Quake - The 1996 Beta scandal | MVG

In 1996 scene/warez groups raced to be first to release the biggest release of the decade - Quake by id Software. In this episode we look at the lies and deceptions that surrounded one of the biggest scandals to rock the underground warez scene.

Thanks to the following sites for archive material

► TextFiles.Com
► Defacto2.Net

Music in this Episode

► Second Reality - Purple Motion/Future Crew
► Alloyrun - Void / Reality, original by Maniacs of Noise
► WVChild - Neo Software
► Exposition - Wayne Kerr
► Quake OST Track #4 - Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails

Social Media Links :

#Quake #Warez #Underground

[ModernVintageGamer]

Let me know if you want more content like this. Really enjoyed this one. If you were a scener affiliated with any of these groups, feel free to reach out

[offspringfan]

There's so much romantism about the early warez scene, specially in the 90s: BBS, CompuServe, Usenet, FTPs, etc. There should be documentaries about these legendary groups.

[TehAwesomer]

9:52 - The note here ("CD beat to net, RZR to boards") shows that this event took place in the small window where both BBS systems and FTP servers were active and neither of them were centralized enough via a global dupecheck to establish definitively who had won a race. It is not surprising in this case that Razor 1911 won to BBSes, as their BBS curry team at the time was legendary.

[MrMario]

The nuke reasons being for a "kiddie game" at 3:50 are great LOL. Either way, fantastic look into this, had no idea this occurred. It took me a while to get through this video as well due to pausing to read all of the NFOs showcased here, loved this historical look back at it all 😁

[gustavs]

Back in the day, I was a part of an FTP ring that had FLT and Razor1911 as members. It was an awesome time. It was fun to read the SSL encrypted mIRC chats. I was a hardware provider which gave me unlimited ratio. The funny thing is that I don't quite remember how it all ended. I think I got my first kid and a job then it all just fell in to oblivion...

[Bushidounohana]

“No honor amongst thieves, ” this is a really great examination of the underground scene and the Quake scandal, would love to see more content like this!

[boomfunks]

Would love to see more scene related content. It's a big part of internet history that isn't covered at all.

[pagb]

I was in the scene like 20 years ago. Competition was fierce to get stuff up first, and sketchy releases like this one were not a rare thing. Some groups would also gladly DDOS your irc or ftp server if they found about it.

[Bestwick]

The group names and the releases are such a nostalgia hit.
Having no online presence at the time most of this behind-the-scenes info was not something I was aware of.
More please!

[TheDorianTube]

Dude, it's like I stepped into a Time Machine. The nostalgia is real.

[iamdarkyoshi]

Please more scene stuff! As a younger individual, I pretty much missed this era in computing history and it's fascinating to learn about, albeit a bit on the harder side to find info about. Videos like this are fantastic, and I'd love to see more!

[faz]

I still remember the excitement my son and I felt when we cracked the infamous LensLock protection on the Sinclair Spectrum so we could copy Elite onto a MicroDrive cartridge. Happy days!! Great article, thanks.

[xorinzor]

Oh man, that Second Reality demo soundtrack.. good memories.

[stevebanning]

The late 90's era of PC culture like this, post BB systems was so amazing. So many 'groups' and 'clans' and different organizations floating around doing cool things, only knowing one another based on their callsigns.

[tehfn]

Man this made me feel old. I was 24 when this released and we spent most weekends on a 9600 baud serial lan playing. What was really fun was learning that whoever hosted the game had a 0 ping so the rest of us were at a disadvantage. :D

[PXAbstraction]

That intro tune fired up so many dormant neurons in my brain. Second Reality FTW!

[lordanthrax]

More please! It immediately sparked lost memories!

"always above the CLASS"
"not just a MYTH"

my teenage years where great because of 1911, technic, fairlight and many more. What was the name if that compression software again? Uharc? Dont know anymore. Getting a bunch of files with around 150mb and having a 1.5 gb after installation (while grooving to the tunes of the cracktro) was pure magic

[Dan.R.A]

I remember all of these groups from the 90s, but didn't know the competition was fierce like this, damn. Thanks for the video MVG, it certainly brought back memories.

[ProlificInvention]

Seems like yesterday, I remember those days well. I had a 386sx33 and Compuserve at home as well as access to many BBS... at my buddies he had a 486DX25 and Sierra Online. We downloaded literally everything, Doom 2, Duke Nukem, Quake, Rott--we even downloaded all the patches and modified the games and were waaaay ahead of the curve with all the Betas . I even remember RoR 😆

[sneakingelephant]

This was a really interesting episode. My knowledge of scene groups, cracking and distribution only really extends a bit to the early 2000's and it's awesome to have such a detailed story about something like this. I know it might not end up being the most popular content you publish but I find it fascinating and would love to see more of it