Our story

Those of us who grew up in the ’80s look at the world a little differently than everybody else. We’re not afraid of turning up the collar of our polo shirts and wearing some light blue eyeshadow. We do think the MSX was the best computer money could buy.

We were young, with long curly hairs, dots on our nose, looking at Playbloy coverpage in the bookshop before jumping on the latest MSX magazine. πŸ™‚

MSX Computing surrounded by friends, that was our life or our ’no life’.

IOD era

IOD 1994 amazing painting, drawn by DanDan

Our story starts, I think, around 1988, Maggoo, Dr Ray and I (Mumbly) met in a small computer club, called “Leonard De Vinci”, in which MSX, ATARI and, in a later stage, PC users can exchange programs, software copies πŸ™‚ and project ideas, this club was really a group of nerds. 

In our small group, Dr Ray was the specialist of the MSX memory management, he was the specialist for rip roms, Maggoo was playing around with the VDP, and I was almost in the middle, trying to learn assembly code to plot some nice pixels on the TV screen.

We then met Squeaky, a Maggoo friend, a very enthusiastic MSX guy (he has more than 130 MSX devices now, he can open a museum, believe me).

After a while, we decided to create small demos, since making video games is far too long to develop.

The group has been called IOD. The name came from a book (Instrument of Darkness). By the way, IOD was supposed to be an ATARI ST demo/cracktro band, that never actually existed (some GFA cracktro there and there). We reuse the name for the MSX band.

The main issue we had was that our small group were coders only. We were missing skilled artists to help us, and fortunately, Maggoo had interesting and talented contacts on the MSX scene. The very first one was Spooky, a great artist. He was studying animation at that time in Belgium, funny and really creative guy. He took the role of the lead graphic artist. Then came Dandan, from Italy, a great guy and an amazing musician, very talented, who gave us positive pulses we needed to achieve our small MSX productions.

With that team in place, and many pizzas, IOD released several demos and one Mega demo (see Demos section).

Mr Maggoo, Dandan and Spooky (Holland)

ABYSS

Then, came our friends from France, they came with their incredible knowledge of the MSX as well as their ambitious projects.

At that time, these guys was part FUC (French United Coders), we have decided to merge the two friend bands into one, Spooky pushed Abyss as band name.

Gorgeous logo drawn in 16 colors in interlace mode by Spooky

The team has been then enlarged by new members. Here is the complete member list:

  • Maggoo (developer) – MRC account: Maggoo
  • Slayerman (developer)
  • Popolon (mainly pixel artist)
  • Squeaky (developper, hardware support)
  • Maverick (musician) – MRC account: MaverickMSX
  • Spooky (animator and pixel artist)
  • Mumbly (developer and small design) – MRC account: Mumbly
  • Dandan (mainly musician but great drawer) – MRC account: Dandan2
  • Looping (pixel artist)
  • Dr Ray (developer)

Our French friends were really skilled on game development, MKID was already started by them.

Nowadays

Mumbly, Skweaky and Maggoo are still in touch on a regular basis through their chat group.

Spooky has created an animation company, you can follow his latest performances on this site Chocolate Tribe, he has migrated in south Africa with his family.