BAO - name of the lesser-known groups who were key players
In the currently flourishing IT, Anime & gaming community in the
Philippines.

Origins:
The origin of the name "BAO" is somewhat vague, even to its members, it claims that the group Was formed in the year 1986 is a bit misleading. However current data suggest that the name may have originated from 2 points in the groups' history. The first involves one of the founding member's childhood accident that made him loose a considerable amount of his hair turning him bald & resembling a "BAO" (Ba-Oh, a Filipino word for coconut shell) or coconut. The second involves an acronym given to the group during their Junior High years, The Bastusan Area Organization or literally "The Tomfoolery Organization", a name given to them by their teachers, for their
crazy antics, notorious and anarchy. The group was formally founded on October 1993 by its core members JJ, Nesty, Cahos, TJ, Perez & Galo, later the group added "since 1984" due to the fact that four of them were classmates and friends since 1984, the same year their school, The Gentle Shepherd School Inc., was founded.

Highlights of BAO
Here are some if not all the achievements of BAO through the years; although there are others who contend the group’s claims stating that they did not accomplish these and state that they're making them up, the group honestly and truthfully confess as to the validity of their claims.

Pioneered ROM-Hacking and an SNES Legacy
The group was lucky to have SNES game copiers which at that time (1993 to 1995) the price was pretty expensive and lack of marketing. Game copiers can only be purchase at Greenhills, an upper-class district in the Philippines. The group immersed themselves on games like Dragon Ball Z, Yuyu Hakusho, Final Fantasy, Chromo Trigger, Front Mission and other titles which have sequels on current consoles. They even held tournaments on fighting games and they are the best in line. The group considered younger gamers who follows these game series, "Unlucky" they suggest to play and appreciate the early part of the series to understand the game. Sometime in 1994, the group questioned themselves with the design of the game copiers which is using a 3.5 microfloppy diskette. What they want before is to play SNES games on the PC. They became curious they need something to "edit" the diskette (The term ROM was not use before). They found out Norton Disk Editor, a simple DOS hex editor. They found out the difference of the headers of an exe (PC executable) and an SNES ROM, edited the script and credits of a certain game. From then on unknowillingly they embark their contribution in the "The Golden Age of Gaming (16-bit era)" and "Romhacking". This has been a major issue, the group has been fighting for sometime now. Indeed, the romhacking culture became widely known at around 1996 onwards, the group actually began romhacking at around 1994, during the group's work on "EMIT" a Japanese-English reading and learning game for the SNES that was released only in Japan.
The group do admit that at that time they only romhacked those games for parody like changing heroes' names and storyline like the bad ending remark on Chrono Trigger from "But the future refused to change" to one with a nasty meaning. One of the earlier hacking tools the group used was Japanese DOS (JAPDOS) which allowed them to edit the japanese text on certain games. Some of the better known ROM Hackers at that time and up until present have questioned the group's work and professed that JapDos didn't existed, primarily because most of them were Americans who have no
access to other Asian applications at BAO's disposal.

Game Translation Issues

Variable Geo (VG) - A Hentai PC game. The bad translation was in part done as a presumption that since the game was a hentai game, therefore VG would have stood for

Virgin Girls which was apparently not.
Romancing Saga 3 - A classic from Square's Saga Series. Conflicts with Dejap's Darkforce and handover to ManaSword and Disnesquick for Assembly (ASM) modifications.

Front Mission - A mecha Strategy-RPG also from Squaresoft. Dropped the project with Stories because only few can be modified by using JapDOS

Sailormoon: Another Story - It was not a merged project with Bishoujou Senshi Group. The translation was done by Moose and romedited vouluntarily by JJ and Galo. Unknown to Cecil, the rom modification still continued by the two until FuSoYa intervened for ASM modications. Cecil discredited them thinking that it is a seperate project which at the time he was ignoring JJ's emails.

In the advent of Snes Assembly modifications and conflicts, the group left the Game Translation scene as they prefer playing PSX and game programming rather than studying SNES ASM.

Anime TV Ripping and Streaming

The group was also the first when it comes to ripping anime in the Philippines. The group ripped anime like Yuyu Hakusho which was broadcasted on IBC-13 in 1997 every Thursday evening at 7pm (GMT 8) using Real Media. Then they stream it simultaneously over the Internet by their AnimeGenjitsu website at FortuneCities. People don't care about the language which was dubbed in Filipino.All they want is the neck-breaking fight scenes.

Game Development

With these huge successes of "Visual Novel" games, very much of doujin game creators also shifted for developing their own novels. After all, many of what they used to create was more of a reading than game, so it was natural for them to move this way. And with this background, DNML was born. As soon as Karin, the author of DNML, released DNML on Project Angel Wing HomePage, it has spread wildly and now acknowledged as a de-facto standard among doujin "Visual Novel" creators in Japan. In 1998, DNML was introduced in the English-speaking community by the outstanding anime news site namely Anime Densetsu but they abandoned the project because of the lack of documents that was written in Japanese. In 1999, BAO chose DNML as the easiest programming language for anime/hentai programming. The group asked Karin to developed DNML. They wrote some real-world applications for DNML such as the online examination. Later, the group launched DNML Network webpage for the international audience. A Frontpage-like DNML editor was written by the group and later discontinued because only a few people are interested with it.BAO conceptualized an RPG called "Project Zeven" for the PC but it was later scrapped because of the rising conflict within the group.

Hentai Games

BAO was the one of the first group who setup a server that shares Hentai games freely on The Internet at sometime for the group strongly believes that any and all forms of information should be free to the public with no restrictions and prohibitions whatsoever.

Hacking and Warez

In 1999, various Filipino hacking groups was formed by means of IRC. BAO was aware with hacking incidents and questioned the abilities of these "local hackers". The group set a standard by asking these so-called "hackers" to prove themselves. A few "hackers" responded and they are a little bit satisfied and let them use the group's unlimited internet access. On the other hand, BAO ridiculed Onel De Guzman; alleged author of the "iloveu" virus as he tainted the image of the IT sector in the country, in fact, the Iluvu bug is not destructive as the Chernobyl Virus (CIH). It is coded in low-level programming language using C and ASM; not unlike iluvu bug, it was written in VBScript. BAO can also crack computer applications but for their own use only, one notable is the hentai game, Dividead.They didn't pursue cracking because they have respect with other groups in the "scene" like Razor1911; BAO is only a year older than them. In the broadband era, BAO asked one of the hackers if hacking is still possible, one responded "Yup, better than evil" responded by one of the hackers that addressed them as "badsekt0rs’s archenemy” . The group covered the identity of these hackers for information gathering only. as of today it will be remain classified.

Data Gathering: Crime

This is an exclusive article. BAO will not cooperate to any lawful actions against these crimes because such claims are just plainly observations. With the Neo-members, the group observed people who are involved in illegal activities such as carding, hacking and marijuana.The location they are referring to is Capitol Hills and Commonwealth, an upper-class district in Quezon City, Philippines. The said place is the central of these activities.