Mr Byte: the 'gang' leader of gaming in Peru

The early '90s was one of the most dangerous periods in Peruvian history. The terrorist group the Shining Path kept the whole country living in fear. A civil war between the Shining Path and the military forces raged every day in the heart of Lima.

On July 16, 1992 a car bomb exploded in Miraflores, one of the upscale districts of the city. Twenty-five people (all of them civilians) were dead and more than 200 were injured. At the headquarters of TEG, everybody was worried for one of their friends, Hawkings.

That night, Hawkings, who was just 13 years old, had stayed at Mr. Byte's house until late. They'd been programming for several hours. Mr. Byte's house was the headquarters for TEG. Mr. Byte was always there.

"Some people knocked on the door at 2 a.m. I opened it [let them in] and went back to sleep," says Mr. Byte.

In the worst years of the Shining Path attacks, blackouts were usual and when that happened, the team had to stop working and light candles. And wait. Sometimes, when a curfew was imposed by military forces, team members had to sleep at Mr. Byte's place and return to their homes the next day. But on the night when the car bomb exploded, Hawkings took a bus home. After Mr. Byte and his crew learned about the terrorist attack, they called Hawkings' home immediately. The kid was safe, although he recalled passing by the building that had exploded just 20 minutes earlier.

Every member of TEG has a story about how they met Mr. Byte. Osamu, one of the group's artists, met him after one of his art teachers arranged an introduction. Mr. Byte liked Osamu's work and invited him to join the group. Hawkings met Mr. Byte while waiting at a Commodore 64 repair store. They began talking about the games they liked and soon became friends. He was 12 and Mr. Byte was 18.

Hawkings convinced Mr. Byte to teach him how to program. "I called him every night, even when he was at his girlfriend's house," Hawkings remembers. Although Hawkings didn't enter TEG, he was a good friend of the group and soon created his own team, called The Tiger Force.

Most TEG members met Mr. Byte after calling the number that appeared on the intro screens TEG placed on the games it cracked. It was always the same: the phone rang, Mr. Byte answered and the next day some kids would come to the house — sometimes with their parents — get fascinated with the equipment TEG had, and return every day to find more.

What led the members of TEG to join the group was always the same: passion. Everyone remembers TEG as their first gang. They didn't hesitate to work for long periods of time to get the work done, and Mr. Byte didn't pay them. They only received some royalties if their projects sold. Age was not important within TEG. There were kids as young as 12 and adults as old as 60. There was no alcohol and no drugs.

Mothers were always an issue at Twin Eagles Group. Having teenagers at a house for several hours can be misunderstood. At first, moms were happy that their kids were learning new things and discovering how to use technology. But then, as their children arrived home late in the night and in the middle of a civil war, they began to worry. Things began to turn bad. The mothers wanted to stop letting their kids go to the TEG headquarters. They even accused Mr. Byte of kidnapping their children.

"I remember one mother accused me of everything, like being a drug addict or a homosexual," says Mr. Byte. Because of that, several members of TEG left the group, while others got into problems with their family but stayed.

The daily routine of the group was to receive games from other countries (mostly from Europe), crack them and then send them to local stores in Lima or sell them through ads in the classified section of the newspaper. They became famous, as their initials appeared on almost every game played in Peru.

Each member of TEG had their own responsibility: Some handled the art, others cracked code, while the rest distributed the games to local retailers. They only used nicknames. "It was a way to be careful at the time. But now I try to share their real names on our website," says Mr. Byte.

But there's a story that remains to be told around Mr. Byte and the programming scene of the '90s in Peru.

After Mr. Byte became famous, he was asked to do other kinds of jobs, like modify existing SNES games. "I always separated the hacking activity from the things we did in TEG; they were two distinct groups," he says.

One of the most well-known jobs performed by this unnamed group was hacking soccer games. Konami's International Superstar Soccer became Fútbol Peruano 97. Local teams and even the voice of a local commentator where inserted in the game. It became a hit, and they went on to create Brazilian and Argentinian versions of the game.

Then came other games, like a bizarre SNES port of Sonic the Hedgehog. But this side business started to get dangerous. Mr. Byte soon found himself on the wrong side of organized crime organizations that claimed control of the hacked game business and he heard rumors about police operations on other groups.

Mr. Byte decided it was time to move on. He left the hacking scene and returned to his first love: making his own games.

In 2001, Peru underwent a major political change. President Alberto Fujimori resigned via fax from Japan, and emergency elections were called. One of the candidates, Alejandro Toledo, was the leader of the opposition party and one of the men who helped bring back democracy to Peru. Toledo and Fujimori were on the cover of every magazine, journal and TV show in the country. So Mr. Byte thought that might be a great story for TEG's new game.

The game was called La Tercera Vuelta (which translates as The Third Round — Peru uses a two round system for elections), and it showed Alejandro Toledo trying to get to the Government Palace of Peru on a tank, while Fujimori was throwing him yucas, an Andean tuber. It was a simple, casual game that TEG distributed through its website. The game became a hit, and shined a light around the world on game-making in Peru. Mr. Byte decided to continue making games about politics, so he created The King of Peru.

Fighting games had always had success in Peruvian arcades. So, why not make a fighting game with Peruvian politicians? In The King of Peru, you could play with two characters: Alejandro Toledo and Alan García, the two candidates for the presidency on 2001.

"People said it was a clone of The King of Fighters with new sprites, but everything was made up from scratch," says Mr. Byte. Again, the game was a hit and attracted even more attention. The game's sequel, The King of Peru 2: The Final Mecha (The Final Fight), was begun and scheduled to be TEG's first commercial release in Peru.

The King of Peru 2 took six months to develop, and added a story for each fighter as well as two additional characters, Fujimori and his secretary of intelligence, Vladimiro Montesinos. TEG partnered with a local computer company to distribute the game, but the relationship turned sour.

"That company was also part of the piracy emporium at that time, so they were more interested [in] having the game pirated until our commercial contract ended, so then they [would] sell the remaining copies for a higher price," says Mr. Byte.

It was a hard hit for TEG. After months of work, with the entire TEG team working for deferred pay, they instead got nothing. Mr. Byte filed a lawsuit against the company.

The experience highlighted the paradox of TEG's development. In the '80s and '90s, TEG had been sidestepping the law by cracking original games and distributing them for free in local stores. Now it was seeking justice for a company that had done the same to one of its games. After 12 years of trials, there is still no verdict from the Peruvian courts.

TEG released its final game on 2003, as a way to say goodbye to the Peruvian game scene. It was called Samba de Oruga, and according to Mr. Byte, it was the first erotic game made in Peru.

The mechanics of Samba de Origa closely resemble those of Tetris, with blocks coming down as the player creates lines in order to destroy them. As blocks are destroyed, a picture is revealed on the background: a photograph of a girl in lingerie; Mr Byte's girlfriend at that time. The game shipped with a condom inside the box.

Samba de Oruga was not called shareware, but rather "pollada-ware" ("chicken party"-ware), making a reference to a modern Peruvian tradition where family and friends gather to eat chicken while paying a small fee to help the organizers fund or buy something they need. It was a none-too-subtle reference to TEG's financial situation. The damage of being hacked by its business partner had been done.

Mr. Byte tried unsuccessfully to revive the company as TEGMO (TEG Mobile), but again, he entered the Peruvian market too early.

"I remember a meeting with Spunk, one of the former members of TEG and an entrepreneur, to ask for some money for investing in TEGMO, but he refused," says Mr. Byte. "He said 'people would never play games on their phones.'"

Mr. Byte got some contracts but he didn't have the manpower to make the games. So in 2007 he quit the game development scene for good and started working on other things. A year later, Apple would open its App Store and start a mobile gaming revolution.