Meh, regardless how l33t sp33ch got started, its still lame as hell. If they wanted to be cryptic, they could have written in hex code or something. I did a little wannabe game cracking back in 87, and i was dorky enough to remember half the alphabet in hex.
These days, i look at a hex editor like a monkey doing a math problem. :rotfl:
edit:
You know i just realized, i was probably one of the earliest script kiddies. Oh the shame of it! Seriously, back in 87 game copy protection was pathetically weak. Most of the time it invloved having a key disk. So You had a number of TSR's you could run that would bypass it. Put TSR in a batch file, edit the game to show your stupid name "cracked by Im a dork", and give it to your friends at school.