybe one of these meetings will result in a new release...