9 ms·
Razor 1911
- darklycan51 3y agoDefinitely not me but man I remember headbanging to my friends keygen software from Razor1911
- pixelpoet 3y agoKeygen music is truly one of the greatest genres, absolutely no joke.
- sysadm1n 3y agoYou can browse chiptune/keygen music here: https://chiptune.app/ https://chiptune.app/
- CapstanRoller 3y agoNostalgia overload, especially with the UI
- chungus 3y agohttp://keygenmusic.tk/ http://keygenmusic.tk/ and here
- malermeister 3y agoThe artist behind a lot of that still makes music - under the name dubmood! I like this song for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7RE8ue6V74 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7RE8ue6V74
- Mindless2112 3y agoAnother Razor 1911 musician runs an internet radio station: https://scenesat.com/ https://scenesat.com/
- m0zzie 3y agoI have vivid memories of reopening game installers from CLASS, long after installing, just so I could keep listening to the music. This one by Maktone still pops into my head from time to time, almost 25 years on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjxgaZtHqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NjxgaZtHqA
- mavamaarten 3y agoI have an mp3 of the patcher/keygen by Digital Insanity for Sony Vegas in my music collection. Such a banger, even after all those years.
- Eduard 3y agothis one? https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nwiff https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nwiff
- markus92 3y agoUnreal Superhero 3
- w0z_ 3y agoHaha, same - found it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCMzIE9p07Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCMzIE9p07Y I didn't think many people cracked Vegas back in the day, I needed it for digital media presentations :)
- hackernudes 3y agoGotta be this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STiQ8cCIo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9STiQ8cCIo0 ("Unreal Super Hero 3" by Kenet & Rez) It has been stuck in my head for years and I was able to find it now!
- halper 3y agoWow, that brings back memories. Long nights, CRTs, that fresh and health-promoting smell of warm electronics in poorly ventilated spaces, microwaved garbage food, sugary drinks … not sure how my friends and I survived until adulthood.
- waynesonfire 3y agoYou were one of the lucky to have found your people.
- blackhaz 3y agoI need to find a CRT and recreate one of those nights. Always wanted a 17" Viewsonic.
- digitalsanctum 3y agoI remember being pretty stoked after getting a flat screen CRT. Oh how things have changed
- short_sells_poo 3y agoI'd say you'll feel miserable and will wonder what is it you are missing from the old days. We look at it with rose tinted glasses, but for all practical purposes, everything was significantly worse back then. The kind of hardware and software we have available today was the stuff of the wildest dreams and imagination. I remember we could spend entire weeks in 4 player Doom 2 deathmatch during summer with my friends. We could spend an entire day just playing made-up scenarios where we tried to kite cyberdemons from one part of the map into another (an exercise which we called demon shepherding). I fired up Doom 2 again on one of the many ports and it looks great, all the nice memories came flooding back, and yet it wasn't the same. It made me realize that the magic wasn't in the games, or the computers or the people. The magic was in us being a bunch of kids born into infinite curiosity and no (real) responsibilities. That magic unfortunately cannot be recreated in adult life. Now if you spend an all-nighter on any hobby, your 30+ year old body will wake up feeling rubbish the next day. Do it 2-3 days in a row, and you'll feel like death. I can afford any piece of hardware and any game my heart desires, my steam library numbers more than 200 games. I have played less than half of them, and less than a quarter to completion. It's the age old curse of aging :) When you are young, you have time but no money. When you are old, you have money but no time.
- avg_dev 3y ago> On April 22, 2011, Razor 1911's demo division won the public choice award[7] during the Scene.org Awards ceremony at The Gathering for their 64k intro "Insert No Coins" coded by Rez with music from Dubmood.[8] Insert No Coins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5CNlMGcARA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5CNlMGcARA
- jchw 3y agoThis and The Scene Is Dead[1][2] are some truly extremely memorable 64k intros. I immediately thought of them when I saw this on the frontpage here. [1]: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105 https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=59105 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXIGHOElrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFXIGHOElrE
- avg_dev 3y agofantastic demo. 64k... i've never done anything like that. i think it is a very cool skill to have.
- doublerabbit 3y agoPlease don't nostalgise me of my script kiddie days.. I miss those times; it all feels like we've all been lumped in to one big box.
- flykespice 3y agoBtw the same group whose GTA cracked copies Rockstar were using to sell: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37394665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37394665
- airstrike 3y agoReminds me of when we were writing subtitles in Portuguese for pirated US only to see the fan subs copied verbatim on the actual cable channels months later, when episodes would finally get released in Brazil https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/18881/18881.PDF https://www.maxwell.vrac.puc-rio.br/18881/18881.PDF RIP InSUBs
- harrisonpage 3y agoAre bots just submitting random Wikipedia articles?
- bigbillheck 3y agoIt's the action of but a few seconds to click on the submitter's name and from there their comment history.
- smokel 3y agoTo prove that you are elite, what do these mean: RZR, FLT, DRG, TDT, TRSI? Oh wait, you can just look these up on the internet :(
- doublerabbit 3y agoI knew that FLT was FairLight and TRSI was TriStar?
- velo_aprx 3y agotristar and red sector incorporated*
- naiv 3y agoHotline, Eagle Soft, ... I do not want too write too much but what a time.
- maremmano 3y agoQuartex? THG?
- nshkr 3y agothe humble guys
- inversetelecine 3y agoI miss tKC (The Keyboard Caper) and Phrozen Crew. FAiRLiGHT was popular during the game CD / SecurROM days iirc. PARADOX, CLASS, SKIDROW and RELOADED I remember as well. Reading .nfo files was fun, the artwork was great too.
- short_sells_poo 3y agoI remember the sometimes less than subtle jabs these groups threw at each other in the nfo files :)
- rzzzt 3y ago
- WXLCKNO 3y agoIs the main motivation for these groups notoriety? In particular this group was created before I was born, which makes me extremely curious about what makes them keep going this long.
- 29athrowaway 3y agohttp://www.textfiles.com/piracy/anatomy.txt http://www.textfiles.com/piracy/anatomy.txt
- fluder 3y agoYes and no. Access to warez dumps is more interesting part.
- ronjouch 3y agohttps://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and-aesthetics-of-piracy/ https://punctumbooks.com/titles/warez-the-infrastructure-and...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- digitalsanctum 3y agoGreat memories of spending all my time on IRC and hunting for Photoshop when it was just a desktop app. Untold hours spent in college while procrastinating for my next exam.
- pricees 3y agoThis hit hard. I have a smile from ear-to-ear. I can still remember plugging my USB Robotics 14.4k modem in for the first time. We could transfer 1 megabyte in 5 1/2 minutes!! Thanks for the memories. Here's a shout out to all those who read 2600 magazine and tried to hack their local PBXs so that they could call some TDT support board, internationally.
- borgchick 3y agoI remember spending all the money in the world I had on a USR Courier HST, and that world changing moment the HST connected... ahh, good memories.
- 29athrowaway 3y agoBesides a piracy group, they are a demoscene group. You can check their productions here https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158 https://www.pouet.net/groups.php?which=158
- gainda 3y agoa fixture of my childhood .... in the early 00's. aXXo being the other one.
- marttt 3y agoOoh, as a pre-teen of An Early Post-Soviet Country, I remember how puzzled I was as to what the hell that message and the files with those curly logos in the folders of most of my pirated DOS games actually mean. A paper dictionary lookup (razor = "habemeajaja" or "raseerija" or "žiletitera" in Estonian) didn't help either. Also, in our language, "warez" rhymes with "vares" [v-uh-res], which typically stands for "hooded crow" (corvus cornix), so... this + 1911... uh... that didn't make sense either. As a boy really into drawing, I was seriously impressed by that ASCII art, though. It is surely a big part of why I still find the DOS/ASCII aesthetic the most pleasurable in terms of computer graphics and GUIs.
- skeletal88 3y agoHiiele!
- seatac76 3y agoMan, lot of games I played were due to them, good times. They had such a trusted reputation.
- _8j50 3y agoShoutout to C.O.R.E, who for some reason are missing from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_warez_groups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_warez_groups
- satvikpendem 3y agoAh, Razor. Sadly it seems that DRM companies like Irdeto, makers of Denuvo, are now simply hiring talented crackers such that there are very few people now able to crack games beyond simple DRM. Empress is the only one remaining.
- unaindz 3y agoThere are still more talented crackers in the wild, emulators still getting worked on, new DRMs being defeated, denuvo is the exception. Sadly you can't expect people to work a month+ for free for cracking games with arguably less quality every year. Also a pet theory of mine is that teenagers (the ones with actually free time) currently tend to pick these skills less often, more computer and internet access but tons more of cheap entertainment and a steeper learning curve. Who knows what I would have learned if I had TikTok, Instagram and infinite free/cheap games when growing up.
- satvikpendem 3y ago> Sadly you can't expect people to work a month+ for free for cracking games with arguably less quality every year. True, at least one solace is that Denuvo is now a time-restricted SaaS, so if a game is old enough, Denuvo is often removed as the license duration has passed. So at the very least, we are still getting DRM-free games, we just have to become /r/patientgamers, a great sub by the way for these kinds of discussions on older games. > Also a pet theory of mine is that teenagers (the ones with actually free time) currently tend to pick these skills less often I've noticed this too, apparently lots of Gen Z don't know what a file system is as they only ever grew up with tablets and phones which don't expose these (usually iOS, while Android does to some extent).
- tetrisgm 3y agoThe only groups are Empress and FitGirl? Sounds very progressive!
- satvikpendem 3y agoIt's actually unknown whether they are actually women, lol.
- sgloutnikov 3y agoThe Scene is a fun and related miniseries worth mentioning and checking out. [0][1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scene_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scene_(miniseries) [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC2FCB2871C396459 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC2FCB2871C396459
- b8 3y agoThe first season of The Scene is better than the second season (yeah it exists) in my opinion.
- jasondoty 3y agoAnyone have inside stories to share on more modern software cracking in Scene/P2P?
- SSLy 3y agoJust google for the unhinged Empress rants, everyone else is not interesting
- boppo1 3y agoIs there anything technical in those or is it just games-politics?
- branon 3y agoI wouldn't say _technical_ but some of the recent ones have Empress and Skidrow feuding and there's some dialog about the peripherals of how the cracks are made (in between the slurs and personal attacks). For example https://i.redd.it/p3s5d14i7hib1.jpg https://i.redd.it/p3s5d14i7hib1.jpg
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- m00dy 3y agoAnother group to mention is Knights Of Doom. Bunch of high school kids from Turkiye, they were rebranding already existing cracks/warez releases. One of the innovation that they brought to the scene was self-typed serial number boxes. So, you insert a CD to setup a game for example, you go through installer and then you realise serial number is already typed in. They even had their own forum so.
- nxobject 3y agoThey had an incredible capacity to compress large games... as a broke person with ~1MB/s ADSL, it was the only reason I was able to pirate GTA IV back in the day. They really thought about the common gamer...
- airstrike 3y agoFunny to think of GTA IV as being "back in the day", but also didn't actually realize it's been 15 years already
- m348e912 3y agoSide note, I have and will continue to pronounce "Warez" like the Mexican city Juarez. I know it's wrong, but I read the word years before I heard someone pronounce it and it's stuck in my head that way.
- WD40forRust 3y agoThe correct pronunciation always is, always has been, and always will be: war'ehz.
- bonzaidrinkingb 3y agoHacker Ramzi was first big player in the Kazaa++ Warez Scene. He pronounced it War...Ez... https://youtu.be/bAQqrnX7BsM https://youtu.be/bAQqrnX7BsM
- vizzah 3y agoyeah, we've all pronounced it like that in xUSSR..
- asylteltine 3y ago[dead]
- ghuntley 3y agobrings back memories https://ghuntley.com/under-suspicion/ https://ghuntley.com/under-suspicion/ the person who taught me how to program ran the r1911 botnet and was taken down in operation buccaneer.
- nintendo1889 3y agoNFO viewers on GitHub: https://github.com/model-map/EmpressNfo https://github.com/model-map/EmpressNfo https://github.com/syndicodefront/infekt https://github.com/syndicodefront/infekt nfo files were used to describe the release. Similar to FILE_ID.DIZ files, which were a way to describe a zip file for bbs software to index them. Another good article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrinkOrDie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DrinkOrDie
- brotchie 3y agoI learnt to code primarily by writing IRC bots for these groups + wrote an auto-trading FXP client in C++ that looked for pres dropping in top site channels, and automatically FXP couriered to other topsites. I wish I'd know back then (13 years old) what I know now (39) in terms of even simple things like linked lists, linear programming, estimators, etc, could have dominated. The "hardcore" in the scene would actually set up shell boxes and write a bunch of shell scripts to do auto trading. That also piqued my interest in learning Linux and Bash scripting.
- jmacd 3y agoIn 9th grade I was a "VP" of a group called aPC. We were couriers. I used to walk down the hallways of my Jr High school thinking how I was so fucking cool and not one single person around me knew it. :)
- ExoticPearTree 3y agoAnd yeah, the bandwidth requirements back then to make it as a courier. I almost forgot about all the groups in the '90s. The .nfo files were the best art.
- burnte 3y agoDitto. I lucked into being a courier. We had a second phone line at my house and while we cancelled it, Bell Atlantic left it active for three YEARS, but no active billing attached to it, so I could call anywhere in the world for free. I used Slip.NET for years too, and became a courier between EU and North America, since I had free long distance I could make the long calls to upload/download. To this day I have spoken aloud my warez courier handle exactly once, to my wife, and I doubt she remembers it. There's two other people in the world who know (each ran a BBS in the 412 that were my US endpoints), but I doubt they remember today, and I have no plans on becoming culpable what that identity did. :D
- EternalUsenet 3y agoThe 412? As in the Pittsburgh area?
- burnte 3y agoIndeed. Born and raised in Pgh, moved out of PA in 2009.
- jmacd 3y agoGreets!
- exclusiv 3y agoSame! And APC rings a bell - were they MP3 and ISO? I was an MP3 courier in a group on a lot of global top sites. I remember being in an irc chan for one of them (I think it was the hungarian one) and kali of the top group RNS stated his birthday or something else personal and said "oh crap I shouldn't have said that" lol. He was indicted by the DOJ in 2009! He was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit copyright infringementalthouh 4 other members pleaded guilty. They busted sites from time to time but RIAA couldn't do anything substantial. I stayed away from movies and tv because that was riskier and I enjoyed getting music a week or two before the p2p platforms got them. And also getting high quality rips. The sister group that did ISOs eventually got busted. Saw the move from ftp to fxp and shell accounts and semi-auto and automated trading. Some government officials would spend years to infiltrate the groups to bust the sites and members. Anyway, it was with being a courier that I got interested in code and had an insane amount of lines to handle all the topsite rules on what they would accept and I traded semi-automated. We even had a UI to help. I actually met a few people from those days in person and they were really cool. Still friends with one of them today. Many groups required meeting in person or doing a phone call before you could join and then they eventually relaxed that.
- NorSoulx 3y agoGreat memories being part of a few C64/Amiga groups and the demo-scene community back in the 80s, such as: * Special F/X (C64) * The Deadly Friends (C64) * The Supremacy (Amiga) We made the first ever Amiga Demo/Intro Creator back in May 1987, used by a few groups to create their first Amiga Intros, including Fairlight: https://coding-and-computers.blogspot.com/2022/05/first-amiga-demo-creator-may-1987.html https://coding-and-computers.blogspot.com/2022/05/first-amig...
- silisili 3y ago> 1911 which translates to 777 in hexadecimal. Interesting. Having seen the name a million times in younger years, I always assumed it was a reference to the pistol.
- 0x008 3y agoJust a great time.
- TacticalCoder 3y agoMuhahaaaa this thread full of people mentioning .nfo files. You guys are ten years late at least! Razor 1911 was a C64 an Amiga group way before the PC scene was a thing [1] [1] My crew and I made ex aequo first place at a PC demo-compo in Sweden/Uppsala, tied with Future Crew, before Future Crew became a thing so believe me I know about the PC scene being late to the game ; )
- w0z_ 3y agoMusic was also binded to AOL progz - miss those days.
- philxor 3y agoMyself and some of the original #warez folks on EFNet still hang out on a non-IRC chat platform, 30+ years later. Some of those guys were Razor members at one point in time. Lol most have grown up kids now. It's definitely a far cry from back in the day. I was briefly a courier for Razor starting on BBS but they were quite demanding. I would courier releases from their HQ at the time Mirage to a number of the member boards, but they wanted things done like the second it hit and really wanted all their couriers to have multiple lines. Certainly some colorful fellows in Razor 1911 like the TRC.
- CoBE10 3y agoI remember a certain Skyrim installer that was created by them. The progress bar would only update every 25%, and on my slow PC, it felt like an eternity waiting for the game to install. Also, if I recall correctly, the installer didn't create a desktop shortcut, so you had to hunt down where the game was installed. Those were certainly some memorable times.
- tony2016 3y agoI used to sell copies of pirated games on tapes and 5.25" floppies for the C64 in the 80's in a third world country. Made some good money as a teenager. I predate most people here. It was very hard to get these games in the country. Used snail mail which took weeks. I remember Hotline, Fairlight and many other cracking groups. Trainers at the beginning of the games were cool. Also remember the Freezeframe and Expert cartridges that freeze a games and enable you to save it.
- martin1b 3y agoThen Neverlock came around. Was incredible. Still remember the small loader files that ran before the game started - 'cracked by ... (INC, Razor, Fairlight, whoever). Those were cool. Loved demos back in the day. Second Reality is still one of my favorites.